Premiere In News

[Mark Hollis]

I’m not really sure that we are a good example but here goes:

I am using Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 on a Dell xps600 and a Dell xps Gen3 (with the latter mostly doing capture and the former editing) for the Connecticut Public Affairs Network (CT-N) in Hartford. We edit a weekly show called Capitol Reports.

We have a weekly deadline, not a daily one or a twice-daily one but our deadline is firm. We have to be done in time to completely close-caption the show and hit an airtime.

I come from a hard news background and worked with an Avid DS making graphics for NBC Nightly News as well as the in-show promo or opener. I know from deadlines. The folks at Avid did not think that the DS was capable of doing what NBC did with it. They use Avid Newscutters (Media Composer with a few things disabled) for their stories.

I would say that Premiere Pro is as capable of crashing a deadline as any software out there. Your limitations have to do with what producers (on deadline) expect and the quality of the person operating the software. When you are faced with render times, a cut becomes a very valid transition.

You want to buy technology that can support the product. We will not run Premiere CS4 on our systems because they won’t make deadline. This is not to bash the software — the Dells just cannot chug through the rendering needed.

Our final timeline currently has 7 audio and 7 video layers, though I intend to see if I can reduce that.

We edit our stories and then export them as .AVI media so that Premiere Pro doesn’t have to manage all of the layers in the stories — just the final edit.

We don’t like how long it takes Premiere Pro to “conform” AVIs (even the ones it created) but we take special pains to make sure we’re doing these when we’re not under the gun as much as possible. We would like to be able to work directly with P2 media files but we cannot work with CS4, so we have to convert those elsewhere or use videotape.

For videotape formats, we’re using DVCPro and Sony Betacam SX. Ingest of Betacam SX is really easy. I’m having problems controlling the Panasonic DVCPro AJ-SD255 with Premiere Pro, but it will capture if I place the VCR in local and just hit the red button.

We will upgrade to HD in the future (though we’re not doing that next year). We’re going to transition to Final Cut Pro in January and buy a server for that. We’ll have several seats of FCP running on Mac Pros and I’ll answer the Final Cut Pro question the same way: It depends on the producer’s expectations and the quality of the person operating the software.

I have over 20 years of experience in television meeting deadlines. There is nothing specifically lacking in Adobe’s application that would prevent you from hitting a deadline with it.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Rodney Johnson]

Thanks Mark for giving me a thorough analysis of what you do and how it has been for you. This gives me a little idea on the road we will be embarking on in the future. I would agree that it all depends on the user and the hardware that comes with the software to make it work smoothly, effectively and of course producer expectations.

A note on the DVCPro there are still times I have issue capturing even with my Avid Symphony Nitris system so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s an issue with the Deck rather than the Adobe software. Thanks again for your feedback.

Best Regards,
Rodney

[Mark Hollis]

Heck, use your Symphony!

It’s just a Newscutter with better color correction…

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Mike Cohen]

Mark,
As a CT resident, I was especially interested in your post, and agree CS4, unless in a rock solid system, is not for the deadline conscious. Although the upgrade to the Media Encoder improves things a lot.
We used to capture DVCPRO into our Media 100 and occasionally had errors. Granted this was via RS-422, not firewire.

Mike Cohen

[Mark Hollis]

I would not sentence CS4 to the Gulag yet.

I detailed the specifications of the computer on which I run Premiere Pro 1.5. It cannot handle CS4. I have not tried it on my MacPro, as I only have the Windows version.

My Mac Pro is a dual-quad Intel Xenon (Nehalem) system and does tend to get out of its own way.

In a proper machine, CS4 may well be able to make air. It has been my experience that software is usually written for processors and computers that have not quite come out yet.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Tim Kolb]

[Mark Hollis] “We would like to be able to work directly with P2 media files but we cannot work with CS4, so we have to convert those elsewhere or use videotape.”

If CS3 is updated to it’s latest version, it does P2 native…still far faster and more streamlined approach than FCP…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Mark Hollis]

We didn’t get CS3 and the choice to not upgrade was not made on my watch (I just started two weeks ago and am at the tail end of a number of command decisions that I simply need to accept). We can get P2 into the system by transcoding it — though I do not know what process is being used.

Going forward, we may move to FCP, though I’m agnostic — I am interested in a workflow that does not lose renders, handles the types of media we are using (Sony Betacam SX and Panasonic’s DVCPro, as well as P2) and gets us a completed program regularly once a week with a minimum of hysteria.

This last week was a good one: We had a “late-breaking” story that happened about 6 PM the day before we were due that necessitated the completion of one segment (mostly done all ready) and then we had to do show assembly. We try to be done by noon for review, but we were closer to 1:00 PM. Delivery by 5 PM — though that can be pushed.

We were completed by 2:30 and that was considered a really heavy, rushed schedule for output. Pardon me while I don’t break a sweat on that deadline. I used to have a nightly 6:30 PM deadline with tons of compositing.

We will stick with Premiere 1.5 until January, when we upgrade computers. There may be additional CS3 in the “may be purchased in shrinkwrap” pipeline somewhere, but we won’t buy anything new until we have new hardware. Included in our purchases is a new server and a fiber interconnect across the street. By far, the largest expense is the fiber because it involves backhoes, there not being conduit to pull it through.

Good to note about CS3, though I have a friend in Manchester, NH who says he had to upgrade to CS4 for P2 (maybe the JVC flavor he was using?). I didn’t upgrade to CS4 applications at home as I heard ample evidence that it was a “no go” for my system. And it was. I had a Mac G4-400 (Single-processor Sawtooth) with a processor upgrade (to 1GHz) and 1.5G of system RAM. CS4 does not run on G4.

Present home system outdistances the work system (Dell XPS600 Win XP-Pro with 4G of RAM). My home system is a 2.93GHz Dual Quad-core Intel Xeon Nehalem system with 8G of system RAM. It’s ready for CS4. It’s ready for Final Cut Pro. It’s ready for Snow Leopard.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Tim Kolb]

[Mark Hollis] “Good to note about CS3, though I have a friend in Manchester, NH who says he had to upgrade to CS4 for P2 (maybe the JVC flavor he was using?)”

Maybe the JVC thing…or perhaps he didn’t load the updates? P2 native was in the last (or close to the last) update for CS3.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,