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Realtime Output in Premiere Pro
I’m seeking knowledge / recommendations on a television series workflow.
We are currently debating moving our workflow over to Adobe Premiere & After Effects from a former FCP & Autodesk Smoke workflow. The television show is 22 minutes in length, and we are trying to decide if there’s a solution to obtain the same turn around time that we’re currently using.
Our current workflow, finishing in Smoke, allows us to output via SDI in realtime time to capture in FCP a final ProRes file. The whole output process only takes 22 minutes since we are outputting and capturing a ProRes file in realtime.
Now we are wondering if we can accomplish the same turn around time with Premiere Pro. Once we have done our final color grading, stabilizing and audio sweetening, we would want to the render/export the 22 minute show. Would the best solution be to use an SDI out (BlackMagic), and capture the ProRes file via another method? Or will investing in a high end Nvidia card allow for lighting fast realtime render/export out of Premiere or Adobe Media Encoder with the aid of the Mercury Playback Engine?
Basically the question boils down to, “Can I export from Premiere timeline in realtime to a final file format?”…not realtime to a playback/reference monitor necessarily.
Any help/solutions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
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6 Replies
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This is a workflow I am exploring currently. PrP doesnt work like FCP, which creates previews then stitches them together so you have a relatively fast export. Because of the universal nature of its timeline (which needs no transcoding or rendering of most basic clip formats) when PrP exports it rebuilds the sequence frame by frame as it makes the master file. This can be very fast depending on format / use of accelerated effects with a Nvidia/CUDA card, but definitely not real time.
Ive been interested in try real time output thru a AJA Kona 3 card (I dont like BM products or customer support) out to a Ki Pro Mini.That would result in making a Prores master in real time. There are a few details that go into this process that I wont bore you with at this time This workflow could revolutionize the export process, but needs to be tested and I dont have a demo unit yet.Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3 -
I have lots of experience with PPCS5.5’s “Realtime performance, and i would say it is defiantly hit or miss.
In fact i was on here to hopefully find out if their is anything i can do. Basically we for one of our clients everything we shoot regardless of format, Red, 5D, F3 except has to be delivered on XDCAM disks. Since we have 4 F800s we opted to not get the 35000 dollar deck and just output vie HD/sdi to the input board on the camera. This is by far the fastest way. Our workflow is this. Transfer media to raid, throw it on timeline and hit play. We have both AJA and blackmagic cards. The problem is for no apparent reason the timeline just stops, usually on a transition between clip. We then have to reformat the disc and start over. Sometimes it works sometime s it doesn’t. Another issue is that there is no time code out except via machine control(an entire thread could be written about those problems.)I don’t know why they can’t just let you carry it over sdi, There is a setting for aja to do that under preferences but it doesn’t work. Our Flanders has a cool feature to display timecode but in premier it is useless.So in conclusion id say that if you want to do realtime out over HD/sdi don’t go the premier route it is 100% unreliable. These are just to of the constant bugs but there are many random F-ups everyday. Im really surprised so many pros sing its praises. -
oh another major flaw is that while using Black magic or Kona’s proprietary codecs.(A must if you want to output HD/SDI) Many industry standard codecs don’t i.e. XDCAM 422, MPG4, H.264, DNXHD, even prores do not output correctly. By this i mean there is extreme aliasing and exzagerated stutter on playback. These same files on a nitris DX or output via the same aja or BM card in FCP do not have these artifacts.
Truly Sorry for the rant but i am just about at my wits end with PPCS ANYTHING.My System is a 2.93GHz 12-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” 32GB 1333 Ram i have an Decklink extreme 3d+ and Aja Kona 3G(bought the Kona for LTC timecode out but it is currently not installed) 2X Quadro4000s(used for davinci),32TB Fibre connected MaxEvo4k. Im running OS X Lion(upgraded because I hoped it would help-Dont Upgrade!!!)Os and main applications are installed on a 240GB OCZ HSDL SSD. I also have 4 2TB 7200TB WD Cavair Black HDD
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Jeff, do you have the latest Kona drivers that were released last week? I haven’t seen the awful playback performance you are describing. Of course the clip codec can be a large variable in this situation.
So you are positive that the HD-SDI out of Kona 3 playing a PrP 5.52 timeline doesn’t output time code. And you tested this by recording to a disk recorders or tape? Thats a problem.Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3 -
I have troubles shot this to death. Even with all the latest upgrades. Premeier doesn’t embed LTC timecode through the Aja sdi even though they give you the option. Ive tested it with many different decks, Camera TC in a Motu V4HD ,Locit box, older beta deck, Everything. The solution was to transcode everything to pro res and it worked fine in FCP7. I even tried mastering back to tape via 1394_what a nightmare. as well as use machine control and sdi+ext audio to a DVCProHD Deck -Nadda . As I said before the export tape command is seriously jinxed. Other than some $500 dollar consumer deck presets there are no controls. you end uo using generic preset A,b or C and then 99& of the time it never can complete the task. I love how Adobe spends time here on the board asking for what new features we want but if you try to call tech support on this issue the call cent host has never even touched the program…Durong our conversation the would say tome that these kinds of features should be in cs6…..Lovely more feats in CS5 and those same features in 6 but this time they will work,,,,,,,Anybody have a workaround……
I still can’t get my time line to just play without randomly stooping,
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Like I said earlier, Jeff, for all the short form pieces Ive worked on in the last 6 months (30 sec to 10:30 min) none have ever had playback issues. You can see my configuration by my signature.
The next time you need tech support, ask for Vinay. We spent lots of time troubleshooting a very complicated issue. He was knowledgeable and good to work with.And free, unlike Avid support which is $200 a ticket!
Hopefully I will continue the battle you have been fighting if I can get a demo unit of the AJA Ki Pro Mini to test out. Without some alternative to lengthy exporting, Adobe will find Premiere being used by very few professionals if this issue isnt resolved. Premiere Pro has a lot going for it now .I hope to act as a catalyst and get timeline timecode out of the Kona 3 and into the Ki Pro Mini.Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3
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