CineForm and Adobe Premiere Pro -- various questions
 

I just got a report from a friend that Adobe representatives at IBC claims the new HDV plugin that will be released within a month is made by CineForm.

If it's true it's great news because I quite frankly think the collaboration with MainConcept is no good. MainConcepts Mpeg2 products are all substandard (and CineForm is top notch).

Premiere and the m2t file ...
 

Hello :)

I am using Premiere Pro with that update including a simple Version of cineform codec. Everything works fine and I am really happy with that solution.

The only thing I wonder:

Everytime I export back to tape Premiere want to save the "m2t" file, which I guess is the "real" MPEG that goes through firewire. But what is it saved for ?
Nice to have it, but I even cannot import or view it.

What is the deeper meaning behind that saving to disk ?

Thanks !

Peter

It comes in handy if you purchase either Connect HD or Aspect HD, because you can simply save these "tape images" on your disk for later exporting to tape. The HDLink tool that comes with Connect HD or Aspect HD allow you to export one or more of these M2T files to external HDV devices. Aspect HD has a mode for creating M2T files without requiring the camera or deck be connected.

there are many ways to look at these files.
use VLC (free player), or install mainconcept HD codec (sorry cineform), play them to your D-VHS recorder are ones of the few.

Premiere, Vegas 6 and PC requirements
 

The new Vegas 6 suposedly faster after you convert files to Cineform, which is included with product. Is it then as fast as Premiere?

When playing Cineform, viewed resolution decreeses. How much it get reduced?

If resolution decreeses, how you examine footage, especially if you go for film out? I need to examine footage at 1920x1080 to discard unsharp images first. Only then can I edit.

I don't really want buy Premiere but Vegas because I get excellent student discount.

How much faster computer need for Vegas, compared to Premiere? Is it like 3 GHz versus 2 GHz?

Are there as good student discounts for Premiere? Vegas 5 was just over
200 USD for students and Vegas 6 may be same.

How about examining footage on large monitor and footage would play at slow motion at full resolution, so computer could handle it? Then after mark unsharp sequences, you could basically edit offline. Would laptop be OK for this, laptop with 2 GHz processor, 512 MB ram, 60 GB 7,200 RPM hard drive and external hard drive? How much GB would that hard drive need? You can take laptop everywhere. You hook large monitor only to check sharpness and maybe color?

Does make sense?

Radek

Both Premiere and Vegas allow you to see the full resolution, you just need to open your window big enough (in Vegas you set the preview scale.) Vegas 6.0 actually requires less CPU to start working with HDV using CineForm than Premiere, yet under Premiere we can accelerate the editing more. There are completely different technologies at play. For Aspect HD and Premiere Pro 3+Ghz recommended, for Vegas 6.0 using CineForm a 2+Ghz PC will get you going. If you are looking for the lowest cost, go with Vegas, if you are look of the highest editing performance going with Aspect HD and Premiere Pro, both application are very good NLEs.

another simple way to be able to pay it in your computer is to change the extension from m2t to mpg. That way your media player (Real or Windows) will rcognize it as a mpeg file and will play it in its native form (1280 X 720)! Sure, you need to have the Cineform codec installed in your computer, but you will be playing it in HD!!!

Luis

No need to change the extension.

David,

Thank you. Think that I'll get laptop. I'll hook monitor to as needed.

The biggest hard drive I can get is 60 GB at 7,200 rpm. Let's asume I get laptop with 60 GB, 4,200 rpm. Should I replace with 7,200 rpm drive or should I instead add external drive. Let's asume laptop has USB and Firewire ports, one each, what kind external drive should I get?

Radek

Get an internal 7200rpm drive (it will come in handy) and have an external USB2 drive for larger projects.

Premiere Pro 1.5.1 Muxing v.v.v.v.slow
 

Guys

I left my Premiere Pro cineform project exporting to over the weekend and it seemed to have stalled when I came back in today. I rebooted the PCandset it going again and I think it is stalling at thesame place. It transcodes the timeline fine, but then when it muxes it says 10:21:14 remaing and nothing else seems to happen,itsnotcrashed as I cancancel out of it, but this is how it was when I came in this morning and how it is now, which means over the weekend it hung likethis for 48 hrs. Any ideas?

Cheers

Ben

Are you using the export movie option and selecting "CineForm M2T"? This is the preferred mode. Or are you using direct "Export to Tape"? I need to know to make any suggestions. Do try a CineForm M2T export and set the work bar so that only a few minutes is export to confirm (quickly) that is working fine on your PC.

PPro Program Manager resizes clips
 

David, any thoughts? My post on the adobe forum and a response.

Man, its one issue after another. So, I finally got my video done. This project is a 720x480, 16:9, 1.2 pixel size project. In this video were two type of clips. One set were standard DV clips. The second type were files that started as HDV clips, and then were exported out to 720x480, 16:9, 1.2 pixel size. All of these clips in this project have these features when I look at them with properties.

