[Tim Kolb]

Well…it isn’t something inherent in CS5 itself as I (and many others) seem to be able to cut DSLR footage unremarkably and output it.

So…you’re attempting to output all these formats through QT? (From the media encoder)…or did you try to encode PNG sequence directly out from the PNG selection in the top level of the media encoder’s format list?

I have seen where certain effects used in combinations will once in a while cause some inexplicable hang up. The “crop” effect does seem to be a handfull to crunch in certain circumstances…which is some sort of bug, but CS5 has no inherent instability specifically with QuickTime, though it does take some accomodation to write around it as it isn’t 64 bit and the basic framework for anything pre-QTX is closing in on 20 years old.

If you’ve tried formats outside of the QT export options (say straight to WMV or MPEG2..), and you are still seeing the issue, I’d start trying small work area runs at various points on your timeline, and you should be able to at least determine what on the timeline is causing the issue.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

…sure, but I’d use whatever the native resolution is of the panel you’ll be using. The pixel counts themselves won’t matter unless you output to a file type that has a dimension limitation.

I just know things will get funky if you work portrait with non-square pixels.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

The H.264 is in a QT wrapper…if you have a friend with a Windows machine, I’d take it to them and have them play the file in Windows Media Player and see what it looks like relative to QT Player.

It sounds like the gamma issues with QT may be alive and well…I know that the H264 files I create with QTPro end up looking very washed out, but when I play them in Windows Media Player, the colors are great.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Premiere Pro does custom frame sizes just fine…but why would you work with non-square pixels for D-signage?

When you say 1.2 PAR, you do realize that the application of those pixels is to expand the 720 dimension to the equivalent of 864 so the screen is 16:9…so if you’ve chosen to work vertically and set a custom project setting to 480w x 720h, the dimension of the stretch will be the opposite.

Instead of 16:9 frame aspect rotated 90 degrees equivalent to 864×480, you will have a screen equivalent to 576×720, or 4:5 instead of 9:16.

I’d figure out what the desired square pixel frame size is and work in AE and Premiere Pro at that frame size. Non square pixels are an unnecessary pain in the neck if you aren’t creating a project for those specific video formats…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

[Steve Brame] “CS5 is MUCH better at handling AVCHD footage than CS4 was”

Steve understates this…even with the caps on “MUCH”.

I don’t know many people who use(d) AVCHD with CS4 that didn’t transcode to CineForm or something like that.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Have you ever used a VOB file with CS3 before this?

I’ve never used VOBs in Premiere Pro myself (I usually take the DVD apart in Vegas and output a more conventional video file…), but I seem to remember that official VOB support is a relatively recent thing…like maybe CS4 recent?

I’m not an expert on what makes a VOB file different from your regular ole’ MPEG2 file, so Ann’s recommendation as it applies to why it would take the video and not the audio seems like the first thing I’d follow up on.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

[mikkell khan] “I put the external player as my camera and then the option to select external audio device was enabled…The option to select Export to Tape is now grayed out.”

That’s interesting… I have no explanation for why the export to tape would be grayed out.

It’s good that you’re running and getting the job done however…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Have you verified that there is sound in the file to begin with?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

First, I can tell you that Adobe “crippled” nothing.

Your system has a good amount of RAM, and hopefully it’s speedy enough to be at spec…

What is your CPU configuration? 1 CPU? 2? You don’t mention that.

Also, how full your media harddrive is will affect fragmentatioon and therefore, read speed.

What effects are you specifically using?

Are you rendering because you see a red line, or because playback is simply inadequate?

All that said, you mention “HD” as if it’s one thing. Uncompressed HD requires a massive and fast harrdive subsystem, but iisn’t terribly stressful on the CPU…compressed HD runs the gamut. DVCProHD is fairly easy to handle partially at least because it’s I-frame, but once you venture into MPEG Long GOP, the decode and encode process becomes far more stressful as the compression is certainly aggressive, but the fact that tthe frames are encoded and decoded out of order make it a task where the process needs to stay well ahead of playback…of course, PPro’s MPEG previews are I-frame, so they do run pretty quickly.

MPEG2 formats like HDV and XDcamHD and EX were one thing, but MPEG4 formats like AVCHD and the video shot by DSLRs are even more complex…

As the compression you work with gets more complex, additional physical processors and cores are helpful to keep playback reponsive. Multiple processors are typically a bigger boost than one processor with multiple cores. Both are great of course, but you would traditionally have seen better performance from a system with two dual-core procs over say a single quad-core proc.

CUDA acceleration helps you when you’ve added effects (the ones marked with the “accelerated” symbol in the effects directory ) as it takes over computing the effect. The software “hack” that is out there only works on NVIDIA CUDA display cards and enables the ones that aren’t on Adobe’s approved list, usually used to enable NVIDIA gamer cards, which have no professional support.

As far as I know ATI cards aren’t supported because ATI has no equivalent technology. NVIDIA actually builds computers that use this as their core “CPU” and I know of nothing even close from ATI…it isn’t advanced GPU support…it’s quite different.

Mercury Playback Engine doesn’t need the CUDA option to run…you can also drop visual playback to half or quarter res for edit responsiveness.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

What sort of MXF files are you referring to?

Panasonic P2 files that contain DVCProHD files can be edited natively, but MXF is just a container format. What is inside the file is another matter. Sony MXF files contain MPEG essence files and MPEG compatibility requires licensing, so Adobe doesn’t include MPEG compatibility in the free demo version.

The retail version of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 is very compatible with camera formats in general… Very few formats require conversion.

That being said, the CineForm product line is excellent and the codec is more robust than most camera formats, AND it runs very fast as it’s specifically designed to run on a computer CPU, whereas camera formats (and in particular, the avalanche of Long GOP MPEG-based video formats of late) take some processing power to decode/encode.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,