[Dan Geller]

Here’s what I’ve learned, in concert with another Varicam LT user in Sweden who talked with some Adobe people. As of 11.1.1, the issue has been largely resolved. I’m not clear whether the 11.1.1 version even creates PEK files anymore from Varicam LT files – could use some clarification here.

In any case, 11.1.1 does have a few weirdnesses with audio. The waveforms in the timeline will show as identical across all the Varicam footage tracks until zoomed nearly all the way in – at that point the waveforms show their true individual profiles. Audio does play properly as the unique channels no matter what the zoom size.

Also, proxy files generated via 11.0.2 need to be trashed (the mov and the pek files) and regenerated for the audio to work properly.

I’ve updated and tested things – so my report is based on my tests this morning. I also trashed the caches and databases before testing.

[Dan Geller]

Looks like there is a serious regression bug that came into being starting with cc 2017 11.0.2, that wasn’t there before. In previous versions with the Panasonic LT codec, Premiere would make several PEK files upon import of a clip (2 if on the Varicam LT you recorded a two stereo pairs, 3 if you recorded two mono and a stereo pair, 4 if you recorded four mono channels). Now Premiere is making only a single PEK file of Channel 1 audio from the camera – and ignoring all the other tracks, though it will place four tracks worth of that channel 1 audio onto your timeline, replicating itself four times, thinking that it’s putting four unique tracks of recorded audio into place.

[Dan Geller]

And now I’m puzzled, because that pair of epr’s did just work for me. I think there may have been something with my overwriting settings on presets I made – rather than starting from scratch with new preset names. See if these work for you, too. If so, then we may be good to go!

[Dan Geller]

Trent – Here they are.
10236_trentingest.epr.zip
and
10237_trentencodecineformlutedyuv10bit.epr.zip

[Dan Geller]

Trent,
I’ll do that. Do you want to have me email them to you?

[Dan Geller]

Trent,
Even deselecting the matches and creating alternative Frame Size or Frame Rate doesn’t help. I tried it and the app still flips to transcode.

[Dan Geller]

When doing as you suggest, the Create Proxies pulldown flips to Transcode. There appears to be a known issue with adding custom Ingest Presets created in AME to Premiere – it won’t permit using those Ingest Presets for Proxy Creation in the Ingest Dialog, only Transcoding.

[Dan Geller]

Let’s not forget that both floppies and DVDs are/were cheap enough to consider them formats not requiring erasure. The data could stay on them indefinitely – not requiring nightly transfers and scrubs. This is the key consideration – for now. Believe me, I know flash memory inside out – a client of ours makes the stuff. If flash gets cheap enough to be like a DVD so that we can record to it and not worry about making dupes to a laptop and sets of redundant drives at the end of each day – then there won’t be the issues that have driven many of us to the HDX-900 or Sony’s XDCam. I think Panasonic is surprised at how many 900s are selling and they’re back-ordered at many resellers.

[Dan Geller]

True, but you’re still left with data wrangling at the end of the day. On client shoots, there’s the issue of not having a tape to hand over at the end of the day. When flash-based storage becomes as cheap as tape, in other words when it is no longer necessary to wrangle data off the cards, then tape will no longer be so useful.

Data wrangling is a big issue. I need someone on set or someone fresh at the end of the day. It has to be copied to redundant drives – now we’re talking about taking laptops, drives, power to location. Cases of tape are easier to deal with – especially having shot for 6 weeks in the Galapagos Islands – or more locally, having a producer who wants to catch a 6pm flight back home with a tape in hand.

[Dan Geller]

The funny thing is that “tapeless” winds up being taped to archival media such as LTO3, at the very least.

We just bought the HDX-900 because we needed the flexibility of tape, because shooting long-form documentaries on location is not P2 data wrangling territory, because some clients need a tape at the end of the day, because it’s way less prone to on-location wrangling errors, because we don’t want to pay for another person on location to handle data wrangling, because we don’t want to spend tired nights ourselves wrangling data off P2 cards. If the HPX-3000 or the new Varicam 3700 had tape, we’d have bought it. I’m not thrilled with the 900’s imager, but it’s a trade-off we had to make versus the gotchas with P2.

–Dan