But, after I have used Project manager on the project, all the clips that started as HDV, are now messed up. They have been changed to .9 pixel size, so they are no longer 16:9, but 4:3. The other DV clips were left as 1.2 pixel size.

So, any ideas? There are no options in PM. So, is this a bug in PPro?

Dave


Pierre Hervieux - 12:21pm Dec 23, 05 PST (#1 of 1)


Premiere uses the pixel aspect ratio in the clip file to interpret the clip. During your conversion process the required data may have been omitted. Premiere then uses the default 0.9 for any 720x480 clip as contained in the file Interpretation Rules.txt in the Plug-ins/en_US folder You can use the Interpret Footage command to conform to 1.2 pixel aspect ratio. You can select all the clips in one go and change them all at the same time.

Sounds like Adobe bug. We do very little work in SD, so using the PM feature in SD is completely outsize of our test environment. We know the PM control works in HD.

Ok.
I may try PM on my HD project, just to see.

dave

Preview on a TV - A few questions about recommended options...
 

A couple of display questions...

1. How does the software cope with having two monitors of different sizes?

ie: I will most likely be using a Samsung 930BF 19" monitor for the primary, Dell 24" for the secondary montior and am still undecided as to whether/how to have the component display output. Does the software cope with having to stretch across an unusual span of a 4x3 & a 16x10 dual screen setup?

Also, as is discussed in another thread somewhere, 1280x1024 is 5x4 rather than 4x3 and results in a distorted preview window. Will this same effect occur with the different sized dual screens even though the preview window will be on the Dell 19" monitor in 1920x1200 (because this is actually 16x10 instead of 16x9)...

2. I will be using the ASUS A8N SLI motherboard with two PCI-Express slots and am definately going to be buying an MSI 7800GTX. Now if I have the GTX in one slot to drive the 2 monitors with DVI out, will I be able to place either the Parhelia or the Quadro FX540 in the other PCI-E slot to drive the component out? Or will having two different video cards cause problems within the computer?

3. Are there advantages that warrant the higher price of the Parhelia over the Quadro card?

4. Does the Quadro card display the image the same way as the Parhelia - ie: does it show only the preview window or does it work more like a simple video out cable?

5. Can the Parhelia or the Quadro be configured to output to a TV that is NOT HD ready? I have a nice TV with Component inputs but it is not HD-Ready and I don't have a set top box. Can the video cards scale the image down that much?


Thank you ever so much for your help - without it I'd be lost, broke, a camera in one hand and half a computer in the other.
-- John.

I hope someone answeres your question - cause I have pretty much the same set up and ideas:)

I believe I read that with a dual SLI board you CAN configure it this way, but then again, I can't seem to find it now so maybe I was just dreaming. Sorry I'm of no help.

I hope someone does too.

I read on the Matrox forums that you can configure an APVe & an Nvidia on the one board (This guy was using an ASUS A8N, the APVe & a 6800GT I think). But he didn't specify whether the board was the 32 (ie: with 2 full 16x PCIe ports or one of the other ones.

I haven't been able to find the post since so haven't been able to clarify.

Do u guys have any idea on a dual head graphics cards for this purpose? I am trying to drive 2 monitors to preview HDV as well but my setup only support AGP.

Adobe not including HDV editing in tryout Premiere pro 2.0
 

I downloaded today the tryout version of Premiere 2.0 wanting to see how it worked natively with HDV but.... OH! Surprise, the tryout version does not include the settings to edit HDV !!!

hmmmmm.... It makes you wonder why they decided to leave that out.

Don't they want people to test editing HDV in native format before buying ?

hmmm....again.

My guess is that they have to pay a third party (Mainconcept?) for the license. So they leave it out of the free version.

"Don't they want people to test editing HDV in native format before buying ?"

Answer= NO, they are not that dumb, I saw that about the tryout and my first thought was, no one would buy it if they really wanted it for HDV editing, it is probably using mainconcept because theres is slooooooow too.

Mike

PPro 2.0 Freezes after Aspect 4.0 Install
 

I have a WinXPPro system with Premiere Pro 2.0.

I had the Cineform trial version of Aspect HD plug-in installed a few weeks ago. It expired, I did not uninstall. I just made the AspectHD purchase today. I installed, now Premiere freezes up constantly. It will open projects, but I can't capture.

I have tried uninstalling Cineform, and Premiere... then reinstalling, but to no avail.

Any help out there?

I don't want to go against any official direction from Cineform, but here is my two bits after having to reinstall my OS (WinXP Pro)

I installed Premiere Pro 2.0. I downloaded the trial version of Aspect, and installed.

The trial period expired. I then purchased Aspect.

Thinking that the proper procedure was to Uninstall the trial version first, this is what I did. I may have seen a post that suggested Uninstalling... but perhaps this is only if the trial period is still active?

