Premiere Requires Rendering
 

Hi,

I'm on a mission to find a good intermediate codec for intermediate editing. I've been looking at HuffYUV, which has very good compression. However, when I pull HuffYUV clips into Premiere, the timeline wants me to render a preview. I've tried various codecs, including uncompressed AVI, 8-bit YUY2 (4:2:2), and various settings in the HuffYUV codec. The all require a prerender to play real time in Premiere.

I've always chosen the DV NTSC project template for my projects in premiere. But the only combination I've found that doesn't display the red render bar above the video is to create a project using the Adobe SD-SDI NTSC template and use the 8-bit YUY2 (4:2:2) codec. However, that codec doesn't compress too well, only about 20% smaller than uncompressed.

I'm running Adobe Production Studio (Premiere Pro 2), and my footage is all DV (shot on a Canon GL2). My system is a P4 2.8Ghz with hyperthreading enabled, 4GB ram, 600GB RAID0 (striped) dedicated video editing drive.

I guess my question is: for those who use an intermediate codec for editing, do you have to prerender to preview in realtime, or do you put up with the stuttering on playback? What's the best way to deal with this?

Thanks!

I don't understand why you would have an intermediate codec for DV footage from a GL2. Using an xl2 with premiere, I never have to render to playback my footage in realtime, unless I apply effects or transitions. Are you sure your setting up the correct sequences to match your footage? such as NTSC 4:3 for your gl2? If you do NTSC 16:9 you would probably have the render bar, because premiere would be trying to scale your footage. Maybe I'm missing something...

Why intermediate footage? Well, I'm trying to find the best workflow for editing. I will be making a lot of color corrections and other effects within After Effects. It'd my understanding that the DV avi format is not lossless, and will eventually begin to break down. I want to maintain the highest possible quality through the life cycle of my projects.

Another reason...archiving the footage. At this point, I plan to archive my video onto external hard drives, probably eSata interface for performance. I'd like to archive in a lossless format if possible.

What got me started thinking about this was all those old Hi8 tapes I shot years ago. They're just going to continue degrading with time. My plan is to capture them onto my hard drive (MS DV AVI format), and use After Effects to deinterlace and denoise them (using NeatVideo). It's at that point I want to render out as an intermediate format, both for archiving and for further editing/effects/color correction. Some of that old video needs a lot of color correction and luma balancing. Some of my projects may be in the 1-2 hours range, with hundreds of clips. So I'll be breaking things down into manageable sizes. A lossless format would be essential, I think.

Yes, I'm selecting the proper template in Premiere. I usually pick DV NTSC Standard. I only experimented with Adobe SD-SDI NTSC with these intermediate formats.

In either case, I've been doing some testing tonight, and with the HuffyYUV codec, the playback is not smooth with any project settings I pick, unless I first do a preview render.

Does this make more sense now? How to the "big boys" do it?

Of course, if I'm incorrect in thinking that MD DV AVI format will cause problems after several generations of editing and saving, then please correct me. No sense in doing more work than necessary.

Thanks,

Hi Tim,

I believe the 5:1 compression of DV is only going when coming out of the camera and going to tape or firewire to another device, not in the AVI file format. So if you have a 1 hour avi, cut it to 50 mins, save it and open that, cut it to 40, save and open, cut to 40, save and open, cut to 30, etc, etc.. I don't think you're going to lose any quality. If you send it out to tape and back, I think there's no compression happening, because it's just data transferring back and forth between mediums.

I just came across this thread:
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@@.3bc3983d/2

It explains some of your concerns and at least you're not involved in the debate of it. :)

Eric

Hi Eric,

I just read that thread on the Adobe forums. Reading through all the spiteful comments and flames (I can't stand those forums, they drive me crazy!), it confirms my thoughts. Everytime you need to rerender to DV AVI format, you sustain another generation of loss. Someone even mentioned using the HuffYUV format to avoid this. I also understand that if you don't need to rerender, then the data transfer is lossless, as it is with any file you simply copy on a computer. Premiere is smart enough not to rerender any areas in a clip that don't need it.

So I've established the DV AVI codec is not the one to use when many filters and other render-causing adjustments are going to be made. Back to my original reason for posting... :)

When I use a lossless format such as HuffYUV within Premiere, it always displays the red render bar, and will not play back the video smoothly. Is this normal? Do others experience this? Is there a setting or another codec that would be better?

Thanks for the replys so far!

I see now. Hmm, I guess I mainly just work in one app, so I haven't run into that problem. I thought AVI was lossless though, like WAV is. Or maybe the DV AVI codec is different?

I don't know that I've really helped you out, other than pointing you to another forum with the answer, but at least I've learned something. And where NOT to post. ;)

Eric

Heh...yeah, I've asked questions over on the other forum before. And I've searched for answers, but more often than not, I end up sifting through a bunch of rhetoric and flames. It's too bad, they should model themselves after this forum. It's by far one of the best I've run across.

Regarding AVI, it's not necessarily lossless. Depends on the codec used. DV AVI is pretty good, if you're only making a couple passes. Probably won't notice any degradation. But I'm just trying to maximize the quality, so that I have the freedom to make numerous passes without causing generational loss.

No worries if you didn't have the answer I'm looking for. I'm sure someone else will step in at any moment. Right? Anyone? :)

Thanks!

The only recompression is on the final export -- so you can make changes, apply multiple, filters, et cetera ... you are only recompressing on final export. Preview doesn't change that, so just leave your workflow on the timeline until you are finished.

And don't sweat it if you have to revisit a file occasionally that was finished and exported once before -- DV is able to stand a couple of recompressions without collapsing.

GB

Yep, I understand that. But what if I'm bouncing back and forth between Premiere Pro and After Effects?

Here's a couple threads where I found previous discussions concerning workflow:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=66543
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=50373

So it seems to me that there are those who use intermediate codecs to maximize quality. I'd like to know how they deal with Premiere wanting to render for preview.

It isn't my habit to bounce between the two -- I may take a file into AE after I'm done in Premiere ... but can't you bring the Premiere project into AE? And so still be working with the timeline?

GB

Hmmm...honestly, I haven't thought about that. I supposed I'd have to be careful which effects I include in Premiere, so that After Effects has the same ones. But I'll basically be using Premiere to cut the project, and maybe do dissolves. Interesting idea.

I wonder what happens if I try to import a Premiere Project that has multi-camera edit sequence. I think I have some experimenting to do.

Thanks, good suggestion! This is exactly the sort of workflow suggestion I'm looking for. Although, I'm still hoping for an answer to my initial question. :)

Tim,

If you are only editing SD and are disliking rendering, then you might want to look into a Canopus DV storm card.

I have PPro, but mainly use Edius with this card.

No rendering and realtime preview of multiple tracks along with filters ect...