[Tim Kolb]

Cineon is a Kodak format which went with the system of the same name…DPX is a more up-to-date standard (based on Cineon) that was designed to work in a wider variety of environments.

I’d have to believe that your Da Vinci system will output DPX frame sequences as well as specifically “Cineon”… Though if Cineon is all you have, I suspect that PProCS5’s DPX importer may parse it.

Keep in mind that in Premiere Pro CS5 you have 8 bit color precision…or 32 bit float. Any material brought in with greater than 8 bit color precision should be handled on a 32 bit float timeline…which is enabled by checking the “max bit depth” box in the sequence settings dialog.

Then…when exporting the material, if you plan on using it downstream in finishing, etc with deep color precision, select “max bit depth” in the export dialog as well…and I recommend you don’t “use previews” for the export source, even if you’ve set them for 10 bit.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Unless you’re specifically referring to a dual link DVI port output on the BM device, it’s not nearly as easy as you envision…

RED files are RAW. They need to be decoded, and then de-bayered to create an image.

HDSDI is a fixed environment…Rec 709 color Y’CbCr, and 1920 x 1080 max res. The reason the desktop reduced resolution modes aren’t supported by I/O cards (and BM is not alone in this respect, AJA is the same) is that they really aren’t supported by the pipeline.

When you are in a BM sequence, you are in the proper color space and frame size for HD video. Bringing RED R2D files to that sequence creates a situation where you are decoding the RAW at 4K, then scaling it AND transcoding the color space. It’s a load.

My recommendation might be to shoot RED at the “HD 4K” framesize (3840×2160) which scales at half to -exactly- 1920×1080, which looks beautiful… Use the capabilities in PPro to take advantage of the RAW workflow for color correction, basic cutting, etc… Then export an HD master clip that you can use for output via your I/O card, and also do your final CC pass, etc. with your external scopes and monitor.

Unfortunately “Digital Cinema” cameras that shoot RAW are not “video” cameras…and their optimal post workflows are not based on “video” as much as we all seem to keep lumping all these cameras and production workflows together…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

PPro 1.5 captured and converted to CineFormHD.

You can still buy a CineForm plugin for CS5, but Premiere Pro has captured/edited HDV “native” for some time now…

(HDV is MPEG…exactly what you are seeing in your system.)

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Have you tried uninstalling the iLife app to see if things run again?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

The XDcamEX workflow for Adobe Premiere Pro is to simply import the BPAV files as “Import Folder” or…a series of BPAV files. PPro sorts out the metadata and the clips show up in the bin…no conversion necessary. I’ve been editing XDcamEX since CS3 this way.

It would eliminate a bunch of pre-processing and data duplication for you.

What edit sequence settings are you using with this converted media? The XDcamEX settings or the XDcamHD settings?

I’m wondering if this conversion has something to do with the problem you’re having as it certainly isn’t the most streamlined workflow for XDcamEX and PPro…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

Two particular areas worth noting is that the sequences in PPro are not based on a video format per se…but a frame size/PAR. Whatever media is on the machine that there is a decoder for can be dropped on any timeline and seen immediately, but if you had 1080p XDcamEX, DSLR, and AVCHD all at the same framerate (and I’ve even mixed framerates), it all plays because the sequence is not based on a particular decoder.

Also…if I shoot 720p60 overcrank on my EX1, I simply load it into my 1080p project, right-click on it to re-interpret the framerate at 24 fps, and go… The clip will come up as a red line when I scale it(indicating rendering is needed to maintain framerate), but that’s all there is to that.

…so, two areas you might find interesting.

(ok…a third…you might want to try switching your sequence to “audio units” and see what editing audio -by the sample- on the video timeline is like…remove a click or pop and don’t even fill the hole as it’s too small to hear anyway. Also…splicing music beds is sooooo easy.)

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

As far as I know, Vince is correct on this…Adobe’s documentation of what parameters they support within each file type is unfortunately…not informative.

What is creating the image sequence?

Can you create some other file type? CS5 now has what is probably some of the industry’s most extensive DPX support…also I believe that 16bpc PNGs work…

16 bpc TIFs can be loaded with some third party software installed (my AJA LHi software enables me to load 16 bpc TIFs for instance)

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

First off, Adobe doesn’t restrict the Mac to these two cards…Apple does.

Second, if the GTX285 card is the problem, based on my experience with those who are using that card on a Windows machine…that’s probably a Mac issue…the card performs as expected on a Windows machine.(I believe Apple insists on creating the drivers for the NVIDIA cards which is why they only accept 2 cards)

Third, I’ve edited 1080p 5D footage as well as footage from a POV camera that may not quite fit the DSLR spec exactly, but is H264, on an 8 core Intel Mac (can’t remember which model, but certainly not less than a couple years old) seemed to play it back without a CUDA card without much trouble…certainly no jerky or intermittent playback…and I was training so I was running an interface capture app on the same system simultaneously.

So…

I’m not sure what the problem might be…perhaps try switching off CUDA acceleration and see if that works better…perhaps it’s the way the machine interacts with the card?

Also…can you describe the media’s path, (I assume 5D?), how it was transferred, have you processed the footage with any other application? (any camera format imported into FCP as “native” almost never is…etc.)

Any other conversions? File hierarchy changes?

Your experience with multiple machines (I assume not all had a GTX285?) makes me wonder about the state of the media… I assume it all plays back fine in QT player?

The Mercury Playback Engine’s sales pitch can make it seem as if it’s solely based on the CUDA card, and it’s not. Responsiveness during editing on many systems is helped as much by being able to drop to half-res (or lower) for timeline editing/preview (a feature you have regardless of whether you have a CUDA card installed or not) as any effects preview benefit from a CUDA card, depending on the format and the system configuration.

You need a massive harddrive system to playback something like uncompressed HD video, and Mercury doesn’t change that.

You need more processing power on the -CPU- to do the decompression of compressed formats (obviously less harddrive throughput is necessary for smaller bitrates).

(…and this is important…no matter what you’ve read from Adobe or NVIDIA that seems to imply that the CUDA card somehow helps decode more video streams, video decode is done on the CPU. Once you start applying effects that are CUDA accelerated (they’re indicated in the Effects Panel), THEN the CUDA cores kick in and of course, kick butt.)

…and of course, you need a hopper-load of RAM. Adobe’s published minimum system requirements for it’s video apps are typically only second to Apple in their sheer fantasy (last I looked, FCP would install on a system with 1 GB or RAM or some such nonsense).

I would not run CS5 for any HD work on less than 8 GB on the system for a workstation (I’m used to pushing my luck with laptops in this area…but on a workstation, I can tell you that 16 GB of RAM makes a difference, and I’m betting that 32 GB would probably be a noticeable improvement from that…)

(Disclaimer: I am not an Adobe employee, but I am a PPro trainer, so while I’m not exactly Switzerland, I don’t whitewash issues.)

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

I use XDcam EX files (which are not MXF…they’re MPEG4 wrappers, only disc-based XDcam is MXF), and I never have four audio tracks come in…

That’s an odd bit of behavior.

How are you importing the clips into your project?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Tim Kolb]

“Left out”?

Not sure what you mean by this… Analog deck control is usually handled by the card you install in your machine that handles analog video/audio connections.

Deck “control” without a deck “connection” of some sort isn’t a common need, and therefore this is handled by the I/O card manufacturer (AJA, Blackmagic Design, BlueFish444, Matrox, etc…)

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,