[Carl Werdine]

Have you found a solution to this problem?

I am having the same one. In my case I import concerts that we mix live and then I track them so we have the concerts split into tracks on our network for easy access. This is the workflow we have used for many years and it works best for us.

In the past I could cut the file into tracks in Premiere and then batch render them. Now the Media Encoder renders one or two tracks and then gets stuck on “Reading XMP”. I waited long enough, if you count -start render, go to sleep, check in the morning and the program is still frozen- as long enough.
I have tried finding a solution to stop AME from reading the XMP data but there is no setting for that and I couldn’t find a hack either.

I also tried importing the original file with Premiere settings set to not write XMP data on import, but this doesn’t seem to have much of an effect either.

It worked fine in the past when we were still using SD material, but since we switched to HD this problem cropped up.

Also, rendering straight from Premiere and not via AME, apart from being time consuming as I have to wait for every single file to finish rendering before starting the next one, also makes Premiere freeze sometimes and then has to be force quit.

I’m at a loss and it is crippling.

Does anybody know of a workaround that doesn’t involve an added 2-3 steps for something that should really be possible in one go?

Thanks!

(In my case I also suspect Quicktime to be the culprit as I am rendering out DNxHD files on a Windows machine and apparently there are more cases where the lack of 64bit support for Quicktime is blamed for crashing AME or Premiere. When I terminate the Quicktime Server in the task manager the program unfreezes, but the file is unusable)

[Carl Werdine]

Thanks, that is interesting. I was only the last to try to get the ATEM stream to capture in Premiere, after all failed to get it to work, but it is worth to try it directly through USB3.

When I select the Intensity in the capture setting, I could see from the pull down menu a great many codecs to choose from, I assumed they could be chosen, and not just DVCPRo, that is a bit disappointing. (EDIT: I went through it again and did see only M-JPEG, DVCPro and Uncompressed, I guess the first time I confused another setting or I was looking with my nose)

Concerning M-JPEG, we need to do some post production on the files, and I found that even the 2nd generation M-JPEG was degraded to such an extend as to not make it usable. This is using the preset in Premiere/Media Encoder. DNxHD held up much better, the 1st generation being almost identical to the original file. The weird thing is that when I encode shorter fragments the DNxHD file is smaller than the M-JPEG one, but if I encode the whole file (+/- 1 hour) the DNxHD file is bigger.

I did consider Cineform, but it is a paid option and we are running out of budget fast and we have multiple people working on the files, some privately, I can’t expect everybody who offers to help out to invest in the codec. Plus not all the workstations available, including the private ones, will be powerful enough to handle the codec, as I understand it requires a fair amount of CPU to process. We are trying as much as possible to use standards that are readily available, the fact that for DNxHD an extra codec has to be installed already being an extra step we rather not have to do. It is a trade off but this is not a professional video environment and most who help out are volunteers.

If there is a way to use M-JPEG and have it not degrade as much after post production I’d be very interested as it would speed up the workflow considerably.

Thanks for the info so far!

[Carl Werdine]

Hi Naveen,

I have made no major progress to be honest. In the case of the music venue, it has been a very tough year, so there is little finance to invest. If there will be an investment I think we will probably go for a Blackmagic ATEM Switch and then use the HDMI out from the cameras. Either we build the switch into the stage so we win cable length (the switch can be controlled with a PC over Cat5) or maybe we build a repeater in the stage.

The last option I have seen done at a newly build recording/rehearsal studio for bands in London. Funnily enough it was one of my colleagues who came up with that set-up, without him knowing I had envisioned the same set-up for our main gig.

In another case where we still use older cameras we use the firewire from the cameras going into two PCI cards with two inputs each and a software switcher called BoinXTV.
Here the idea is also to at some point go the HD switch route, but also here we lack the funds as we would have to upgrade 3 cameras to HD ones.

So yeah, I think in your case you are on the right way. Provided no consumer/prosumer camera with SDI is released any time soon, which seems likely.

I did use CAT5 the other day to span a very long distance to feed a beamer, and there was no delay, but I haven’t tried this with HD yet.

Good luck!

[Carl Werdine]

Hi Jeff,

yes it is simply for making a live mix of concerts held at the venue. The way it is done now is by having three consumer grade HD-cameras and taking their composite out to an old Sony mixer. The idea was to upgrade at some point to a switcher like the Blackmagic Atem series using HDMI. HDMI cable length becomes an issue then. Not in all cases, but in enough for it to become bothersome. I also dislike using HDMI as the connectors are not secure and will break easily, specially as the cameras will not always be handled by experienced users. 100 m for SDI is more than enough for our purposes. Good to know about the CAT5 latency issue, as we have enough latency issues as it is with the preview monitors we use so the operators can keep an eye on the mix (they are too close to the stage for ASL communication to be useful).

Thanks!

[Carl Werdine]

Yes great cams and good prices, this particular venue can’t afford 3 of those though. I realize I am asking for something that doesn’t exist, I did do my homework, but I am simply hoping someone knows something that has been hidden from all of us. Thanks for all the suggestions though.

[Carl Werdine]

Oh thanks for the heads up, that really is a deal breaker. I’ll look into that.

[Carl Werdine]

Looks quite interesting for other projects in much larger rooms I am involved with as well. So even though this may not be quite the solution for this particular venue, I may well be able to use it for another. Thanks!

[Carl Werdine]

Hi Mark,

I’m not sure if IMAG is what we do at our venue. Is a three cam setup, operated by 3 camera operators, and a live video editor IMAG? I’m foggy on the terminology, there may be a language gap here since I’m a non English speaker.

The option you speak of, using CAT5 is an interesting one, one I hadn’t thought of, mainly as I have no experience using CAT5 as a data transfer in this way. I suppose I would have to convert the datastream from an HDMI connector to a CAT5 cable and then to a switch that takes 3 to 4 CAT5 cables (or convert yet again to a more mixer/switch friendly format). I’m not aware of any mixers/switchers with witch one could do live editing but I haven’t looked yet either as I hadn’t explored using CAT5 yet. It would still leave open the problem of having camera’s with HDMI connectors that are fairly sensitive to breakage.

I’m not sure this really simplifies the setup but I will look into it. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Carl Werdine]

Thanks Bill,

I haven’t found much beyond those either. I knew I was asking for something that most probably doesn’t exist, but surprises are just that, and they do arise. Thanks for looking into it and answering.

[Carl Werdine]

Thanks!

I continued working in AE after the crash as I’m under some time pressure, so there is no going back to old AE Auto Save Pojects I guess. I tried out some old Auto Save Premiere Projects as per your suggestion but to no avail.

So I guess there is no other way to tell Premiere to disregard the link and revert back to the original video file? That seems like a rather logical feature to have.

The edit was sent to me by the editor but the workflow you suggest is a sound one. I will try to import the original edit that was sent to me into the current one and see if I can do some copy pasting.

Thanks for guiding me to a possible solution.

/CW