Adobe Premiere & Premiere Pro discussions from 2004

[Jonathan Stanley]

I just got the adobe video collection and with it came a training DVD. I was watching the part about adobe audition, and it was showing how you can do 5.1 with it. It never mentioned anything about it being dolby, even though it was 5.1. (dolby isn't the only company out there ever to invent surround sound, they are just the industy leader)

During the premiere section of the video, the host mentioned the 5.1 capabilities, but again never said anything about dolby.

The only time dolby was mentioned was in the Encore DVD section, and he stated that encore would convert all 5.1 information into dolby.

I think what this means is that in premiere and audition, any work in 5.1 is done by the adobe software, and it is not dolby 5.1 at this point. rather that only when you encode the dvd, does it get encoded into dolby.

[Rob Lohman]

It is custom if you are talking about 5.1 you are talking about
Dolby Digital, or as it is called technically AC3 (yes I know it
doesn't have to be 5.1). If PPro has an AC3 output option then
it is using Dolby Digital encoding.

[Paul Tauger]

I'm thinking of upgrading from 6.5 but realize that one of the things I will lose is realtime video with my Pinnacle ProOne card (the card isn't supported and doesn't work in Pro). Does Pro do realtime preview via 1394 out? If so, I could use my old miniDV camcorder to do digital-to-analog conversion, and I'd still have realtime analog preview.

Will this work?

[Rob Lohman]

The "problem" with such boards is that they require their own
drivers and codecs to work. So there is a real chance it won't
work with Premiere Pro indeed. The best way to test it out would
be to just download the demo version of Premiere Pro here.

It's a whopping 107 MB though and you need to register with
Adobe (free). But it does give you the best option I think. Even
if it works for somebody else everything system is unique and
it might not work for you. Better find that out with the demo then
when you bought the product!

[Lars Siden]

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Tauger : I'm thinking of upgrading from 6.5 but realize that one of the things I will lose is realtime video with my Pinnacle ProOne card (the card isn't supported and doesn't work in Pro). Does Pro do realtime preview via 1394 out? If so, I could use my old miniDV camcorder to do digital-to-analog conversion, and I'd still have realtime analog preview.

Will this work? -->>>

Hi Paul,

I use my Canon XM2/GL2 that way right now with Premiere Pro - works like a charm!

// Lazze

[Charley Gallagher]

I have been working with Premiere Pro on and off for a couple of weeks now and I have to say that until today I have been quite impressed.

The improvements over 6.5, to me, are very nice. Previously if I rendered a clip, then moved it along the timeline, it needed to be rendered again. It always seemed silly that the designers would permit this but it never worked for me. Now its rendered once and I can move it. If I use slow motion and render then later cut the clip. It doesn't need to be reworked. I love that feature.

Also the idea of nesting sequences is great. Its like virtual clips but better.

And the Ken Burn's effect can now be done in Pro. Vegas does this nicely and I was considering learning it just for effects similar to that since previously one would have to go to After Effects to smoothly pan and zoom on a still. Pro works well in that regard.

And it seemed to be quick with non of the hesitation you mentioned....until yesterday. Then I saw it struggle at times. I would hit the space bar and wait. After awhile I opened Take Manager and clicked on the performance tag. I noticed that though I had nothing else running, there were times that I would use up all but 3 meg of my 512 meg, and this seemed to happen at random times.

I remember using a memory manager that helped a lot with Windows 98 when that happened and it seems like I am just short of memory at time. Possibly Pro is a memory hog. I will have to upgrade to a gig of memory and see if that makes a difference.

[Jonathan Stanley]

I think Ppro performance depends a lot on your system. If you dont have a "supercomputer" then it seems to run slow.

When I first received my copy I had to uninstall my matrox rtx100 card to install PPro. just out of curiosity, i did some editing on my comp without the matrox card installed. this is a 2.5 GHZ pc built specifically for video editing, with nothing else on it. premiere was without a doubt sluggish in places. when i installed the rtx100, WOW, what a difference. There is no delay, no matter what i throw at it.

just thought i would share, and i wouldnt recommend Ppro unless you have a suped up comp. also lets not forget being able to interchange any adobe software imaginable with it. that is a BIG bonus for Ppro (photoshop and AE come to mind)

[Kent Fraser]

I wouldn't get excited about editing with PPro without the RTX/100. Like Jonathan said, you would need a super computer. Hey, new software in the realm of digitial video editing is going to need all the help it can get. Enter Matrox.

