Sebastian Alvarez
Forum Replies Created
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[Mike Cohen] “Now I simply do a PIP arrangement of all cameras, play it, make my cuts and then paste a motion preset onto all clips to make them full frame again, moving the clips I don’t need to a transparent track. May take a bit longer than using multi-cam, but much more control.”
Sounds incredibly convoluted. This was the main reason I switched to Edius and not looking back. Another big reason: Edius reads the embedded timecode in my AVCHD files; Premiere doesn’t. If I set Edius to multicamera mode, and I drag all the clips to the timeline, they even get distributed according to their timecode. Drag the files from one camera to one track, then the files from the other camera to a second track. Done. What took me two hours in Premiere took me less than a minute in Edius. That’s what a real NLE is supposed to be. And, it doesn’t force you to spend hundreds of dollars extra in cards with CUDA. It gives you real time, as much as Premiere, but using the CPU, and it works.
Sebastian R. Alvarez
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Thanks, Gary. I have a follow up question to help me decide on whether I should return the Blackmagic Intensity Pro and get the Matrox, because returning the Int. Pro would mean stop editing in Vegas, which the Matrox MX02 doesn’t support.
I noticed that if I edit AVCHD footage using the sequence preset that comes with Premiere, everything on the timeline, whether it has effects or not, has the yellow line on top, which I think means that it will play realtime thanks to the CUDA processing. So editing with that preset is problem-free, but I can’t have external preview because for that I need to use the AVCHD preset that is in the Blackmagic group of presets.
When I start a sequence using the AVCHD preset within the Blackmagic group, I don’t get the yellow line, unless I apply an effect or a transition, even if it’s the ones that have CUDA acceleration. Now comes the problem. I’m playing a section of the timeline, and when the cursor gets to a simple crossfade transition (CUDA accelerated, displaying the yellow line on top), playback stops midway through the transition. I can only play it straight if I select a work area that includes that transition, and I fully render it. Also, if I apply a CUDA effect like 3-way color corrector to a clip, sometimes when the cursor gets to the beginning of that clip, it also stops. If I press play again it will keep on playing in real time, but at first it stopped. Sometimes it also stops at the end of that clip, before it goes into another clip that doesn’t have any effect applied.
Obviously this is annoying as hell, given that selecting a work area in Premiere is not as fast as in Vegas, and besides, that’s why I spent $200 in a CUDA card, for real time performance. Now I’m trying to determine if this is a bug in Premiere, or in the Blackmagic plugins for Premiere. I would bet it’s Blackmagic’s fault since it crashes Premiere a lot with the player plugin it loads, but I would hate to return the Intensity, stop editing in Vegas and then getting the Matrox MX02 and have the same problem in Premiere.
Can anyone with the MX02 Mini (not MAX) please test this for me? The footage I use is from a Panasonic HMC40 if that makes any difference.
Thanks,
Sebastian
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[Gary Bettan] “The MXO2 family of products deliver rock solid I/O with CS5. If you opt for the MAX option you get additional real-time performance with Premiere Pro CS5 running Win7.”
So what you’re saying is that if I don’t get the Max version I wouldn’t get real time performance? Currently I get real time with AVCHD footage in Premiere CS5 thanks to the help of a Nvidia GTX465. I get real time even after applying rotation, zoom and 3 way color corrector. So if I get real time playback through the Intensity Pro, which as far as I know doesn’t have any playback acceleration hardware, then I should still get realtime playback using the Matrox MX02 Mini without the Max option, correct?
Sebastian R. Alvarez
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The Intensity Pro (or at least its drivers) suck, plain and simple. I’m going to return it tomorrow. I’m sick of stopping editing 2 or 3 times per hour thanks to BMDPlayer.prm, which shows in each and every crash.
Sebastian R. Alvarez
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PC
Sebastian R. Alvarez
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[George Sey] “Stop blaming the card for your crashes and impatience. Get the right connections for the in and out and you will have fun. You can capture with Premiere Pro or Media Express. For CS5 crashing, update to 5.02. But if your computer is sub-par then use CS3 or CS4 as PPro5 demands more power. The $180 card does more, but will not do magic unless you push it and get it right.”
No, that’s where you’re wrong. I can blame the card for the crashes, which in turns makes me (as would everybody else) impatient and frustrated.
The Premiere CS5 crashes happens with 5.02, updated from a fresh install of CS5 on a fresh install of Win 7.
And why do you assume that my computer is “sub-par”? My system is an AMD 1090T CPU with 16 GB of DD3 RAM with Western Digital Black Edition hard drives. If you consider that subpar, well, you live in a very different world.
Truth is, this is a card with very flaky drivers that just don’t work well in Premiere CS5. Each and every crash I got in Premiere since I installed this card has been because of the card’s own player plugin. So I think the card will go back to B&H.
Sebastian R. Alvarez
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[Margus Voll] “you do not get the simple idea here. vhs has so bad signal and no sync, that the standardized capture cards will go nuts with that. been there done and tested that a lot. does not matter what card you use.”
While I agree that VHS seems to be a very unstable signal, I have used some other capture cards in the past and never had problems. Granted, I haven’t used them with this very cheap JVC VCR, but I have captured different VHS tapes, some were decent, some were copies of copies, and never had a problem.
Besides, if the Digital 8 camera has whatever stabilizing module it needs to make this tape look fine, I don’t see why a dedicated capture card doesn’t have the same chip. Perhaps they were expecting the users to connect one of those $ 2000 pro VCRs, but people that have those VCRs are pros that probably bought those pro VCRs 15 years ago and wouldn’t buy a $190 card to capture their footage, they would probably buy a $1500 card. What I mean is, a card that is $190, which is obviously targeted at the consumer or prosumer, should have better stabilizing features for cheap VCRs.
Sebastian R. Alvarez
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OK, I finally figured out that I had to set this from the Blacklink control panel. However, while now I get a picture, it goes black for a split second very often, and also the audio is seriously screwed up, it’s just a very loud high pitch and that’s all I get. Obviously I double checked the connections I made according to the manual and they’re correct, unless Blackmagic screwed up when they put the labels on the cables.
I tried all the places where I could control anything about the board and I don’t think there’s anything else I can do. Please help.
Sebastian R. Alvarez
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Nevermind. After selecting the Blackmagic card I had forgotten to click on the external preview icon. Doh!!
Sebastian R. Alvarez
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[Kevin Monahan] “I would look into getting a video capture card that is especially made for playout of the timeline.
The Blackmagic Intensity at $199 is the most affordable option”
Thanks, I was thinking about getting the Intensity Pro. My concern is if Mercury playback GPU acceleration will still be available if I output the timeline through the Int. Pro.
Sebastian R. Alvarez