[Ryan Holmes]

What type of GPU do you have ATI or Nvidia? CS6 screams with the proper CUDA enabled GPU card installed. What codec is your source footage in? If it’s in a long-GOP codec like HDV/AVCHD/h.264 format then it’ll take longer to export than a mezzanine style codec like ProRes or DNxHD.

If you have an event of that length, with dynamically linked material, FX, frame resizing, etc. and you have an ATI based video card I would anticipate it taking about anywhere from 3X-5X realtime. You’re doing a lot to your footage.

Additionally, have you tried exporting out directly from Premiere Pro, not queuing it to AME? In some situations I’ve seen the dynamic link handoff add time.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

In order for PPro’s Media Browser to see everything you should’ve copied the P2 card to your storage device exactly as it appears on the card.

If I just point the Media Browser at the folder for a given solid-state camera, PPro will parse the xml contained in the folder structure and show me just the files playable from the card. Admittedly I’ve had some problems crop up along the way….but it usually works pretty good.

The other approach is to do what Greg recommended – bring the files into Prelude and transcode to another format (DNxHD, ProRes, etc.) and then bring that newly transcoded file into PPro. That’s been my workaround on the few occasions where it’s hung in PPro.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Use the Media Browser built into Premiere Proto to navigate to your footage. It should parse the folder structure, recognize it’s P2 footage and show you the files (not the whole card). Then you can just drag and drop those files into your project without any problems.

I’m assuming you’re running CS5 or later (CS5.5 or CS6). Otherwise, I’m not confident the above approach will work.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

My general approach is to shoot the best quality image you can from the start. I’ve never heard anybody complain about having too much resolution or too much image. If you shoot HD you can always make a SD master at the end. If you shoot SD it’s much more difficult to go to HD.

There are some tricks you can use to get SD to blend with HD. So it’s not impossible, but it will look a little bit softer than the HD you shoot. I would recommend that the next 2/3 of the shooting be done in HD at 30p. It will save you a lot of headaches down the road.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Supporting what Mike wrote – 8PM PST:

https://forums.adobe.com/message/5415643

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Yeah the struggle is you shot a pretty gnarled up format to start with. 24p on the FX-1000 is not true 24p (or 23.976 for us digital junkies). It’s actually a 30i (or 29.97) video stream that’s having a pulldown applied to it so that it “reads” as 24. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of voodoo magic going on the moment you hit the record button.

I wouldn’t make too big a deal about 24 vs 30 as giving you the “filmic” look. The filmic look is not simply a frame rate to be shot, thereby giving you an extra edge. For your project I would standardize on 1 frame rate. From the sound of it, I would pick 29.97. Once you are done with everything you could create an exported file that is 24, but for editing and work I’d stick with 29.97.

If you capture you’re footage as DV – NTSC 48kHz (either standard or widescreen depending on how you shot) then you should be fine. I’ve never been a fan of how the HDV cameras tried to mimic 24fps. It caused a lot of hurt in the mid 2000’s as everybody chased this notion of “filmic.” The frame rate isn’t the sum total of the filmic look. Shoot DV. Capture DV.

From your thread on DV info, they seem to be telling you the same thing:
https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/sony-hdv-dv-camera-systems/517083-best-sony-fx1000-can-do.html

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

What camera did you shoot this on? Is the originating material shot at 24fps or 29.97?

It sounds like the material is 29.97 that you’re trying to playback at 24, hence the distorted audio because you’re playing the material back at a slower than original rate.

If it’s 29.97 material you should capture it that way. If you want to convert it to 24fps after capture you’ll have to transcode the footage.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

As far as I’m aware, US standard broadcast is either: 1080i60 or 720p60

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Let me see if I can condense what you just stated:

You are shooting 3 cameras at different frame rates, shooting to some various flavors of h.264, editing natively, adding effects and color correction, then exporting back out to h.264 on a relatively lightweight (spec-wise) laptop with slow hard drives.

Yeah…when looked at that way having to encode something for 8 hours may actually be fast. Your demanding a lot of things be done to your timeline, and that’s not wrong. Just remember for all those requests you’re adding time onto your final export. Things like color correction is computationally intense, conforming frame rates is very resource intensive, doing a 2-Pass VBR will take longer than a CBR or 1-pass VBR.

So here’s my $0.02 on the subject. When you shoot all cameras should be set at the same frame rate, either 24 or 30. Shooting multiple frame rates is a mistake made by people new to the profession….no problem. Just don’t do it again! 🙂 It’s a pain to fix, 2:3 pulldown footage doesn’t look good IMHO (what you’re doing when you convert 24 to 30), and it adds time to either ingest or export. It’s a simple setting in the camera. Take 5 minutes before you hit record and verify your settings on each camera – frame rate, ISO, shutter speed, and white balance. Every time. Doing this alone will save you time when you hit the computer.

Since you’re uploading to YouTube what’s the benefit of VBR? Variable bit rates exist to attempt to maximize the use of a data to define a scene. So the encoder is smart enough to know that the talking head portion of the video won’t need as many bits to define the picture as your intense car chase scene. So it’ll use less bits during the talking-head portion and more bits during the fast-action car chase scene. Thereby making your overall file size smaller. Smart right?! But these “passes” take time as it has to analyze the scene either 1-time (1-pass) or 2-times (2-pass) before applying the data. But it only matters if you’re concerned with your overall file size. Since you’re uploading to YouTube there really isn’t much need to be concerned. If you have a verified account with Youtube you can upload a 20GB file. For my YouTube uploads I set the encoder to do a CBR (constant bit rate) and forget about it. VBR settings require the encoder to analyze the scene before encoding it. Thereby making it smarter. However, a CBR is in a sense a “dumber” encode whereby it just throws all the bits at the scene indiscriminately. So you’re talking head gets just as much data as your car chase scene. Not the most economical use of data, but if you don’t care how big the ending file is and you want/need a faster encode, then go with a CBR.

As to your other questions – rendering to your external drive is probably better, though they are both slow at 5400RPM. Where does your media live? If it’s on the same drive you’re exporting to, that’ll slow things down further as you’re asking the disk to both read and write at the same time (not a strength of traditional spinning hard drives).

720 vs 1080 won’t greatly change your encoding time, depends more on the the things discussed above.

Rendering straight from PPro vs. handing off to Media Encoder….in my experience the export times are about the same. The difference is that sometimes that handoff, using Dynamic Link, can go sideways on you and freeze your export. Provided neither method hangs, in my experience, I don’t see a huge time savings in one over the other.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ryan Holmes]

Which window is active in PPro? The active window is the one with the yellow outline around it. You need to select the timeline (simple click anywhere inside the timeline will do it), then you should be able to j, k, l, and spacebar to your hearts content!

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost