Joe Moya
Forum Replies Created
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Neoscene
I just started to use it… and, for me… it is a bit flakey at times… perhaps it is because I haven’t mastered how use this codec… but, then I think… why should a codec be difficult to handle for goodness sake.
At any rate, I have limited success (so far) using Cineform… but, others report good results. But, on that note… it does SIGNIFICANTLY speed up editing and compositing… but, you better have huge hard drive space available.
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Want a file format that doesn’t work? That is easy… try and import a m2t file recorded with a Canon HD HV20/30/40… and, THAT is not an uncommon camera or file format. Chances one of two things will happen… PPro will indicate it is not supported or (in about 1 out of 20-ish times) will import the file with no problem. Never figured out why this happens… but, it does. In general, the problems with compatibility of video formats and PPro seem to fall in the HD codec area and less in SD.
As for various formats working with PPro… there are two issue. One, there are many file formats that will import but will crash/freeze if you try use effects. Two, see above reference to the Canon m2t file. Oh…BTW,… Adobe indicates they support m2t files BUT if you dig deeper and read the fine print you will find it only supports the Sony m2t format.
Prem Pro is good… but, it is not as capable of handling some formats that other editing softwares have no problems handling. And, this is true for every NLE available… but, my experience seems to point to the fact that PPro seems to have more problems than the others I have used.
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The problem is likely that you need to spend another 2 thousand-ish dollars on a multi-RAID system… I use groups of RAID 0 striped setups with an ADAPTEC raid controller to find my best bang for the buck in caching speed increase.
What you want to do is break through the I/O bottleneck caused by drives. Most RAM and CPU chips aren’t the problem when it used for editing(…however, if you are compositing with a layer compositing stucture like AE uses… in which case you want a really fast chip and LOTS of RAM… I use the intel i7 3.2Ghz chip and it still doesn’t help that much with AE compositing speed… but, then again that seems to be a AE 32 bit application limitation).
The raid controller choice can make a big difference as well as the HD you decide to use… I use the e-sata Fujitsu 15k rpm HD’s with Adaptec Raid controllers. This combo significantly helped with using/editing HD video in an uncompressed format.
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When you open open up AE… look at the applications being processed…. (via.. Ctl Alt Delete)… how many Aftereffects.exe are open? … should be at least 4 for a quad machine (or MAYBE 8 if a dual quad machine unless it is a i7 chip). If so, than that is normal and AE would not be using all the cpu capacity (i.e., no flat lining would occure… which is good). CPU useage should be runnning during a render at about 30-50 percent is normal. This is normal because AE is distribution the processing power over how ever many processing cores your chip has built into it.
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sounds like you have something rendering/processing in the background… perhaps a server process function? … ctrl alt delete and see what is procession in the background.
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If my comments are false… then, why is it that when I put a mix of some 2K video with some various m2t/m2v files, mpeg and a few over mov files both compressed and uncompressed (just as a test) and I get all kinds of issues with Prem Pro… but, put the same short clips in Avid and/or Vega and get no problems (…or much fewer problems in a few instances of various format mixes).
I am not saying that CS4 can’t mix codecs… but, my experience has been that CS4 has more problems using various formats than other editing software… similar to what the original poster has already noted.
And… if I want to make this a more fair comparison… Avid MC (which costs WAAAY more than Avid/Pinnacle Liquid) doesn’t do as good of a job as Avid Liquid (specially for the cost difference). Liquid had mastered the multiple codec/fps many years before either Avid or Prem Pro were able to achieve this task. Plus, my experience seems to point to the fact that Vega doesn’t frequently play well with mov files.
The original poster noted he recieved various file formats (…which is always a big pain to start with for almost any NLE). And, noted that FCP did a better job of handling this problem (…could be because FCP converts to a Apple common codec (AIC) – don’t know because I am not sure exactly how he brought it into FCP). At any rate… No matter, my experience is that CS4 doesn’t do as good of a job as some other NLE’s. That doesn’t make CS4 a bad NLE… but, it does make it a limitation of CS4 – imho.
The original posters problems could be more easily solved by converting to a common file codec and not so much by saying the software is not as capable. In the end, I think what is happening is that FCP is converting the file format for the poster… and, he is unaware of this.. that is why is works better… but, then again… that is just a guess.
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Prem. Pro is not as good as some other NLE’s when it comes to mixing various video formats… that is the primary issue that you seem to have realized. FCP is better at this task… but, (non-Mac) NLE’s such as Vega and Avis (specially Avid Liquid) are much better at handling various codecs (including mixing 24 fps with 30 fps) within the same timeline/project (…some also report Edius is equally good at handling various file formats but I have no experience with mixing file formats with Edius).
Your best option if you wish to use Prem Pro with mixed formats is to convert them all to a common video format before editing. However, this too can cause some issue that might not make this a viable option. Another option would be to go back to using FCP.
The key strength of Prem Pro is it intergration of After Effect as a compositing tool.
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Perhaps the main reason you have not had as many problems as others is because the types of rendering you described are not HD formats (i.e. – 1920×1080 or 1440×1080 or 2K or 4K… for example).
AE and rendering of HD to an nice uncompressed format for long-ish compositings is not a fun experience for even the beefest machine. And, forget about AE capable of easily handling HD size files for view rendering without a proxy… Especially in instances where an effect requires pixel shifts which can not use proxies.
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The only time I have ever seen this sort of dramatic change in render time is when the setting between the two were not the same…and, with AE that can easily be done by accident or in a few instances certain effects used in AE forces AE to a lower quality render format even if the settings don’t indicated this… off hand and if my memory is correct, this happed to me with puppet tool.
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Several hours to load the encoder? That’s not right for sure…
What is your system specs? Are you using the most updated version of CS4?
Compared to some other NLE’s… Prem Pro is pretty clunky, less stable and slow for an NLE… but, something doesn’t seem right if it takes hours to load the encoder.