Adobe CS3/CS4 + MainConcept = Great News
 

Dear Friends,

I am very happy to announce that MainConcept has released version 4.1 of their MPEG Pro HD 4 Plug-In for the Windows version of Adobe CS3 and CS4.

This version fully supports the files created by the nanoFlash and Flash XDR.

MainConcept and Convergent Design have been working together for some time to achieve this goal. (Of course, MainConcept did almost all of the work, we just supplied test files!)

Thus, MXF files created in the nanoFlash in version 1.0.112, or before, should be fully supported in CS3 and CS4, under Windows, when the MainConcept Plug-In, Version 4.1 or higher is installed.

The normal price of the the MainConcept Plug-In is $359.

For owners of the Flash XDR and nanoFlash, Convergent Design and MainConcept have worked out a special price break - $199 (US).

The details are on the flyer that I have attached.

Please note that one can download a demo version of this new software from:

MainConcept: MPEG Pro 4 HD Plug-In for Adobe Premiere Pro


Note: Our next firmware release will change our file format to the Sony Optical Disk file format. MainConcept has test files for our new format and will release an upgrade for their Plug-In as soon as possible. Thus, Adobe CS3/CS4 + MainConcept Plug-In users will want to stay on our 1.0.112 for a little while.

Any word of when this plug in will support CS3/4 MAC versions?
Checked their site and no mention of a MAC version coming.

Dear John,

I just sent an email to MainConcept.

It is almost the end of the day in Germany, and it is already too late for Japan, so it may be a while before I know the answer.

I took advantage of the MainConcept and Convergent Design discount offer to purchase the plug-in required to run PC-based PPro CS4 with the CD high bit-rate MXF files. I can report that the download, registration, and installation went without a hitch. The choice of which codec to use is a bit inscrutable as there is nothing labelled for Convergent Design, but the choice I finally made (XDCAM EX 35Mbps variable bit-rate) seems to work just fine.

My first test of the material shot today looks great. PPro seems not to have any problem with the files, but the computer does take a while to render.

Alan

Dan,

Do you have any file samples that I can test on the Axio? Should work fine (but more dangerous words were never spoken.)

David
AllinOneFilms.com

Dear David,

Yes, they are all here in this post:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/converge...atibility.html

I tried the 100mbps long GOP and the 160 Mbps iframe. Both work fine in Axio.

BTW out of curiosity which camera were the files shot with?

Dear David,

I am sorry, but at this time I do not have that information.

These may be files that we have on our website, and there may be more information there.

Please go to the nanoFlash Product Page, or maybe the Flash XDR Product Page. You may be able to recognize the files from the descriptions. Additional camera information is there.

HDV To HD-SDI Video Converters Professional Video Equipment HDMI To HD-SDI Television Studio Equipment

I've paid too much attention to this thread since I don't use Premeire but today I'm paying attention because I've spent the last two hours trying to get my files to work in Premeire and now I'm realizing my guy needs to spend $200 in order for this to work.

Either that or take degraded files that are recompressed. So frustrating.

Ok, I've officially wasted an entire day trying to export an XDR clip so that the Adobe Premiere guy can edit it. He doesn't want to buy a $200 plugin in order to edit a clip.

Does anyone know of settings that are known to work for exporting an XDR Quicktime to something that Adobe Premiere can read without needing to purchase a plugin?

This is ridiculously frustrating. I had no idea that editing these clips in Premiere was such a pain in the ass.

Dear Aaron,

Adobe's Premiere Pro, part of CS3 and CS4, does not support Sony's XDCam 4:2:2 codec.

Thus, if one creates high quality files, from the Sony PDW-700, the PDW-F800, the Flash XDR or nanoFlash in 50 Mbps or higher 4:2:2, then Adobe's Premiere Pro can not use the file.

Adobe has announced to us that their next Premiere Pro, in CS5 will support the 4:2:2 codec.

Obviously, this is a serious limitation in Premiere Pro. This is not a problem with just our files, but with files from Sony's XDCam 4:2:2 files also. This is frustating for both Sony and us.

We have been working with both Adobe and MainConcept to solve this problem.

One solution is to use MainConcepts Plug-In for Adobe CS3/CS4 which is normally $359, which MainConcept reduced to $199 for owners of the Flash XDR and nanoFlash. This works on Windows computers only.

Another solution is to shoot in 35 Mbps 4:2:0 in the Flash XDR or nanoFlash. This mode is supported by CS3/CS4. This is a lower quality solution, so this is not a very attractive or meaningful, but it is an option.



Note: This is not confirmed, but I heard that if one has a Mac with Final Cut Pro and Adobe CS3 or CS4, then the Sony 4:2:2 files are usable.

It would be great if anyone with this combination could report if this is true or not.

That's good info Dan. I've already shot this project though. I need to convert the 100Mbs footage I have into something he can edit.

Does anybody have any recommendations. I've already tried every codec that I thought should work.

Have you tried transcoding the clip to DVCProHD? It's probably your best bet.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

Dear Aaron,

We will be happy to assist in any way possible.

If you send us the footage, we can play it out from a Flash XDR or nanoFlash into another Flash XDR or nanoFlash, re-recording your footage in any format you desire.

But, editing in CS3/CS4 without the MainConcept Adobe Pro HD 4 Plug-In limits your high quality choices at this time.

Your footage can be edited in Sony Vegas (Long-GOP only) and Edius.

Shortly, we expect our File Converter to be able to take your existing footage and convert it to Sony Optical Disk format. This, then allows, your MXF footage to be used in Final Cut Pro with the free Sony FCP Plug-in.

There may be other options.

Aaron -

Play out from the XDR and capture in Premiere, assuming you have HDSDI ingest. Not fast, but will preserve the quality and move you on.