Anyhooo....upon reinstallation of Aspect, things began to go awry. Premiere would freeze upon loading. I reinstalled Premiere countless times, to no avail. I had limited success in that if I logged on as another user on XP, I could get the Premiere/Aspect combo to function, but by that time, so many other installations on my system were corrupted, programs not functioning properly, etc... rather than fighting it, I took the hour to do a fresh OS installation.

I'm sure someone much brighter than myself could done some troubleshooting and solved the problem, but in the final analysis... the fresh OS has resolved everything.

The moral of the story... don't be a dumbass and install things based on what you "think" you remember.

Marty,

Sorry you had these problems. Normally the upgrade from the Trial version of AHD to the purchased version is seamless. It seems that there was a conflict gremlin running around in your system somewhere. At the end of the day we're glad you're up and running, frustrating as it might have been.

David.

Yeah.... I think the gremlin was mostly yours truly, however.... another little nugget of XP info that may save others who know just enough to be dangerous...

One of the errors I continually got when trying reinstall Premiere, was a registry error about access. I have subsequently learnt, that if you go into your registry and grant permissions to each KEY folder to your logon name.... then those sorts of errors will be avoided.

I am indeed up and running.... it's getting kinda boring with everything running so smoothly. I think I may go tweak some stuff to see if I can make it run even BETTER!

Output for Web
 

Hi,

I'm currently using PPro 1.5.1 and Aspect HD 4.0 and am having difficulty trying to export a wide screen video for the Internet using either Windows Media or Quicktime.

I'm wanting to go straight from the timeline (Cineform) to a smaller size and keep the 16:9 aspect ratio of my Z1U.

Is this a one-step process, or do I have to export twice?

Thanks,

Jim

I use a 480X270 image. A bit bigger than the usual 320X240 but I like to show off the HDV and I need a bit more room to do it.

I have no problem exporting to WM9 in one step using the Adobe Media Encoder.

I just set the frame size and use square pixels.

Out of sync
 

Hello.

I'm trying out Aspect HD with Premiere Pro and have discovered a very strange problem. When I drop a clip encoded to CFHD 720p/25p in a CFHD timeline I get three secs sync delay. It's not my audio setup or my graphic setup. It's there on the timeline visibly. Opening the clip in AE or even Vegas does not render the same issue. How can this be?

I'm using Premiere Pro 2.0 and the latest Aspect HD 4.02.

I've just tried it in PPRO 1.5.1. No problem.

Premiere Pro project trimming/recompression
 

There's probably an answer to this somewhere, but I've been unable to find it. I don't know if this is a Cineform-specific question or a Premiere-general one, so I'll ask it here for starters.

When trimming a project using Project Manager or whatever they're calling it now, are the resulting AVI files recompressed? Or are the frames just rewritten to smaller files containing a subsection of the original clip(s)?

Basically I guess what I'm asking is: do I spend a generation trimming a project?

Trimming the project is purely file based, so it is much faster than requiring a re-encode on everything.

Is Premiere 1.5.1 still required?
 

Does Aspect HD still require Premiere 1.5.1 be installed on the system to support full functionality of CFHD in PPro 2, or has this issue been resolved in the latest release of Aspect HD? If this is still an open issue, are there any target dates as to when this may be resolved?

Best,
Christopher

We are still waiting on the legal department on a partner company to upgrade our licensing, it is very frustrating. This is not a technical issue.

Thanks, understood.

Best,
Christopher

PPRO 1.5 better than 2.0 ?
 

Since PPro2 cannot export to tape without PPro 1.5 installed and since i got a lot more problems with PPro2 (mainly with sound, moving the cursor into the monitor window and the sound is lost, this not happening in 1.5) that i do not get in PPRO 1.5, is there any advantage to work in 2.0 rather than in 1.5 ?

I much prefer 2.0 as an edit app. But for Aspect HD, most features are the same between running in either, so it is personal choice.

2.0 is a great app, I have been premiere since 5.1!!!!!! I can say that the DVD burning part of Premiere 2.0 has bugs, they can't burn a 24fps dvd yet, but it's not Adobes fault it's MainConcepts!! they are working on it they told me today in an email, should have a fix soon.

Premiere 1.51 crashes on preview render
 

I'm using Premiere 1.51 with Aspect HD 3.4 for a 1hr project. It is impossible to render previews in the project without Premiere encountering a "serious problem" and shutting down about 95% through a simple render. If I export the same work area as a CF avi it works fine, so this has become my workaround on the project.

Footage was captured via Premiere and converted to CF on the fly. The project is a PAL Cineform HDV project via the preset.

I also experience a sporadic loss of audio playback randomly. Restarting Premiere overcomes the problem. Very strange as otherwise audio works perfectly.

System: AMD 3500+ 64X Processor, Nvidia GeForce MB, 2GB dual ramm, 80GB system drive, 2x200GB Raid 0 AV drives.

Any ideas?

I haven't heard of that one. File a ticket to see if the support guys know of it. Does Aspect HD 4.0 do it on your project (use the free trail)?