[Keith Moreau]

Thanks Louis. I have a strange workflow where I wind up with a lot of files that are .MOV – Quicktime wrapped files. My process is to replace that footage with the .MTS original files that created those wrapped .MOV files, file by file. Most of the time those .MTS files are in the same directory together, right now I have to click on the .MOV file, choose ‘Replace footage’ then click on the .MTS files in the file browser, and repeat until done, tedious but not too bad. I’m always looking to reduce tedious repetitive things which supposedly computers are good for.

I did think about messing with the XML and could probably create a script that looks for .MOV files in a source directory and matches them with MTS files in another directory but there is also a lot of meta data in the XML that would also need to be changed and I fear this could be a big programming effort that isn’t worth it.

Thanks for you advice here.

[Keith Moreau]

I actually have a special way of handling the media for Quicktime, I used Calibrated Software’s EX Plugin which fakes out Quicktime and makes it think that the XDCam .MP4 (actually Mpeg2 compressed) files are Quicktime capable, this is a lifesaver for me and has saved me terabytes of storage space, since I can use the native EX files, as well as tons of time ‘wrapping’ them with the Sony XDCam or FCP XDCAM log and transfer utility. By the way Calibrated and the developer, Greg, are amazing and have a great product and great support.

The XDcam files are well formed and each file terminates with a end of GOP, so they butt nicely against each other, no partial GOP issues.

Ironically the files that should be spanned by Premiere pro are AVCHD files because their 4GB file sections end mid-GOP, which, at least in my experience Premiere pro doesn’t span and results in a 1/2 second of garbage with clips that should have been joined by the NLE.

Anyway, I’d love it if there was some plist (in the ‘registry’ secret setting that just told PPro to ignore XDCAM EX spanning and presented every file as it is named in the file system, let me butt them together if I need to. Any clues or advice?

[Keith Moreau]

If anybody has any ideas about selecting clips on the timeline for pasting attributes, please any suggestions are very welcome thanks.

[Keith Moreau]

First do you have the files on other that the SD / SxS cards? Have they been transferred to a hard drive?

That’s the first step is to get them off your cards and onto your hard drive.

Once that is done, this process shouldn’t involve any copying or moving of the files. just pointers to the files. The BPAV structure should stay intact in order for Calibrated and Premiere to understand the files. While the .MP4 files have the actual video data, the other files have the metadata that describes the .MP4 files.

Are you on Mac or PC? I work on Mac so I’m not sure of the differences in PC.

If on Mac, have you ever successfully added a EX .MP4 file to Premiere and had it play correctly? Premiere (the CS5 version at least, I don’t know about earlier versions), does a lot of ‘helping’ with EX files, primarily it will concatenate the MP4 files together (within Premiere Pro, not actually in the file system) if they are ‘spanned’ that is if the shot spanned more than the 4GB file size limitation with EX. for example if a shot spans 01.MP4, 02.MP4, 03.MP4, Premiere will make 01.MP4 actually all 3 files, and any instances to the other files will actually be the beginning of 01.MP4. In this way the surrounding BPAV structure helps Premiere figure out which files are spanned. This is kind of confusing so play with importing spanned EX files directly into Premiere pro to see what I mean.

So, if using CATDV, you do a selection of EX files, and export a FCP XML sequence of those ‘selects’ you should then be able to import that into Premiere pro. There should be a bin with those files and a sequence. If the files are spanned you’ll have to account for that.

if on Mac, do you have FCP? you can test this ‘interim’ workflow out this way as CatDV likes to play with FCP.

Also if on a Mac, I have “Perian” installed and this helps with audio sometimes (avchd mostly).

You also might want to post this question in the CatDV forums if you haven’t already, I think it will do what you want, you just need to add Premiere to the end of the workflow, I gather.

If you’re on a PC, I’m not sure if there is a solution, if you’re on a Mac, let me know and when I have a few free moments I’ll try to test it out if you still need help.

[Keith Moreau]

Thats why I recommended CatDV, I have it and it takes what Calibrated does and puts it into a nice searchable database automatically. Adobe won’t do that no matter what, even with footage it handles optimally.

THe single user CatDV product isn’t too expensive, I have the server version and I like it a lot. You can export what it finds into Final Cut XML, then import that into Premiere pro. (Theoretically, I haven’t done this but I’ve thought about it -) So before purchasing CatDV you might want to try it and see if what I theorize works.

[Keith Moreau]

I export all kinds of formats (I’m on a Mac) to Prores and H.264 MOVs via AME and it works well. I haven’t yet tried MJeg. Would Prores work for your application?

[Keith Moreau]

Look into the Calibrated Software plugins for XDCAM, they read the metadata and insert relevant stuff into quicktime files. Then you can use sometime like CATDV that understands Quicktime to catalog the footage.

Premiere / Adobe handles XDCAM strangely, I’ve had to work around a lot of stuff to get it to work well, for example it concatenates spanned XDCAM EX files together, making it difficult to know what you’re editiing if you need to import or export it out of Premiere Pro.

Not sure if this is helpful but the Calibrated software for XDCAM is really excellent and the support is great.

[Keith Moreau]

The Mac model is compatible with a Mac. It works with Premiere, I had one and it worked but I traded it up (?) for a Quadro 4000. I think I might recommend the 4000 over the 285, I have a feeling, since it is a discontinued card, that NVidia is isn’t supporting it with driver and QA like their newest cards.

[Keith Moreau]

Have you tried opening the file with MPeg Streamclip? (free) If so you can repair it a bit with that.

Possibly VLC can open it or the command line utilities, FFMPeg.

If it’s an HDV file you might be able open it with the Firewire SDK Apple developer utilities, you can sign up to be an apple developer for free. Other than mpeg streamclip, there is some technical skill and knowledge involved.

[Keith Moreau]

I have a 2007 Macbook Pro with 4GB of ram with absolutely no CUDA and edited much more challenging stuff than yours, I think, multiple combinations of DLSR (5D, 1D, 7D) AVCHD, SonyEX1 all on the same timeline. I’d remove all the hacks you added, they could be detrimental.

Here are a couple of thing I noticed:

PPro CS5 hates ‘wrapped’ MTS files. I ‘wrap’ a lot of my MTS files in quicktime using Clipwrap, it’s the only way to use AVCHD files in Quicktime apps (FCP, compressor, anything on the Mac) without having to ‘transcode’ them into bloated prores. If I put that type of file into Premiere pro, it bogs way down to the point of what you experienced. It plays back the original MTS avchd files very well, however.

Another thing: Sometimes PPro would get into a ‘state’ where I’d get spinning beachballs. I would use a program called “Cocktail” to clear the Mac system cache files, and reboot, this seemed to help.

Also upgrading to the latest PPro helped. Having more RAM helped. Having faster hard drives helped. I wouldn’t use the internal HD, too slow. I used an external firewire 800 HD.

I still use FCP, but mostly as a ‘utility’ to get stuff to work, like using it’s media manager if I need to transcode (Premiere Pro’s isn’t as good as FCP here) and to use effects I don’t yet have or don’t exist on PPro. The XML cross platform support is pretty good for simple things.

I think FCP is ‘smoother’ if you get all the footage transcoded first into prores or a lightweight MPeg2 (HDV, EX) format) I hate the 1/2 second ‘lag’ I get with PPro when I do anything, FCP is instant.

But if I had to use FCP to do the last project, I’d still be transcoding to Prores now and would have several terabytes of prores media that I’d have to deal archive. Premiere Pro is much less wasteful this way.