[Michael Kellam]

Hi Blaise,

I agree. In other operations, we generally only switch to autofocus briefly if we aren’t certain if the focus is in or not and then switch back to manual. But in that moment, the autofocus brackets would be displayed on air. With the HDMI setup test, the HDMI steals the camera output so we cannot see the image on the DSLR screen.

I was disappointed that the stream did not look any better using the DSLR video captured via HDMI with an AJA card than it looked with the Logitech USB webcam we were previously using, so not sure what the future of this workflow is.

Thanks for replying,

Mike

[Michael Kellam]

Hi Craig – Thank you very much for your reply! It’s very helpful.

Also, for everyone:

I spoke with someone at Wirecast and he recommended integrating an external capture card (KONA HDMI Capture Card, Blackmagic Designs Decklink or a Magewell Pro Capture Quad HDMI) with an enclosure from Sonnettech so I can capture all of the video with one external unit.

So I think I’m going to try setting this up.

Thanks a bunch!

Mike

[Michael Kellam]

Hi Alex,

Thanks a bunch for your answer! That worked great! I thought there MUST be a way and that was easier than expected.

As you recommended, I usually save audio keyframing for the end, but this client frequently likes to change minor things at the end that are just significant enough to need to make minor tweaks. I don’t mind shaking the keyframes a little at the end, since the change is pretty minor, but the track lock was something I didn’t encounter with my pre-CC version and i’m glad to know it’s easy.

Thanks again!

Michael

Michael Kellam
https://www.kellammedia.com

[Michael Kellam]

OK Thanks, Ivan! I appreciate it. I will do that.

Thanks again!

Michael

Michael Kellam
https://www.kellammedia.com

[Michael Kellam]

Yeah, that was my concern about the FCP learning curve. I’m sure I could adapt but it might slow me down for a little bit, which would be worth it if it increased my efficiency in the long run. My experience is largely with FCP7 and earlier, Premiere Pro and Avid, so I expect I would need to re-tune my brain, but it might help keep me young! lol

I didn’t think about 5.5 not playing nicely with the OS or the newer hardware, so definitely a potential advantage. And $50 for Compressor would be an easy choice.

Not so excited about monthly payments for Adobe, which is why I haven’t upgraded the Premiere…

Do you happen to know – Is it possible to transfer existing projects from Premiere to FCPX? Given the tracks vs roles thing you mentioned, I assume it may not be advisable to transfer existing projects. Would there be something like EDL export and rebuild that could map an existing project to an FCP format?

Thanks again for your help!

Michael

Michael Kellam
https://www.kellammedia.com

[Michael Kellam]

Thanks, Craig. I was considering FCPX and may change if it ends up looking like that’s the problem. I did see that the FCPX might be likely to create h.264 files with fewer artifacts, too, but I’m just a bit hesitant since I have a bunch of projects already in progress on Premiere and wasn’t sure what kind of learning curve came with the redesign of FCP. Thanks for your suggestion! Michael

Michael Kellam
https://www.kellammedia.com

[Michael Kellam]

Hi Ivan,

I don’t currently have QuickTimePro or Compressor, but would be willing to get one or both. Would I be able to use QuickTimePro or Compressor with my current Premiere project or would I need to change to FCP? If it seems likely that Premiere Pro is the problem, I would buy FCPX.

For storage, I’m currently using an on board SSD, 1TB, but when I took a close look, only 50GB was available because of a buildup of sneaky preview files! 😉 I considered writing the movie to an external, but I only have USB3 and I thought it would be slower than the on board SSD, even with the OS on the same SSD. The 8 hour file should have been about 30GB but I assumed not having more free space might have contributed to a bottleneck.

I removed some files to free up 150GB and tried transcoding the clean 30 minute 1080p@30fps ProRes 422 file to H.264 using Premiere Pro CS5.5 and it took 1 hr., 36 minutes.

When I looked back in my log, the same 30 minute footage edited natively and exported 1080p *with coloring* directly to h.264 without the intermediate took 3 hrs, 23 minutes to encode.

And I’m encoding the h.264 with the Adobe/MainConcept H.264 codec. Would the QuickTime be better?

The 8 hour file was 16 copies of the prores file end to end, with no coloring but with dissolves and crossfades between each of them and a 5 second key overlay at the beginning.

Thanks again!

Michael

Michael Kellam
https://www.kellammedia.com

[Michael Kellam]

Hi Ivan,

Thanks again for your answer!

When I created the 30 minute prores movie, I rendered it on export with the colorization so it would not need to be re-rendered for the multiple items. Thus my ProRes to H.264 did not include any effects since they were already rendered into the movie I reimported as the source, correct?

I paused the 8 hour version at 14 hours, and it looks like it is less than 10% into the first pass, so I do see why the software is predicting such a long export.

I will need to try the 2 hour export like you suggested and see if it works any differently… Maybe the longer version needs a greater amount of disk space for the swap.

Thanks!

Michael

Michael Kellam
https://www.kellammedia.com

[Michael Kellam]

Thanks, Ivan.

So I tried exporting the 30 minutes as Prores 422, which took around 10 hours. Then I imported the Prores movie and put it on my timeline 16 times (to get the 8 hours) and then tried exporting that as h.264 1080p 8Mbps. So far, it’s been exporting 10 hours and is estimating 212 hours remaining. This is with no effects or anything; just the Prores movie.

Does this seem right?

I’m running the highest end MacBook Pro available, and when I export just the 30 minutes to the h.264, it only takes 2-3 hours to export, and that’s actually rendering color grading, too, so I would expect it to take a lot less time for the 8 hours with no effects. Or is a Macbook Pro simply too wimpy to handle this?

2014 MacBook Pro, 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB (Running Premiere Pro CS 5.5)

I’m really surprised that it would take so long since it’s exactly the same footage 16 times. Premiere definitely recognizes the 30 minutes as the same footage– If I render one instance, the rest go green, too, so on export I would expect it to process the first 30 minutes and then say, “Oh, the rest is the same” and just add what it did to the first movie 16 more times.

If I can’t find a better option, I’ll try exporting SD, but quite a few other people seem to have the same product available 8 hours at 1080p 8Mbps and the potential income doesn’t seem to support buying a render farm so I can’t imagine it should be this difficult.

Any thoughts? Am I expecting too much from the gear or am I doing it wrong?

Thanks again!

Michael

P.S. I also tried exporting the movies without the Prores intermediate – 1) Natively editing and exporting h.264 with effects and 2) I tried nesting the identical elements and replacing them on the timeline in addition to 3) trying the Prores intermediate and all 3 options seem to predict pretty much the same insane amount of export time.

Michael Kellam
https://www.kellammedia.com

[Michael Kellam]

Thanks for your reply, Ivan. Not sure if I have Cineform, but I do have the GoPro software that came with the camera. Since it is free, I’m sure I can get it if I don’t have it already. I do have Prores. I assume I would export with 422?

I haven’t really used Intermediate codecs – If I export a Cineform or Prores movie and them re-import it into the project, will it not degrade the video at all?

Also, I don’t know why I didn’t think to try, but if I created a nested sequence, with the 30 minutes of identical footage and the effects in the nest, would it recognize that these clips are the same and reduce export time on the 8 hour version? I’m going to try to test that in a shorter bit – i.e. using a 10 minute sample instead of 8 hours.

Seriously, I would expect that there is a way that the software would recognize that the 30 minutes is the same and only crunch the first 30 minutes and then add the other 15 instances of it using the processing it already did!

Thanks again for your input!

Michael

Michael Kellam
https://www.kellammedia.com