PP2.0 and Canon XH-A1. Not!

[Larry Chapman]

Many folks out there (found in dvinfo and Adobe forums) have run into two serious issues when trying to use the Canon XH-A1 with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0.

1) You can't export more than about 6 minutes of 1080 60i footage back to the XH-A1. The symptom is that the A1 flashes an error about the DV connection and stops recording.

2) If you shoot and edit 1080 60i in PP2.0 and export to a SD widescreen DVD (pretty common workflow these days) the rendered result is terrible. Lots of jerky motion on zooms/pans and just general poor video.

I have submitted defect reports to Adobe and Canon and seem to be getting nowhere (standard scripted generic answers and finger-pointing).

In the meantime . . . I have invested $10K to get my company started in HD and these two issues are HUGE barriers to being able to really serve customers!

If anyone out there has ways to get Canon's or Adobe's attention on this it would really be appreciated.

This is our first Canon camera and, in hindsight, we should have stayed with Sony since it seems like they do not have these issues with PP2.0.

[Tom Hardwick]

This news is so shocking and has such far-reaching consequences and the fact that I've not heard mention of it untill this day suggests (hopefully) that there's something amiss with your preferences set-up Larry. But then if you've got so far as to start this thread, I'm guessing that you've spent many an hour struggling at the PC. I await others' input.

tom.

[Larry Chapman]

Originally Posted by Tom Hardwick

This news is so shocking and has such far-reaching consequences and the fact that I've not heard mention of it untill this day suggests (hopefully) that there's something amiss with your preferences set-up Larry. But then if you've got so far as to start this thread, I'm guessing that you've spent many an hour struggling at the PC. I await others' input.

tom.

The inability to export from PP2.0 back to the A1 is pretty well known. Adobe claimed to know about it and blamed the camera. Canon blames Adobe. The customers get screwed.

The poor rendering from a PP2.0 1080 60i timeline to DVD is getting discussed to death in an Adobe forum with several folks seeing the issue and resorting to painfull workarounds. Look here:

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc39b52/68

If it's a "settings issue" then many of us are experiencing it and nobody has discovered the answer.

[Ivan Barbarich]

Hi Larry,
I'm definatly no expert, as I'm new to HD myself, But I'm able to get awsome results from burning DVD from within Premiere 2.

Here's my workflow..hopefully it helps a bit...Oh, I'm in PAL land.

1,Shoot footage HD 50i
2,Capture with premiere (using either Cineform or standard M2t)
3,Edit in HD 50i 1080 project.
4,Export final result as 50i 1080 avi or M2t (depends which I used) so I have one clip
5,Open new SD 720*576 widescreen project..import HD footage and resize (in my case to 54% to fit) create DVD menu/chapters etc..hit Burn and let prem encode and burn DVD, or create ISO image.

I get an excelent result..But saying all this maybe I'm suppose to get better results..dont know, I'm definatly happy with the results..

The above workflow was one I learnt from the Total training video tutes.

Ivan.

[Ervin Farkas]

Unfortunately there is no push-button good quality solution with Premiere, but the work-arounds are not all that bad.

One that works very well for me is editing in Adobe (either in the native format or in Cineform), resizing in VirtualDub and frameserving to any mpeg2 encoder; another one is even simpler and does not require a "real" intermediate step: frameserving from Premiere to Sorenson Squeeze.

[Larry Chapman]

Originally Posted by Ivan Barbarich

Hi Larry,
I'm definatly no expert, as I'm new to HD myself, But I'm able to get awsome results from burning DVD from within Premiere 2.

Here's my workflow..hopefully it helps a bit...Oh, I'm in PAL land.

1,Shoot footage HD 50i
2,Capture with premiere (using either Cineform or standard M2t)
3,Edit in HD 50i 1080 project.
4,Export final result as 50i 1080 avi or M2t (depends which I used) so I have one clip
5,Open new SD 720*576 widescreen project..import HD footage and resize (in my case to 54% to fit) create DVD menu/chapters etc..hit Burn and let prem encode and burn DVD, or create ISO image.

I get an excelent result..But saying all this maybe I'm suppose to get better results..dont know, I'm definatly happy with the results..

The above workflow was one I learnt from the Total training video tutes.

Ivan.

>> The folks having trouble are shooting 60i. Not sure
>> if that's the difference or not.
>>
>> I tried exporting to DV-AVI and the jittery zooms and pans
>> were already there. Changing to LFF/UFF made no
>> difference.
>>
>> Are you exporting a DV-AVI file or using other settings?

[Larry Chapman]

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

Unfortunately there is no push-button good quality solution with Premiere, but the work-arounds are not all that bad.

One that works very well for me is editing in Adobe (either in the native format or in Cineform), resizing in VirtualDub and frameserving to any mpeg2 encoder; another one is even simpler and does not require a "real" intermediate step: frameserving from Premiere to Sorenson Squeeze.

It seems un-acceptable to me that the Adobe Media Encoder (assuming that ends-up being the issue here) can't handle this, thus forcing customers to purchase encoders from 3rd parties.

[Ervin Farkas]

Oh well... we live in an imperfect world... As we all know, there is no perfect "all-in-one" editing suite, they all have their strenghts and weaknesses. I am totally with you on the "unacceptable" part, Adobe should have fixed this a long time ago! If you ask me, I would have spent the money they spent on acquiring DV Rack (that will be used by only a handful of buyers anyway) on something a lot more important, something we all need: a better mpeg2 encoder.

Still, computer-based digital video is a very young industry, and with a little patience we'll be doing much better in a few more years. Until then... we have the work-arounds...

[Larry Chapman]

I tried the workflow outlined by Ivan and . . . it works!

So, it seems that the Premiere defect has, at least, these symptoms:

Un-acceptable video quality when -

1) Burning a SD widescreen DVD direcly from a HD project.

2) Writing a DV-AVI file from a HD project.

I'm not totally sure if the XH-A1 plays a role in this or not. I would like to hear from someone with a Sony camera completing #1 or #2 above with high quality results.

Agreed?

[Kevin Amundson]

Originally Posted by Ivan Barbarich

1,Shoot footage HD 50i
2,Capture with premiere (using either Cineform or standard M2t)
3,Edit in HD 50i 1080 project.
4,Export final result as 50i 1080 avi or M2t (depends which I used) so I have one clip
5,Open new SD 720*576 widescreen project..import HD footage and resize (in my case to 54% to fit) create DVD menu/chapters etc..hit Burn and let prem encode and burn DVD, or create ISO image.

Is this using the Canon HDV preset for step 3?

[Larry Chapman]

Originally Posted by Kevin Amundson

Is this using the Canon HDV preset for step 3?

Yes it is.

[Ervin Farkas]

We have to credit Steven Gotz with this method - he's been advocating for this a long time ago.

And yes, it is the same with Sony camcorders (Z1 in my case), it makes no difference.

[Ivan Barbarich]

Hi All,

I'm glad its worked.

With regards to step 3, I used the adobe 1080i 25 (50i) preset, If I was using 25f I would have used the canon preset, either way it works.

You can see how it was done in "My Premiere Pro video tutes"..

http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=92734

Ivan.

[Kevin Amundson]

Thanks for clearing up my confusion!