[Keith Moreau]

I used to use FCP for these types of projects, now I use Premiere Pro CS5 on my mac for the vary same reason that I have a lot of different camera codec types in the same timeline.

But for any new workflow I do a bit of testing first with a small amount of footage.

I would just drop a clip or 2 of each time on a separate track, choose a sequence res and framerate that matches the majority of the footage and output to your final delivery format and play it back on that device, whether it’s a DVD, a web player, Bluray or any combination. It might just all work well without a lot of fuss. That’s been my experience with CS5 so far. I’ve put 24P AVCHD on the same sequence as 30P EX1 and it cuts pretty well together. If it were going to National broadcast I might be more picky with the frame rate conversion, delinterlacing, trancoding, etc and there are tools to help with that.

The rule is, test your workflow with a small, manageable amount of media before starting down a path that might now work or be a lot of extra trouble.

Good luck.

[Keith Moreau]

Tony

No need to transcode anything before importing the Premiere Pro. Pretty much every type of file works without transcoding. Just ‘import’ your footage into Premiere Pro. This is the primary reason I’m switching to Premiere Pro.

The sequence settings is kind of confusing, but basically you just need to pick a resolution and framerate that matches what you want to output and the majority of the source footage. It’s almost for just for convenience.

I set the ‘preview files’ to Prores, but I’m on a system where preview files aren’t really necessary, I can play back almost everything in real time.

When you export, don’t use preview files, have that unchecked. If I have the preview files set to Prores, then on the Export window I check the “Match Sequence Settings” and this makes the export match my preview files setting. Again confusing but that’s how I think it works.

For fastest output I uncheck the “Use Maximum Render Quality.” I haven’t scrutinized with it on or off, but when I’m downrezzing a lot I don’t think it matters. Checking it will double your encoding time.

Then I queue it, it produces a Prores file.

That is then my master file, I use whatever app works with Quicktime to encode it to the final delivery format.

It’s all kind of confusing, I know, but once you get used to it it’s ok.

The main thing is:

Don’t transcode anything before bringing it into Premiere, unnecessary, time wasting, quality reducing step.

[Keith Moreau]

This to Tony:

Tony, I didn’t follow up with the Mpeg Iframe codec. I did exactly what you did, using the ‘native’ premiere pro codec, I tried to encode using the iFrame codec and it didn’t help at all with render times. I then tried exporting the iFrame file using the ‘use sequence settings’ and got a file output (which was very large, like a prores file.) However nothing I tried on the Mac would recognize the file, including Media Encoder. Apps might open it but it was black video.

However, my workaround was to set my sequence to Prores LT (but any prores would work), and the output a file using the sequence settings, with “use Max render quality” to off. Then I take this into Quicktime Player, Compressor, or mPegstreamclip or even Adobe Media Encoder to trancode and scale. All these are pretty quick, including Media Encoder. You can check this or my other threads for details.

I think there is a bug in the Premiere Pro to Media Encoder connection on the Mac. There is no way this should be this slow. I think there are a lot of Mac users using PPro and Media encoder, they can’t all be having unreasonable encoding times like this. Adobe? Can you test this out? Sounds like Tony has a very simple HDV workflow, it would be easy to test… Adobe, are you listening?

[Keith Moreau]

This is a reply to Jon:

Especially when downrezzing, it’s like 6-10 times the length of the sequence to use the file directly from PPRo Project to Media Encoder, and it takes that long for every instance of the file, so if I wanted to make, say a 270 (ipod-sized) encode, and a 480P (dvd sized) and 720P (AppleTV/iPad Sized) it could take 30 times the length of the original sequence. If I just make one master 1080p file that takes about 2x, then each encode is about 1 -2x, so this way saves me a lot of time. If I can just do one or 2 encodes overnight, I don’t care, however, because of strange artifacting in chroma-key’ed material in the downrezzed encodes I don’t trust it much so if I need it to be done I’ll just output the full rez prores. I can also inspect it a lot better than in PPro when it’s output at full rez and rendered.

Maybe other’s experience is better, and believe me I’d like mine to be but it’s not so I just have to make it work as best as possible for me. Again if you have further suggestions please let me know. I could try using separate media but I don’t’ think that’s the bottleneck, but who knows. I just upgraded to a SSD boot system and things at least cosmetically are really speedy, maybe this will help PPro encoding. Thanks for your interest.

[Keith Moreau]

At least in my experience with a 8 Core Mac Pro with an Nvidia Quadro 4000 and 24GB of RAM there is no difference in export/encoding using the ‘use preview files’ option when exporting. In fact for me exporting is almost unusably slow except for the setting which using the sequence settings, in which case for me it’s about 2x of realtime. This may be partially because I’m doing multicam with very long files and 3-4 tracks at a time.

My pretty fast workflow is to use Prores LT as the timeline format, the export using the sequence settings to a prores file. This takes about twice as long as realtime and can create a huge ‘master’ file. Then I can use Media encoder or various Quicktime encoders to produce my final output. The time taken for this workflow is about 3-4 times the length of the sequence. Not the fastest but I can live with it. Media encoder is pretty fast if it has a Prores file as the master.