[Charley Gallagher]

Well here's something I can not figure out about Pro. I have been working on a project each night for a couple weeks. I was amazed at the way the program responded. The jog shuttle is faster, the scrubbing is incredibly fast. I could go on. Problems I had with Premiere 6.5 were gone but as I continued with the project I started noticing that everything was slowing down.

That is when I started to monitor the memory and I watched it change radically though there seemed to be nothing to correlate with it. I never did think to check the amount of available resources but at time I have to start playing from the timeline a few times in order to get the video to play without jerkiness. I swear as I added sequences the overall speed dropped.

The problem I now have is that when I export to an .avi file the audio is distorted when the music track begins to play...not the pops and hisses that others have complained about but rather as if I had the gain turned up too high. I have read the recent posts on Adobe's User to User forums and am convinced Adobe will have to fix this problem. User posting lengthy workarounds will not cut it for me.

So I will, after I finish the current project in Pro, begin to delve more deeply into Vegas and see how it turns out.

and thanks for the advice on the Matrox card. I am a bit gunshy about using cards after SEVERAL bad experiences with Pinnacle and Pinnacle support. I am stuck with a DV500 card and don't have the money to trade up to Matrox. I just wonder about their support.

[Kent Fraser]

The user forums on the Matrox support are apparently assigned to different tech staff. I have found them both responsive, honest, and sensitive to users. No doubt, there are those who need their problems solved yesterday, and fuss about it. But generally, I'm impressed with the way they handle both the people and the problems... and in the community setting, other users are helping to troubleshoot or add important info to Matrox support along the way.

Not sure if you need to register to gain access (don't think so), but here is the link to the support forums in case you want to see for yourself. It's also a good "heads up" to see what common issues people are having so you can make informed decisions:

http://forum.matrox.com/cgi-bin/rtx100/ultimatebb.cgi

Kent

[Jonathan Stanley]

I did a little research and here is what i came up with. When working with 5.1 in Ppro, you are using adobe's software. Once you are ready to export, you have three options for encoding:PCM, Surcode, and something else (i forget). Surcode is a codec used to encode your audio information into dolby surround sound. and yes you only have 3 chances to do this.

however, up until this point, any work done in 5.1 is NOT dolby 5.1.
5.1 of course refers to the 5 channels of audio that are played on your system, and the .1 represents the subwoofer channel. therefore, although we all associate 5.1 with dolby, it is in fact not dolby, unless specifically stated as being dolby (it becomes dolby ONLY if you use one of their codecs).

[Rob Lohman]

That's what I meant. If you are talking about outputting (encoding)
to 5.1 usually you are talking about a Dolby Digital encoding
(which is something else then just plain Dolby Surround).

You are correct that the 5.1 just stands for the channels. It is
all very confusing since a lot of people don't fully explain what
they are talking about (not pointing the finger to anyone here).

Surcode is both available for Dolby Digital and dts. However, it
will be highly unlikely that it is doing dts with PPro.

[Jonathan Stanley]

Right, but you can also encode 5.1 to the other two formats as well (PCM and the one i cant remember). Dolby is just one of the choices.

Are we on the same page here?

[Rob Lohman]

PCM can be unlimited channels basicaly. you can also do multi
channel mpeg (unlimited to in theory). Then you have the two
mainstream formats: "Dolby Digital" and "dts". I'm don't think
there is any other format [I'm not talking application specific
here]

[Matthew de Jongh]

you mean sub-titles as in for foreign language, or for hearing impaired?

i always wondered how to do this and i just read how in the manual for adobe encore, that is adobe's dvd mastering software.

i don't know if you have this, but it has directions on how to do it in a text file where the text is linked to the timecode, seemed a little time consuming but fairly straightforward.

that last reply was just how to do plain old titles, not subtitles.

matthew