Don Hertz
Forum Replies Created
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We do it to about 50 broadcast shows a week and it works flawlessly. We drop the master on V1, an scc file on V2 and export to Quicktime using an XDCAM HD422 codec. I’ve done tests with ProRes and that worked fine too. I would suggest contacting NBC and finding out what file formats they accept for delivery and then sending them a short test. We are required to submit Omneon ready files, so once we create our Quicktime XDCAM master file, with captions embedded, we drop it into our transcoder which converts it to Omneon before we ship the files out the door.
I’m not entirely sure Premiere is embedding the captions in a “standard” location inside the Quicktime file. Our file analysis system can’t locate them and tells us there is no captions present – although every software package we use, including our Vantage transcoder, see the captions just fine so I haven’t worried about it too much. I had the makers of our file analysis software look at one of the Quicktime files Premiere was exporting and they told me they eventually found the captions but that they were being saved in a non-standard location within the file and their system, at this time, wouldn’t be able to “see” the captions. That may just be a flaw in their product but I’m not sure. Also, when we initially started testing a variety of file formats, before settling on Omneon for delivery, we tried sending the Quicktime XDCAM HD files directly to our head end and they initially said they couldn’t see the captions – until they adjusted a setting in their own transcoder and I was told “found them”. Then everything was fine. All of that is beyond my knowledge at the moment but makes me wary enough that we always send test files whenever we make any changes to our encode settings just to make sure the captions don’t disappear again.
Another positive note, we take our master XDCAM files and re-open them on other workstations, change out bumps, commercials, and add promos and then re-export to a variety of other deliverables. The caption files come back into Premiere perfectly when we re-import the file, trim just like video, and then re-embed when we export with all the changes. Still seems like a miracle – but it’s saved us hundreds of hours of labor since CC’s release.
Sincerely,
Don Hertz
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Hi Peter,
I received a response last night through Adobe’s forums, from someone at Adobe. Based on his response, it sounds like it won’t work (and possibly should not have worked previously). He said that Premiere imports files using 2 methods – importQuicktime and importMPEG. Any MPEG based codec – H264, XDCAM, HDV – that uses the importMPEG function will not bring in caption information when imported. Any importQuicktime codec (ProRes, DVCProHD, etc) will bring in captions.
Does that sound accurate? Even though the XDCAM/H264/HDV codecs are inside of Quicktime – they won’t work?
I could have sworn we had Quicktime wrapped XDCAM HD shows coming in with captions over the past few weeks prior to the 7.0.1 update. However, now I’m questioning that and need to see if I can track down some of those older shows we were prepping for re-delivery to see if maybe a different codec was accidentally being used. And I no longer have a 7.0 version to test on and not sure how to downgrade my 7.0.1 install to try it out.
As far as testing on your end – all you have to do is export a Quicktime wrapped XDCAM or H264 file with embedded captions and then try to re-import it. The captions won’t come back in.
Thanks,
Don
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Nick,
I’ll second the recommendation to check out Smalltree. We haven’t implemented a solution yet – but I was incredibly impressed with the performance and price from Smalltree’s solutions at NAB. Also check out Axle Video (https://www.axlevideo.com). They have a media management solution that works with it that is very affordable and looks really easy to use. It works with a variety of LTO solutions for archiving too. You can even dial in from the road using an iPad and review the footage on your NAS. Again, not using it yet myself, but I sat through at least a dozen shared storage demos at NAB and the Smalltree / Axle combination is definitely worth a look.
Sincerely,
Don Hertz
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Mitch – I tried all 3 clip in Premiere CC and CS6. In CC I get the corrupt frames but only in a portion of the first GOP. So they always occur within the first 15 frames or fewer. (One of them lasts 3 frames, one 11 frames, one is only a single frame.) The remainder of the clip then plays fine. Is this consistent with what you are seeing – or are you seeing corrupt frames throughout?
CS6 plays them all just fine.
So I have to agree with you – then is most likely a CC bug that you might have to wait an update or two to get resolved. I’ll file a bug report with Adobe. I would suggest you do the same.
You are welcome to e-mail me offline to continue the conversation. dhertz@me.com. Have a good weekend.
Don Hertz
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Glad to hear you were able to work things out. Also great to know you tracked it down to an exact culprit. I’ll have to see if that one is installed on any of our systems when I get back into the office.
Have a great weekend.
Don Hertz
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I’m on a shoot this afternoon. Will respond tonight.
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Mitch,
Quicktime wrapped XDCAM HD422 files is our house format for everything – and have so far been working well in Premiere CC and CS6 before that (other than those couple of files I mentioned earlier that I had to re-wrap in Quicktime.) However, I don’t know how many, if any of these were created back in our FCP 7 days – so I can’t help you on that front.
If you’re still stuck you are welcome to upload a short clip to me. I can see if it plays fine on our systems. That might at least help you narrow it down to a system specific issue or a Premiere issue. Let me know if that’s of interest and a we can work out a good way to exchange the clip.
Sincerely,
Don Hertz
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I had similar issues. Perhaps 2 out of 25 Quicktime wrapped XDCAM HD clips stated Media Pending and wouldn’t do anything. Outside of Premiere, I opened the clips in Quicktime and re-saved them as a way of forcing Quicktime to “re-wrap” them. They both worked fine when re-imported into Premiere CC. Might be worth a shot.
Sincerely,
Don Hertz
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Paul – no idea if this will help but it doesn’t look like you are getting a lot of suggestions. Out of 8 workstations we updated here I had some funky stuff happening with one of them not recognizing some of the Quicktime codecs – mainly ProRes and XDCAM – although CS6 on the same machine was working fine. Again, not to the level you are describing, but I couldn’t import and use anything with ProRes. I ended up moving most of the codecs out of the Library > Quicktime file, downloading the ProApps Codecs update 1.02, manually unpacking it (not running the installer – I used a free mac app called unpkg), then copying the codecs out of the unpackaged folder and pasting them into the Library > Quicktime folder. After a restart – everything was working fine.
Might be worth a shot. Good luck.
Sincerely,
Don Hertz
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I agree with just about everyone else. I switched to Premiere last December and after a few projects to get used to the interface changes have come to really like it. We then switched our entire facility to Premiere from Final Cut Pro 7 (12 editors and graphic artists) about 30 days ago and although there was initial hesitation, you wouldn’t find a single person today who would switch back.
Myself and 8 of our editors are using the newer 27″ iMacs, souped up with 32Gb of RAM and the best graphics card you can put into them. We have a mixture of AJA IO XT’s, T-TAPs and Black Magic UltraStudios. These systems have all been really solid for us. We do everything from commercials and trade show videos to multiple half-hour and hour long broadcast shows.
Our four power editors are still on Mac Pros, and I must admit, those aren’t as solid for us nor are they as smooth and fast as the iMacs. We are planning to switch them all over to the new Mac Pro early next year.
So from my experience, if you have a Premiere married up with a system it likes then you’ll be very happy with the results.
Don Hertz