Challenge: 300 HD videos. Google Earth. Premiere Pro...who can give advice?

[Susann Kovacs]

Ok guys it's been a while since I've posted but I guess I've been waiting for a project this scale to stump me!

Here is what we're trying to do:

Capture 300 HD videos with Google Earth Pro
Import into Adobe Premiere CS4 and do some minimal editing (soundtrack etc)
Export for HD youtube and general web use.

Sounds simple enough except we're running into some data rate problems.

We need to find out the best capture settings in Google Earth in order to work with them in Premiere. At the moment we end up with jittery, stuttering preview vision and it gets worse after rendering.

Here are the specs we're using:

Google Earth capture:
WMV9
1280x720
16megabit/sec

PC Specs:
Intel I7 952 Chip
12 GB DDR3 1200mhz
Boot Drive - 2x 60Gb SSD in Mirrored Raid
Storage/Scratch Drive - 4x300GB SATA2 drives in RAID 1+0
Vid Card - ATI HD5750 1G DDR5
OS - Windows 7 x64

All drivers and OS patches are applied

The captured videos are being stored on a 3 terabyte NAS (but we're not editing off the NAS, we're transfering to PC hard drive first to avoid network issues).

Because of the sheer volume of videos we need to crunch through we've gone with WMV format as they take up less space.

Not sure why we're getting a stuttery result once we import into Premiere though (the original captures play fine so it's only within Premiere that we see the problem).

From the trouble shooting I've done so far we gather that it's to do with the bitrate yet there appears to be no way to limit this within Premiere (despite various help files directing me to a project settings - video...that menu option just doesn't exist!).

So can anyone shed light on what the best capture settings would be to still get a nice, fairly high res image for HD Youtube broadcast without taxing our systme or storage space too much?

If nothing else this project should provide valuable feedback for others who may wish to do the same.

P.S. yes we already have permission from Google.

[Adam Gold]

Originally Posted by Susann Kovacs

Because of the sheer volume of videos we need to crunch through we've gone with WMV format as they take up less space.

My guess is that's your problem. WMV is a display format not designed for editing. Can you try another format that Premiere supports?

[Susann Kovacs]

Well an uncompressed Avi capture plays fine in premiere but ends up with the same problem after exporting.

Yet sorenson squeeze seems to smooth it out.

Uncompressed avi will give us storage issues of course though...unless we add a sorenson step to crunch down the size.

[Perrone Ford]

Adam is on the money. WMV is not an editing codec. It's akin to working with AVCHD which causes problems for most users. You need to transcode into a intraframe codec that Premiere can work with. Uncompressed is totally unnecessary. Honestly, with the stuff you're working with, I'd say something like Cineforlm would solve your issue with minimal expense.

Given the specs of your machine, and the rather paltry bitrate of your WMV files, I'd honestly have thought you'd get better performance. That ATI card probably isn't helping matters either, but a transcode to Cineform won't increase your storage load too much, and should give you buttery smooth playback.

[Susann Kovacs]

Thanks for the advice, Cineform sounds like it might be the way to go.

In the meantime we've found that another PC in the same office with less grunt actually performs better. Exporting in mp4 format then uploading to youtube seems to give smooth results, even though initial playback of the mp4 format is a little suspect.

The constraints of Google Earth Pro capturing process unforunately require us to download either wmv or uncompressed avi.

[Harm Millaard]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

Given the specs of your machine, and the rather paltry bitrate of your WMV files, I'd honestly have thought you'd get better performance. That ATI card probably isn't helping matters either, but a transcode to Cineform won't increase your storage load too much, and should give you buttery smooth playback.

Well, this is the first I have heard about an i7-952 CPU and what is wrong with an ATI 5770? It probably is way overkill for CS4.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

ant what is wrong with an ATI 5770? It probably is way overkill for CS4.

It seems Adobe, like others, are leaning more toward the NVidia cards. ATI's have a history of being problematic on PC platforms. I've had several and they've been nothing but trouble. NVidia seems to be more in tune. Ironically, the reverse is true on the Mac it seems, as ATI seems to be the favored brand.

And nothing is "overkill" in my book. The better and faster something works, I'm all for it.

[Harm Millaard]

The funny thing is, since Adobe announced their close ties with nVidia, these cards caused problems where ATI was troublefree. Now again we are led to believe that nVidia will be 'The solution' with MPE in CS5. As the blind said, "I've gotta see it to believe it."

[Perrone Ford]

LOL.... I am only going on my past experiences with ATI, Premiere, and what Adobe themselves have said. Nice to know you've had more success.