I’m not sure if the encoding performance is different it Windows or not. I have’t heard much about encoding times anywhere other than my threads.

That being said, as a current and former FCP user PPRo saves me a bunch of time in the workflow, other than this point so it’s worth it to me. If anybody has advice about how to speed up encoding please feel free to provide advice.

[Keith Moreau]

This is a response to Tony:

I’ve had the same unreasonably long encoding times as you. It’s perplexing but without data to the contrary, I think this is the way it is with PPro and the Mac.

I covered a lot of this in another thread here, https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/909117#909117, but so far my investigations have led me to believe that on the Mac, even with a powerful Nvidia MPE approved card (Quadro 4000) the Adobe Media encoder, while it may be producing great renders, takes a really long time, especially when scaling the footage.

I have not found any time savings to using the preview files as the output encoder settings. The encoding times are the same whether I use ‘use preview files’ or not. I haven’t seen any benefit to using Prores as the preview format.

In addition, at least for me with a 4 Multicam sequence with keying, color correction, garbage mattes and multiple tracks overlaying, I’ve found when I downscaled from 1080P to 270P (iPod sized) the output had strange lines at the edges of white frames that were within the frame. Hard to describe, but these edges, which should have been invisible, showed up as light fuzzy gray lines in the down-rezzed output but not in the preview, nor in the full-rez output, which makes down-rezzing unusable to me. Outputting at full res didn’t produce these lines.

The very fastest workflow for me was this:

1) Set the output to match the sequence settings. This blanks out all the settings and should produce the equivalent of FCP’s Export ‘match sequence settings’ Quicktime reference file. However this is nowhere near as fast as FCP’s reference file output.

2) Uncheck ‘use max render quality’. For low rez deliveries where it’s non critical I don’t know if this setting matters and if it’s checked it doubles the encoding time

3) Output the file by queuing it into Adobe Media Encoder. In my case my sequence was set to Prores LT 1080P, so it out that type of file. The encoding time, for me is about twice that of the sequence length, ie, 1 minute of sequence = 2 minutes of encoding time.

4) If you need a faster down-rez and/or re-encode to something else, use Apple’s Compressor/QMaster combo or Quicktime Player 7 on the PPro QT output file. Using QT7 or Compressor, you can output in faster than realtime, so the whole thing is about 3x the time of the original file.

I’m going to see how using the native MPEG2-Iframe sequence settings as the original sequence works with this workflow.I don’t know if Quicktime tools can handle this codec, we’ll see. Probably Mpeg Streamclip could. I agree with you, I can’t afford to have a day of Media Encoding encoding on a short project. I really can’t accept artifacts in downrezzed stuff that media encoder is producing. I can’t use the output. If anybody has advice for us to use Adobe PPro from beginning to end on the Mac for faster encoding times as well as avoid this artifiacting, let me know.

Hope this helps, it’s great news, though for me the real time aspect of PPro using native files, is still a great benefit to me and I’m not going to throw it away, I’ll just have to deal with it and hopefully hit on an optimal encoding scheme.

[Keith Moreau]

[Tim Kolb] “There seem to be many that imply that whatever differences there may be in speed or processing power between the Windows and Mac platform is solely Adobe’s issue and that they better “get with it”… “

I certainly didn’t imply this but if it seemed so than I apologize. I think at this point that Adobe is doing a lot better job in the NLE world than Apple, that’s why I’m switching from FCP to PPro.

As far as if my CPUs are being utilized to the fullest by PPro and Media Encoder, they are all at 100% when the encoder is running. I like the way it uses the cores and is very ‘gentle’ about backing off if another app needs some time. Much better than Compressor / QMaster in my opinion which pretty much disables the computer until it’s done.. My 8 core was prior to hyper threading and this is a probably one reason for the slowness.

I have a Quadro 4000, which is supposedly a pretty good card for PPro / Mac MPE performance. Previously I had a Quadro 4800, then returned that and had a GTX 285. I’m still not sure if the 4000 is faster than the 285, but it seems a bit more ‘stable.’ I’ll be testing both soon against each other.

Most of my tests were done on a 13 minute timeline, with really just a several long clips, but extensively edited up into hundreds of edits, with 3 types of media, XDCAM EX, AVCHD 60P, and a H. 264 Quicktime movie (an iShowU screen capture.) There was Ultra Key on the EX and AVCHD, as well as a fast and 3 way color corrector on all the clips, and an occasional gaussian blur. All the effects were GPU enabled and I could play them real time, if I didn’t render, the timeline was all yellow. No red. On the AVCHD there was some severe scaling and rotation on one video track, I tilted the camera at 90 degrees against a green screen and scaled it.

I encoded primarily to Prores LT, but also encoded to the “Apple TV” format, which is simply 1280×720 30P H.264 at 5000kbs.

