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Walter, quick question: Adobe Premiere “Exporting”
Walter Biscardi, (and everyone else!)
Longtime blog follower and tried to even find you at NAB SuperMeet, anyways. I am not only a recent Adobe Premiere Pro convert from FCP7, but I consider myself an “Al Mooney” convert, as he hand his Adobe staff, after their presentation at the 2013 SuperMeet, spent about 30 minutes with me and we had some great conversation about editing in Adobe. Few weeks ago, gave it a try and I’m converted.
So, here is the run-down, and I’m sure you get these questions all the time, as a former FCP 7 user, I need some more info on:
1.) Exporting “Same QuickTime Movie” (Same as Source” exporting. Fast in FCP 7, a bit slower in Premiere. Yellow bar in timeline, 27 min clip, XDCAM EX 35/VBR. Changed export from default codec “H.264” to “XDCAM EX 35/VBR”, and set in and out, took about 45 min, is this normal? Yes, the footage on the time-line matches the source footage: XDCAM EX 35/VBR. Pop up asked me at the beginning if I wanted to match settings, clicked “Yes”, so everything in time-line is true editing time-base to source footage that came in.
2. Quick client emailable files – ideas? Client wants to see the raw interview clips, shot 2 cameras, they just want to see one, I drag to time-line, export out a small low-res file, small resolution, what would you suggest? Originally, they wanted DVDs, but I told them this would be faster. What would be a good rule of thumb file resolution size, codec, and email able file size, and one that exports quickly or quicker, or a workflow that entails a shorter potential export time? “If” I were still in FCP, I’d do a batch export through Compressor from FCP 7, and drag the ipod setting QVGA 320×180 preset on to the clips, and do a batch export and let them ‘cook’ over-night and wake up and email them in the morning. I’m interested in learning new and faster workflow with this, so there are no more habits here, please let me know and what you’d suggest, based on your experience, and also, anyone else, please comment, as I’m always trying to become faster at work-flow, and nuts and bolts, behind the workflow.
Thanks,
Tom Laughlin
Producer/Editor
Digital Chop House
Salt Lake City, Utah -
12 Replies
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[Tom Laughlin] “Changed export from default codec “H.264” to “XDCAM EX 35/VBR”, and set in and out, took about 45 min, is this normal? “
Renders depend wholly on your machine. We never export XDCAM anything so I couldn’t tell you what’s normal and not. Our ProRes exports on a 12 Core Mac with dual nVidia cards takes approx. realtime, usually a little faster. So a 29 minute timeline exports in about 27 – 29 min. We’re expecting much faster speeds with newer machines coming online soon.
[Tom Laughlin] “2. Quick client emailable files – ideas? Client wants to see the raw interview clips, shot 2 cameras, they just want to see one, I drag to time-line, export out a small low-res file, small resolution, what would you suggest? “
No clue honestly. We use ScreenLight for client reviews and anything else they want to see. It’s a secure site so they login and can review anything. Best part is the comment section so they can put they can easily timestamp notes right on the site.
For clips that small it’s usually impossible to see anything so if it’s interview only, just export the audio and forget the video.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaFoul Water Fiery Serpent, an original documentary featuring Sigourney Weaver. US & European distribution by American Public Television
MTWD Entertainment – Developing original content for all media.
“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.
“Science Nation” – Three years and counting of Science for the People. -
[walter biscardi] “We’re expecting much faster speeds with newer machines coming online soon.”
Do you know something about upcoming Mac’s that the rest of us don’t?! 🙂
@Tom – Exporting speeds depend on several things such as machine specs, hard drive speed (RAID vs. single drive), how many FX are on the clips, etc. What type of GPU do you have in your machine? Is it CUDA capable/enabled (only Nvidia based cards are).
I agree with Walter, if you’re only concerned with them hearing the interview then just send them a mp3 of the audio. Since you’re not showing them an edited version what’s the benefit of them seeing only 1 angle for 30+ minutes? If you “have to” show them video then a small mp4 using the h264 codec is your best bet. Keep the data rate low and maybe you can email it to them. Or upload a video to a video sharing site and send them the link (YouTube/Vimeo, etc.). Though this method is far less secure than ScreenLight that Walter uses, but it may be ok for this particular project.
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost -
[Ryan Holmes] “Do you know something about upcoming Mac’s that the rest of us don’t?! :-)”
No, I mean here at our shop. We’re replacing older Mac Pros with newer iMacs and seeing really nice performance jumps. The Dell PC is also very solid.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative MediaFoul Water Fiery Serpent, an original documentary featuring Sigourney Weaver. US & European distribution by American Public Television
MTWD Entertainment – Developing original content for all media.
“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.
“Science Nation” – Three years and counting of Science for the People. -
If you have a lot of clients that want to see the raw files from a project and comment on them, a product like this might be worthwhile. Depends on how much time you spend encoding and emailing assets.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
Hey Kylee…
that’s teriffic…
thanks!!!!
Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX -
[Tom Laughlin] “1.) Exporting “Same QuickTime Movie” (Same as Source” exporting. Fast in FCP 7, a bit slower in Premiere.”
Couple of questions…these files haven’t been rewrapped by FCP, right? A QuickTime wrapper will slow things down.
What sort of effects are you using? If it took some time to export, the effects and color correction, etc would need to be rendered to your export format.
Keep in mind that Premiere Pro CS6 doesn’t really smart render like FCP did (a benefit to having an NLE based completely on one media structure-QuickTime), but even PPro CC, which will have a version of smart rendering for several formats, doesn’t have that ability for every format as some native camera formats can’t be written….you cannot make an mp4-wrapped XDcamHDEX clip that you could place back on an SxS card for instance…you would end up with a generic 35 Mbit/s MPEG2 file.
