Jim Leonard
Forum Replies Created
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“It doesn’t excuse the deficiency in the software.”
You can’t make that statement without an upper bound. How much is unreasonable, given the memory configuration of most modern editing PCs? 2000 assets? 5000 assets? Beyond that, the workflow is unrealistic, and since Premiere Pro 2.0 handles that much without problems, I don’t think there’s any deficiency.
Just my $0.02…
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“Yep, we could have joined the throngs and migrated to FCP”
I speak from personal experience that Final Cut Pro cannot handle 30,000 assets in a timeline any better than Premiere Pro can. Don’t think your problems are problems with the tools.
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No no no, that’s a terrible suggestion! DVD is 4:2:0 colorspace; DV is 4:1:1. Even assuming no loss at all, the overlapping (lossy!) colorspaces will seriously bork color edges. Not to mention that, for no reason at all, you’re introducing 2 additional generational losses (one analog, one digital).
No, he should try to work with the data he’s already got to avoid further loss.
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Several suggestions:
– Upgrade to Premiere Pro 2.0. It handles imported MPEGs a lot better than 1.5.
or
– Use avisynth and its dgdecode plugin to create an avisynth script of your MPEG. Then install the Premiere avisynth plugin to Premiere’s plugins/en_us directory and then you’ll be able to import avisynth scripts.
The problem you’re going to have is interlacing. If your clip is progressive, then that’s great, but if it’s interlaced, Premiere is still going to treat it as progressive which is going to bork the footage if you do anything at all to it (resize, speed changes, etc.). To get around this, you should work in a preset that supports interlacing (like NTSC DV 720×480, etc.) and then save your clips as interlaced DV as well (VirtualDub can load avisynth scripts and then save as any avi codec you have installed). When your source matches your project target, Premiere assumes it is in the same format as the project target.
Keep in mind that importing a VOB probably means you’re doing something illegal, so I hope you’re not going to sell your footage… 😉
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“I currently have a project with 30,000 files under the main folder (some of these files are not referenced by the project). If we assume that each clip is five seconds in length the result is 41.67 hours of footage, which is completely reasonable.”
Unless you are trying to edit together a 40-hour movie, no, it is not reasonable. I still maintain you have a serious workflow problem, no matter what editing system you choose. You can’t possibly blame Premiere for this kind of thing. I second the previous poster’s suggestion to hire a media consultant to work with you on better management and workflows.
More personally, how in hell do you work with 30,000 5-second clips? How many months is it taking you to edit this job? How do you find what footage you’re looking for? Did someone log/describe all of those clips manually?
“If there are any suggestions out there, I’m all ears.”
Consolidation, obviously. If there is a sequence in the original imported footage the client can agree on 30 seconds in length or longer, export that sequence as a single file (using a lossless codec), re-import it, and then delete the source files that made up that segment. Do this for about 4 or 6 hours in a single day and you’ll save many more days’ time down the line.
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“a fairly standard job usually has around 25,000 source files”
No, no it doesn’t. How long a project are we talking here? If 2 hours or less, 25,000+ individual files means you have a serious problem in your workflow! Why on earth so many files?
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Footage was generated by myself using an animation program.
I fixed the problem by myself, initially working with an Adobe rep. Their response “Generally Premiere Pro should work with clips as declared by the editing mode you are using” got me thinking: I’m using a broadcast interlaced 720×486 setting as defined by my editing card, but my clips were 720×480 as generated by an animation program. I fixed the problem by generating 720×486 frames (note the extra 6 lines for broadcast standard, matching my project settings) *AND* saving the file in exactly the same codec used by the project settings. With the exact same resolution and codec, the clips are now being treated properly as interlaced.
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While this may be unrelated to your capture situation, I noticed that the “good” capture you’re referring to is a promotional shot provided by Microsoft themselves — developers usually dump shots like that directly from the framebuffer, ie. no capture at all, just the framebuffer to disk. So a promotional image is not a decent comparison.
That being said, I did notice the second capture you posted had chroma bleed. Did you ever test with a different unit to try to rule out the cause of the problem? (ie. was it the decklink or the xbox)
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Thanks for the suggestion, but I don’t have an SP deck and can’t afford $3000 for one just to convert some Y/C into something that the DeckLink can capture.
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Unfortunately, I don’t have a beta deck.
Any cheap way to convert Y/C to component?