[Tim Kolb]

I’m not sure it’s very easy to give you much insight without some more information…

You shot on an EX1 so you shot XDcamHDEX, either at 25 Mbits/s or 35 Mbits/s…it’s MPEG2 in an MP4 wrapper.

What is happening at the two points where you had the problems with the MPEG2 HD export? Is there an effect on the footage that may not be rendering properly?

Have you tried to render the entire sequence (in the sequence pulldown) so the timeline shows green and THEN try to export? I’ve noticed there are certain effects that do not function properly in Media Encoder when using PPro headless to re-execute the file (any Magic Bullet Looks stuff for instance). So rendering the entire timeline in preview, then checking “use preview files” in Media Encoder can trade a little quality loss for some malfunctioning effects…

…but I’m guessing as there isn’t much to go on.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

I don’t have any special insight on it, but I’d bet Adobe would LOVE to know what update causes that sort of a slowdown…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Just make sure he doesn’t use any of the “built in” proc amp effects and that sort of thing…

PPro seems unable to turn them off or alter them in some cases.

I’ve had some of these projects end up with some annoying hangups once I need to try to do my own effects/cc on them in PPro, not to mention the project can seem unstable in my experience.

But yes, technically the manual says you can import Premiere Elements projects…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

[Jeff Pulera] “while not terrible viewing 1080i AVCHD on a 24″ LCD via DVI, was still a little choppy/rough around the edges in general, while MXO2 provided a perfect output all the time. I believe the issue is because computers don’t do interlaced display.”

Valid point. I’ve been working in progressive the overwhelming majority of the time since I started with HD, so the AJA LHi becomes my ultimate proofing system with my Sony video monitor.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Are you exporting to a DVD or BluRay appropriate MPEG2 profile?

It may just be that the data rates are too high. What happens if you export to WMV?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

The issue is not that CS4 can’t read MXF files (xml and other camera data files can sometimes come up as not imported if you just grab a whole folder and import clips from some camera-borne file formats. I’ve noted to Adobe that the software seems to present it to the user as some sort of malfunction when it isn’t.) The media browser will typically only show you the files in a directory that can be imported.

However…as Rex stated, CS4 pre-dates the camcorder, though most importantly, CS4 did not support a Sony XDcamHD422 codec structure natively, and underneath it all, that is what the essence of Canon’s video file is…

I think Main Concept had some sort of plugin that would adapt that format for those who were using XDcamHD422 at 50 Mbit prior to CS5, but I’m not sure if it makes a difference on what the file wrapper is (mxf), so I’d ask Main Concept about it before purchasing it, or you could just upgrade to CS5 if you have a 64 bit workstation…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

I light up four displays exactly this way…I’d simply recommend getting a like brand/product line card (even if it’s a less beefy model) so they can both run on the same drivers…I have two Quadros for instance.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Well…of course there is an After Effects forum here at the Cow where you’ll find help very fast, but I suspect the issue is that your system is just plain starved for RAM so AE has to start disk-swapping instructions that should cache to RAM.

If you want to run AE on a W7 64 system, I’d operate with 16 GB of RAM for CS5, but since you’re on CS4, I’d at least step up to 8 GB so AE can at least max out with the 4 GB it can use…right now you’re splitting up 4 GB of RAM between a resource-hungry OS and who knows what else.

You’d probably also benefit from a display card upgrade for Open GL previews…that card appears to have been specifically designed for gaming.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

One of the costly areas in this scenario is the pixel aspect conversions…which take some calculations.

Keep in mind these are CPU-intensive processes and it sounds like you’ve got one quad core processor…two would be better if this was a common scenario for you.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

I’m trying to track this…

So…what was the reason the Premiere Pro CS4 editor couldn’t simply use the RED RAW footage in the first place? That would have saved a step or two…

Did you use REDCine to do any primary corrections before making the H264 offline files?

Since doing color correction on the RAW files is probably the key advantage to shooting motion RAW in the first place, why wouldn’t you reconnect the 4K RED files in FCP before going into Color?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,