Premiere encoding

[Simon Ubsdell]

[John Pale] “but what problems did you have with DNX”

Subjectively it has always felt a little soft by comparsion with ProRes and I think others have mentioned this before. And DnxHD in FCP is not a delightful experience (but that’s another story) …

Also it cannot handly higher than 1920 unlike ProRes.

But they are mostly extremely similar in performance.

Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[John Fishback]

I’ve used Media Encoder and Compressor and feel Compressor has much more control over encoding parameters. If I decide to switch to PP I’ll keep Compressor. I also use Squeeze 7.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.3, Motion 4.0.3, Comp 3.5.3, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.3)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Simon Ubsdell]

[John Fishback] ” I’ve used Media Encoder and Compressor and feel Compressor has much more control over encoding parameters.”

As always it’s about using the right tool for the job. They both have their strengths and weaknesses and I use both depending on the jobn in hand. Not much chance of getting a 50Mbps Mpeg2 (needed for TV delivery in some territories) out of Compressor for example, but easily done in AME.

Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Robert Brown]

I’ve been testing a lot of this over the last few days and thought I’d give my opinion. There is the issue of Media Encoder vs Compressor as well as OSX vs Win 7. AT this point I’m liking OSX using Prores. Media Encoder actually has some cool stuff about it and performs well. I think Compressor goes a little farther with things like timecode burns, cropping etc., but if you are doing a simple task like transcoding 5D footage to Prores it’s hard to beat. It’s faster than real time and there is NO gamma shift like there is with compressor and the converted image looked identical. Also the Prores files act like MOV files and are very easy to play etc. I made some DNX files yesterday and they would not play in the finder.

I still think OSX is a better editing OS as with Quick View it’s very easy to browse files and drag them in. Win 7 also seems much slower to load and play media files. In OSX I can play uncompressed 1080 off a single drive. Windows chugs. I’ve heard that Win 7 performs better but I’m not sure how. Maybe rendering speed but I haven’t checked it.

I think Apple will sell a lot of FCPXs just for DVC Pro and Prores as they are the ones to beat if you ask me for overall usability and quality.

[Joe Moya]

Adobe Media Emcoder will do what you want…and does it quite well.

As for a file codec exclusive for Adobe like ProRes or DNxHD… then, No… Adobe doesn’t have it’s own file format…

BUT… Cineforms Neoscene is a file format application that you should consider. Cineform video file format is highly effective in matching ProRes and DNxHD in ease of use but will uprez any 8bit to 10bit. Cineform codec is interchangeable between FCP and AVID… it is a very Universal-like file format that improves quality and stability (…not to infer that ProRes or DNxHD are unstable).

I’ve used Cineform, ProRes and DNxHD and found that while there are some small differences when it comes to using in most editing workflows…in general… all three are very good file codecs (…to bad ProRes is history and thank goodness I used Cineform as my primary video file of choice for editing).

[John Pale]

Cineform is great, but costs between $129-$999, depending on what you want to use it for.

[Chris Knight]

[Robert Brown] “I still think OSX is a better editing OS as with Quick View it’s very easy to browse files and drag them in. Win 7 also seems much slower to load and play media files. In OSX I can play uncompressed 1080 off a single drive. Windows chugs. I’ve heard that Win 7 performs better but I’m not sure how. Maybe rendering speed but I haven’t checked it.”
This is incredibly subjective. I edit and work with HD footage in Windows 7 and OS X every day, and experience far more “chugging” in OS X. It’s exactly this reason I prefer to work in Windows 7.

[Robert Brown]

Should my opinion not be based on my own experiences? I do tend to use a lot of the Apple codecs which maybe why. What codecs do you use? Quick view is hard to beat though. Does Windows have an equivalent?

[Daniel Mcclintock]

I think the reason why you don’t see a codec like ProRes on Premiere is because I think they don’t need it.

Premiere Pro plays a good majority of the codecs used out there natively so you don’t have to transcode — just import the file, drop it in the time timeline and just edit — this is especially true for DSLRs and RED.

Also, if you already have FCP on your system, the codec will be shared by Premiere Pro.

Basically the best of both worlds.

—

“Sometimes Life Needs a Cmd-Z!”

[Chris Knight]

My every day bread-and-butter is editing AVC-Intra 50/100, but I’ll be working in codecs ranging from consumer-grade h.264 to R3D. In FCP, most of this has to be converted to ProRes, which eats up time and HD space. Premiere edits all of this natively, and in real-time (thus, no need for Final Cut’s Quickview, if that’s what you were referring to).

Non-MXF media is associated with a simple media player, so previewing it from Explorer requires one second of loading time (and, thus, no need for previewing with the space bar). And since Windows 7 supports Trim, running the OS and applications from an SSD speeds up my workflow significantly – something that can’t be recommended for professional work in OS X.

The only downside to my Windows workflow is working with buggy drivers for my Kona board, but that’s more AJA’s fault, than Microsoft or Adobe (the board worked beautifully in Windows 32-bit XP and CS3, but has since required planetary alignment to work perfectly). Now there’s a company that needs to refocus its attention on the Windows platform.

I didn’t initially reply to start a flame war. I’ve been using both platforms since they were released (I’m old), and love/hate both for various reasons. I’ve gradually migrated away from OS X, because my workflow works smoother in a Windows/Adobe environment. I suspect that after this year, I won’t have much of a choice – but I’m not too upset about it.