[Keith Moreau]

Thanks Todd.

So I gather from your response that there is no ‘keyboard shortcut’ way to set the zoom level in the Program monitor?

[Keith Moreau]

Thanks Tim.

More updates to this Premiere Pro ‘reference file’ workflow from my experience.

I did some tests using Prores LT as the preview file format, rendered the entire sequence so there was a green bar throughout the timeline, rather than yellow or red bars, and did encodes both using these preview files and without the preview files.

I found that there was no significant difference in the encode time either using preview files or not, even when I exported using the sequence’s format – in this case Prores LT, which isn’t what I necessarily expected. I expected it to behave a bit like Final Cut Pro and basically copy and assemble the ‘preview files’ into a quicktime file of the same format. I don’t think Premiere Pro did this. For a 13 minute sequence using previews it took 1 hour 23 minutes, with ‘use preview files’ checked it took 1 hour 18 minutes.

So while I can use these Premiere Pro project and sequences as a ‘master’ source, using a non-standard preview format doesn’t seem to speed up encoding, even when it’s the sequence’s native format.

So right now, though I really like Premiere Pro for the workflow, working with varied formats natively, and it’s efficiency in using all the CPU and RAM and GPU available (unlike FCP). In the ‘render’ area, I’m still looking for a more efficient PPro workflow. Right now I feel the encoding workflow is taking too long.

If anybody has more advice or if my testing methodology about using preview files is incorrect, please let me know. Thanks all for this thread.

[Keith Moreau]

Hi Gard,

Is your software a 64 or 32 bit kernel extension? Right now I’m running my Mac OS 10.6 in 64 bit kernel mode. Also does your mouse software control all brands of mice?

Thanks much.

[Keith Moreau]

Tim can correct me if I’m wrong, but what he is saying is that, the nearest equivalent is the Premiere Pro project file, and the sequence within it. In Adobe Media Encoder, you click ‘add’ and then locate the Premiere Pro file, then when it’s done reading the file it presents you with a list of the sequences in the project file.

I’ve used this several times now after Tim’s suggestion. It’s certainly not as versatile as the Quicktime reference file concept, as it only works with Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder, but it’s better than nothing. The rendering time could be very long, depending on the complexity and length of the sequence, because by default it takes the original media and uses that to encode, but I think it would be shorter if you chose to modify the settings to ‘use preview files’ if you have rendered preview files in your original sequence.

Thanks Tim for your input here.

[Keith Moreau]

Thanks Tim for taking the time for this great explanation. I guess if you have the time to wait for an encode to be done, than it is best to retrieve the original media instead of using the preview files.

However, if you don’t have the time to wait, or the need for ultimate quality for a particular situation, it might be good to have a good preview setting just in case you just don’t have time to re-render everything. I’m still not sure what the Sequence’s “Editing Mode” settings are really for, other than framerate and framesize, maybe they don’t really mean anything.

From what I understood from your explanation, the sequence setting codec ‘Preview File Format’ would be what I would render from if I needed to ‘Use Preview Files’ while exporting. Therefore if I chose a very high quality preview file format, I might be able to utilize this as the ‘source’ if necessary and not have to wait for these effects to be re-rendered. However if the codec is too CPU intensive it could slow down editing and previewing, i assume.

As an experiment I’m going to try to set my ‘Video Preview Files’ to Prores and see if this bogs down my system and see if i can get fast Prores exports.

Thanks again for your explanation. I don’t think this information is readily available anywhere else.

[Keith Moreau]

So, if I was exporting to Prores 422 1080 30P, and I had my sequence settings to that, and wanted to output a file of the same type, would the ‘preview’ files be in Prores 422 and then if I exported the sequence and had the ‘use preview files’ checkbox checked would it just basically copy over the files and not do the double-encoding?

I’m still trying to figure out it sequence settings makes any difference at all either in working with PPro timeline, speed of creating previews, or in the export process. The information out there is scarce, it seems, on this subject.

Thanks much for any advice.

[Keith Moreau]

Thanks Todd.

Do you have any workarounds for me?

My initial thought is to put scopes in the program monitor and then use the reference for the program. At least I’ll be able to ‘scrub’ through the sequence.

[Keith Moreau]

Yeah that might work but it’s too much trouble with a lot of clips.

What I wound up doing was using the PPro Project Manager to export just the clips in a particular sequence by copying the media to a new location (which took some time), I don’t think it truncated the media properly, it seem to want to copy all all of each clip, even when I set it not to.

I then used MPeg Streamclip to batch process all the clips into Prores 422, then brought that transcoded batch to Final Cut for some processing.

If I could get the PPro to AE workflow to work reliably for the few effects I need FCP for I wouldn’t have to do this. However, I tried quite a while and couldn’t get a reliable result from PPro to AE. I’d do stuff in AE, AE saw the clips and seemed to process them and PPro did kind of see the results, but they never seemed to render in the final export, so I temporarily scrapped that workflow in favor of the PPro to FCP and back, which, once I did what I described above, worked well.

Thanks everybody for the advice.

[Keith Moreau]

Now is there a quick way to ‘batch export’ to this codec? When I use the PPro Project Manager it seems to just want to copy the files over. In FCP I could use the Media Manager to convert the files as well, this was handy. I suppose I could use mpeg streamclip for this once the files have been copied.

[Keith Moreau]

I do have the FCP suite. There are some things I need to do in FCP where either a plugin isn’t available or I haven’t yet purchased or found a substitute for it or the same plugin from Ppro or AE seems buggy and less or unusuable. Since PPro is all about FCP XML import and export, I figured they’d do a bit to make this happen on a media level too besides EDL level.

Anyway, thank you, do you have a recommendation about which lossless codec to use that would be compatible with FCP directly or at least with good transcode ability?

Thanks much!