Importing MPG into PPro results in serious AV sync problems

[Blast1]

Ppro is basically a DV editor, it does not work very well with Mpegs unless you have a third party plug-in like MainConcept’s MainConcept MPEG Pro https://www.mainconcept.com/mpeg_pro.shtml#standard

[Jack Kelly]

OK, thanks…

…although, I do feel I should stick up for PPro here… I feel it is more than a “DV editor”. I’ve recently used it do quite a lot of uncompressed SD and some CFHD-compressed HD work.

…anyway, back to the topic…

That MPEG Pro plug in does look interesting but I’d rather not fork out any more cash for plug-ins. Are there any other ways of importing DVD footage into PPro?

Thanks,
Jack

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Jack Kelly
London
Dir / Prod / Camera
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[Tim Kurkoski]

Jack-

The core of the problem with Premiere’s MPEG handling is caused by the fact that Premiere asks Windows to connect it to the MPEG decoder. (This is as opposed to how it handles DV, for which it uses the MainConcept codec exclusively.) Any given computer probably has at least 2 or 3 decoders on it, and whatever is the most recently installed will be what Windows feeds back to Premiere. The decoder in use may or may not play nicely with Premiere. In particular, I seem to recall that the Intervideo WinDVD decoder seems to be especially unfriendly.

The solution is to change which DVD decoder has highest priority. Preferably the MainConcept decoder, which Premiere installs, will be the one. Try searching the Premiere Pro forum on the Adobe site, there have been some tools mentioned there that will change MPEG decoder priority (or you can just hack the registry if you know where to go).

Another solution that has been reccomended on the Premiere Elements forum is to install the free K-Lite codec package. It includes the MainConcept decoder (I am therefore skeptical of the legality of this package), and if you select MC to be the default during the K-Lite install, all seems to be fine with at least Premiere Elements and MPEG handling. I wouldn’t expect PrPro to behave differently. Basically, with this solution, you’re just pasting another version of the MC codec on top of whatever’s already there.

[Jack Kelly]

Hi Tim,

Very interesting stuff, thanks loads for that detailed reply. I’ll give it a go later.

If you get a chance, please could you take a look at the Importing_From_a_DVD page on the Movie Making Manual and update it with your great knowledge? If you don’t have the time to edit the page yourself, please could I paraphrase your last reply? (it’s very easy to edit)

Many thanks,
Jack

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Jack Kelly
London
Dir / Prod / Camera
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[Tim Kurkoski]

Hi Jack,

Why don’t you post it, edit it as you feel appropriate, but credit me (via CreativeCow.net). I’m really busy right now, and while I’m sure it’s as easy as you say, I just don’t feel like messing around with it. (And for some reason, Wiki sites are always really slow for me.)

-=Tim

[Phocas Kroon]

I copy the DVD parts to the anologe input of my camera while playing the DVD on a DVD player and capture the tape.
If you have an analoge input in the PC it is more simple.

Phocas Kroon

[Jack Kelly]

Thanks for the reply. To be honest, I’d rather not have to go the MPEG2-analogue-DV-MPEG4.AVC route. I’d prefer to stay in the digital domain and do as few codec-hops as possible.

Thanks,
Jack

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Jack Kelly
London
Dir / Prod / Camera
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[Jack Kelly]

OK, cool – I’ll do that.

Yes, the WikiFoundation servers can get a bit bogged down… one day soon, Google will provide some servers for the WikiFoundation servers and it’ll all speed up.

Jack

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Jack Kelly
London
Dir / Prod / Camera
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