At this point if I need my fastest encoding workflow I will output a sequence with the same codec and settings which seems to be about 1:2 (1 minute of source takes 2 minutes to encode), then take that into Quicktime player or compressor and turn it into something else, which seems to happen a lot faster than it does in Media encoder with the Ppro sequence as the source. If I have time I’ll just do it all in media encoder, as that’s simpler and probably much higher quality.

Thanks much for this continued conversation and investigation.

[Keith Moreau]

Hi Tim

In the case of my tests, the media files were native files, XDCAM EX with an .MP4 extension, and AVCHD files with a MTS extension. No quicktime wrappers at all.

To change the preview files format to P2, I went to the sequence settings containing the above clips and change the preview files setting from Prores to P2, it warned me that I was about to delete all the preview files if I changed it, I accepted that.

The sequence then had a ‘yellow’ bar instead of green. I then rendered the entire work area, eventually the yellow bar turned to green. I then attempted to export using the P2 format, which was slow.

I hope my posts are not disparaging of Premiere Pro. As I use it more and more I’m finding I can do almost anything I did with FCP, and more. The reason I’m ‘switching’ is that I can get to work more quickly than I could with FCP because of PPro’s ability to work with all kinds of native formats. It’s really the leader here, even better than Avid in many cases.

However, at least for me, the one area that I haven’t found an efficient workflow is in the encoding process, specifically in how FCP / Quicktime could use Quicktime reference files, seemingly very efficiently compared to PPro. When I’m at the end of my projects, I’m just going to have to allow for a very lengthy encoding process, it’s not a dealbreaker, it’s just something I’ll have to deal with.

I’m also very concerned that the Quicktime architecture needs a major facelift, and because QT has so many tentacles into the Mac OS and Final Cut Studio, it’s a lot of work for Apple at a time where their ‘Pro App’ focus is probably not what it once was. I have a feeling it will be 2012 before this issue is resolved, if at all. In the meantime I need things to work. The last major feature upgrade was in 2006, and I’m continually working with editors that are still using that 5 year old software. At one time it was amazingly ahead of it’s time, now it’s outdated in many ways, especially in the need for Quicktime media.

I’ll try the ‘metadata off’ thing and see if it helps, I may also just need to upgrade my Mac, it is an early 2008 8 Core Mac, and though very serviceable, is probably 1/2 the speed of the fastest current Macs. I’m not ready to switch to a PC for PPro, though the though is attractive, too much other aspects of my work is Mac-centric and it would be a huge change (though I do have to work with PCs all the time.)

Thanks again Tim, for your time and expertise, I really appreciate it and I will continue to keep this forum posted on my findings.

[Keith Moreau]

OK, more tests. DVCPro HD P2 as the preview file format / export format didn’t help the encoding time at all, in fact it was 30% slower than Prores. I also made sure my ‘use max render quality’ matched both the sequence preview file setting and the output encoder setting. It didn’t make a difference whether I used preview files or not. The encoding time did vary greatly based on the use Max Render Quality Setting, about twice as long with that setting on.

So, at least in my preliminary findings, there really isn’t a way to speed up encoding by using preview files, therefore I don’t think preview file setting is important at all. I think I’ll go back to using the MPEG I-Frame format as I think that’s probably the most efficient for PPRo to deal with (though who knows.)

I think this is a great room for improvement here to help with encoding times. I think PPro needs the equivalent or even on the Mac platform, use the concept of Quicktime reference file. I was reminded how useful and space efficient they could be when today I helped a fellow filmmaker encode a 720P video for Youtube upload. We exported the Quicktime reference file in about 15 seconds, and then sent that to Compressor and used a “Cluster” to max out the CPUs and it took about 10 minutes to encode a 6 minute video. My feeling is that PPro / Media Encoder would take about 4 times longer than that. (though probably output better quality.)

I’m still going to keep searching for a workflow where I can somehow make this encoding process more efficient, short of upgrading my CPU. I’m still not convinced that the GPU is being used in encoding, but I’ll probably do some more tests with the GPU off, if that is possible (setting MPE to not use the GPU).

If anybody has any more advice for me, please let me know and thanks to Tim and others for your suggestions.

[Keith Moreau]

Thanks for the reply Tim. In fact non of the source media was Prores LT, it was a variety, XDCAM EX 30P, AVCHD 1080 60P (Panasonic TM700) 24P AVCHD.

One thing that I just tried again when encoding another sequence to Prores LT (this was a really long 1 hour sequence) I unchecked Max quality render. This encoded to Prores in relatively a lot less time than my earlier render, at 1 hour 39 or a ration of 1:1.4 rather than about 1 hour to 6 hours of encoding. I think the max quality may be doing lot more to the codec. In addition I didn’t have the ‘Max Quality” checked on in my preview files setting. Maybe they need to match. I’m going to check the ‘max quality’ and render to ‘max quality’ using preview files in the encode and see what happens.

I’ll also see if the DVCProHD P2 format helps me out more.

Thanks I’ll report back with additional findings.