Kona LHe and Premiere CS5.5 –No Go?

[Robert Brown]

I also wanted to add, I’ve been doing some testing and the different codecs take different amounts of time to render. In PPro you set your Preview Rendering codec and DNX is much slower than ProRes. I’m still liking ProRes at the moment. AVC Intra is fast to preview to but a weird one to master to as it creates this whole directory structure to put the file in unless I’m doing something wrong. I also got some pretty nasty sparkles converting an H264 to AVC-I yesterday. Not there in ProRes.

I think this is something PPro really needs to figure out. They need a good codec that is very ProRes like and that has good multigenerational qualities and that works in Mac and Win. Ideally if you rendered out your timeline as previews you should have the option of using those existing render files during export to save time. This is how FCP and Smoke work. Of course Smoke is uncompressed but a lot of clients are going to wonder why you have to re-render it even though you’ve already rendered it. I work in a lot of tight turnaround situations though.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Robert Brown] ” Of course Smoke is uncompressed but a lot of clients are going to wonder why you have to re-render it even though you’ve already rendered it. I work in a lot of tight turnaround situations though.”

For tight turnaround situations, I’d definitely be considering Smoke if the budget allows. Autodesk was kind enough to send us an evaluation copy which I’m very excited about trying out. Have always seen Smoke from a distance, can’t wait to actually take a test drive.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

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[Robert Brown]

Smoke is an awesome system. I did the training classes at Autodesk in Venice CA which is a great way to learn it as it’s not like anything else. I wouldn’t call it a fast turn around box though, it’s much more of a finesse box. But the keying is great, color correction great, rotoing great and it has a really cool 3d DVE where you can load in 3d objects etc. And the output looks great.

The way to think of the Smoke is as a good – but not great – editor but with Flame like effects abilities. The editing functions are fine but you are limited to one screen so it’s harder to deal with larger amounts of material. And some of their methodology is really hard to get used to as far as editing is concerned.

But it’s loaded with all the real tools you need like pulldown removal, de-interlace, re-interlace, grain matching etc. to allow you to do some really good comps. And once you finish your comp you just drop it back in your timeline and you can play it out in context in realtime.

But this system uses a methodology where you render as you go and so when you are ready to export, it’s rendered. I see why Premiere does it the way it does it but clients will balk at the slow exports – in my world at least.

[François Grivel]

Hi all,

I also have problems to switch from FCP to Premiere Pro with AJA Kona LHe.

Here is my configuration:
– Mac Pro 2×2.66GHz Quad-Core Xeon with 8GB DDR3 RAM
– 64 bits Kernel enabled
– AJA Kona LHe with KL-Box
– Premiere Pro CS 5.5 update 5.5.2
– Drivers Aja Kona 9.1
– AJA Adobe Plugins 9.1

I started by installing a fresh version of the AJA drivers and then the Adobe plugin.
I can see and configure AJA hardware in Premiere Pro and I can even connect to VTR correctly.
The Kona is apparently well recognized, the scrubbling over the timeline works well with no latency, the monitor send video…

The problem is that I can’t have a real time smooth playback (on the timeline or on an individual clip).
My sequence & media are Apple ProRes HQ, no render is required.
It play maximum 1s and then stop.

I can’t find the reason…
My whole project is stored on 2 stripped hard drives that have enough speed.
The activity monitor doesn’t show any sign of overstrain when I playback.

Any help is welcome. I will retry a fresh install of driver & plugins.

Interesting thread by the way!

Cheers!

Foué