[Tom Laughlin] “2. Quick client emailable files – ideas? “
I use H264 at a YouTube or Vimeo preset as a guide you could start with…(you can tweak from there however you see fit) For most projects, generating a useful video file that is small enough for email usually just isn’t realistic. I have a folder in my DropBox for each client and I put videos up there and send a link. That way if multiple people need to see it, they can send the link back and forth instead of a heavy attachment, and for many they can choose to play the file over the web or download it. Watermarking is good for proof copies distributed this way of course.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor
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So, what I’ve done was, I took Sony Clip Browser and used it to “import” the media, so now I have all the RAW from the EX-1, in .MOV, still as XDCAM-EX 1080p 29.97 35VBR. I’ve set up my project by opening Adobe and dragging a clip to the time-line to match the same settings that we shot in (XDCAM-EX 1080p 29.97 35VBR), and the same settings that the raw was imported in as .MOV files, time-line still at XDCAM-EX 1080p 29.97 35VBR. So my editing time-line is native to the imported media.
It may just be my computer.
Is it faster to jump import and edit the raw EX-1 footage .MP4s? I think that the habit of editing in the .MOV was a FCP7 thing.
But in answer to your question, nothing was wrapped using FCP7, Sony Clip Browser imported the media raw, and I’m editing native, XDCAM-EX 1080p 29.97 35VBR, but in .MOV. Does this answer your question?
Also, is it faster to export a sequence out using the same settings as the time-line, and then dragging it into Compressor to create a H.264 720p file?, How would you export a Sequence from Adobe Premiere? I’m not familiar with that still.
Can you just drag and drop a setting onto the one clip or a batch? Is it faster to export out of Adobe Media Encoder or out of Premiere? Less time and more speed are my semi-ultimate goals…
Last night, I exported (3) 7 GB clips (30 min interviews) that were exported (uncompressed) same as source XDCAM-EX 1080p 29.97 35VBR, then I dragged those three .MOVs into Compressor to output H.264/720p files, and it took about 3-4 hours last night to encode those, with no other apps open, just Compressor running. I guess I could have just exported right out of Premiere as H.264/720p files, with “time-code burn-in”. Would that be even faster? My time-lines are ‘yellow’, is this about the “pay your tax up front or at the end” (when to render) talk we heard at NAB this year?
What’s your additional thoughts everyone?
Thanks,
Tom
Tom Laughlin
Producer/Editor
Digital Chop House
Salt Lake City, Utah -
[Tom Laughlin] “So, what I’ve done was, I took Sony Clip Browser and used it to “import” the media, so now I have all the RAW from the EX-1, in .MOV,”
Once you use Sony’s Clip Browser that is re-wrapping the mp4’s as mov’s. It’s still using the same XDCAM EX codec in either wrapper, but you are re-wrapping the footage.
It largely depends on your total workflow whether or not you want to re-wrap something. If you’re just editing in PPro and then exporting a finished product, I’d say save yourself the time and hassle and just bring in the mp4’s straight to PPro. Provided you copied the entire folder structure of the SxS card over PPro should just see it and show you the available clips for import. Super easy and no time spent re-wrapping.
As for export times, it’s all heavily dependent on your system. GPU, CPU, RAM, hard drive speed, how you’re connected to said hard drives (internal, external, RAID, etc.), how much work you’ve done to the timeline through various FX, etc. In the future I would let go of the Compressor route (and I’m an old FCP guy myself) and begin to embrace Adobe’s Media Encoder. I’ve found it to be comparable with Compressor (better in some areas, worse in others). But you mileage may vary….
Just my $.02.
Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost -
As usual, I’m also just now finding out that, along with using Adobe Premiere, a few things to accelerate work-flow is the graphics card. I just had my tech install a brand new ATI Radeon HD 5770 into my 2008 Mac Pro, and also take out the current system drive in my Mac Pro out, and add and max out the RAM to 16 GB RAM, as well as add a SSD as my main program drive.
So, the computer starts quicker, some performance has increased, and yes I can connect up to three monitors and the video display quality is way better, but in the end, this doesn’t help me “RENDER” or “EXPORT” faster!
I guess I need to get a QUADRO 4000 card, to assist with this. The sad thing is, FCP7 was fast at renders and exports, and with these upgrades to my Mac, and added new parts, I was hoping that this would make the Mac Pro faster, but with Premiere 6, you need more of a robust card. I upgraded a few things for it to benefit me in the editing more, not so much in other computational areas. FCP 7 is faster now in exports and renders with my upgrades, but I’ve switched to Premiere…
Could you run two cards, the ATI and Quadro, or do I need to take this one out and sell it? Or, should I stop putting more money into a 2008 Mac Pro, and wait to upgrade in a year to a new Mac Pro and buy a Quadro?
Does Avid use or benefit Quadro 4000 cards?
I’m also trying to get a handle on Da Vinci and have had multiple errors with using it, and trying to get a handle of what I need to run it properly. Are there any other cheaper cards out there or should I, when I get ready to get a new Mac Pro, get the Quadro 4000?
Any further thoughts? (Walter?)
Tom Laughlin
Producer/Editor
Digital Chop House
Salt Lake City, Utah -
Keep in mind that once you rewrap the XDcamEX files from mp4, you are now working with 32 bit QuickTime…if you would have left the XDcamEX files in their original state (as mp4), Adobe would have used their own codec and you would be operating in 64 bit.
Exporting from the edited XDcamEX original media to H264 in Premiere Pro also performs that process in 64 bit.
You can get a 64 bit application and get a speed increase, but you can’t force it to use all the QuickTime infrastructure…
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor
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