I think we both came to the same conclusion since this is what I'm trying. So I've decided since his editor can't work with high quality files, he can do the EDIT, not the final output of the finished project.

I can send him the DVCProHD files, they really are proxies at that point since he will export the premiere project to an EDL. I'll read in his EDL in FCP and reconnect back to the original XDR files. My thinking says this will work fine. Still a pain though.

Is the pain and extra work really worth saving the 200 bucks? The process you describe is fraught with all kinds of gotcha's and extra work. Unless the editors machine is a low powered wimpy thing that can't edit the mxf files, I'd spend the money and save myself the time & pain.

I just tried with CS4, but I have never used Premiere Pro, so I really don't know the housekeeping involved with editing using PPro on the Mac.

PPro can import and display the 100Mb/s nano .mov files just fine. I imported a single nano file, and watched it and then exported it. When PPro launched the CS4 encoder application, I couldn't find any way to export it without re-rendering.

I did set the PPro sequence to 1080i high quality, and I specified MPEG2 100Mb/s for the encoder setting. If anyone wants to give me a simple set of settings (for the sequence and for the encoder), I'll be happy to try.

Billy

Hi Billy. The editor uses Premiere CS4 on PC. The 100Mbs mov files from the XDR definitely do not work.

I'm not sure how you're doing this on the Mac, you must have a codec installed or something. There definitely is not a codec on the PC that CS4 AE or Premier can use.

I was answering Dan's question about Mac users who have FCP installed. I assume that the FCP installed codecs are being used by PPro on the Mac. I don't use PPro and I don't edit on PCs...

Billy

Dear Aaron,

I think Billy was confirming that when Premiere Pro, part of CS3/CS4, is installed on a Mac, and Final Cut Pro is also installed on the same Mac, then Premiere Pro can use the Final Cut Pro's XDCam 4:2:2 codecs. But, maybe I am reading too much into Billy's post.

(Sorry for the duplicate information, I was delayed in completing my post.)

That's it. Importing to PPro was effortless, and the clip played just fine without rendering in the timeline, but I didn't find a way to export the clip without re-encoding it (unlike FCP); that may be due to my total lack of knowledge of how to use Premier Pro...

Billy

Ok, I decided the best way for me to fix this was to install Premiere Pro and see what works and what doesn't. My testing didn't get very far because I took my color corrected ProRes file and dragged it into Premiere and it seems to work just fine.

This is certainly a better option than DVCProHD.

I did not think this would work after reading some forum postings about ProRes in Premiere issues. I'm not really sure what this means at this point though. Some of my files are over the FAT32 limit so that's another issue I'm dealing with.

Just in case you are still working on this, I will add a few comments.

First, you can pay $80-85 for Calibrated XD QT Decode. I have tried it with PPro and AE CS4 and it works just fine. It only works with QT files so mxf can't be used.

Second, I tried the Mainconcept plug-in and it does NOT work with QT wrapped Nano files (files downloaded from CD's site).

Third, your experience with ProRes working in Premiere is due to Final Cut's codec's and/or Apple's inherent QT playback. I think there is a free plug-in from Apple to play ProRes on a PC and/or that Calibrated XD decode software should work as well.

Dear Steve,

The MainConcept Adobe Plug-In is designed to work with MXF files, as far as I know.

Note: We have had many reports, from credible sources, that the ProRes decoder, for use on a PC is notoriously slow. Our reports show that playback, on a fast computer, is limited to approximately 6 frames per second.

Bad News
 

The CD mxf files (both old and new formats) are not being read in After Effects CS4 on my Axio system (unsupported format). I checked the MainConcept website to see if their 4.1 software works with Ae. Apparently not as they only mention Pr.

This is real bad news as one of the great advantages of editing with Pr is the dynamic linking with Ae.

Has anyone from CD been in contact with the Ae development team. I'm sure they'd be open to modifying their mxf support.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

Hi Steve. I did not have to get any plugins whatsoever in order to use ProRes.

I installed a fresh copy of Premiere on a windows system and loaded up the files and they worked great.

Edit got done and we moved on. It's posted on vimeo if you want to check it out. I did not do the edit. The guy shooting the 5D did the edit.


and yes I can tell which clips were shot on the 5D and which were shot by me. His are in focus!

David, the Calibrated XD decode software works with .MOV files in AE and Premiere. I totally forgot to test AE and Mainconcept as AE is the most important to me.

Steve, are you using CS4 on a Mac? Mov files are not very useful when one is editing MXFs in Pr in Windows.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

Davis, no, I am using a PC (tested Calibrated XD on Vista x64 and Mainconcept on 7 x64).

If you are editing MXFs, I assume you don't have control over which format is used when recording. Right or wrong?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought I read somewhere here that CD has a program for re-wrapping MXFs to MOVs and vice versa.

Steve, I have no wish to edit Quicktime files. MXFs are real time in Axio. Quicktime is far from it. Besides, without CD MXF suppport in After Effects the desireability of the codec for acquistion is considerably reduced.

Dear Steve,

We have a free "File Converter", which converts our Quicktime files (".MOV") to ".MXF". This is currently a Mac based program. Thus, one must have a Mac to run this program.

With our next firmware release, we will record MXF files in Sony Optical Disk format. As such, one can use the Sony FCP Plug-In to use MXF files in FCP, or to just view the MXF files in a Mac.

Dear David,

I checked with MainConcept.

They have confirmed that "We officially only support Adobe Premier Pro with our Plug-In."

I am still researching this.

Dear Dan,

As you probably know Pr is just one arm of the Adobe workflow. It's tightly integrated with After Effects, Encore, Soundbooth and Media Encoder so that clips and the timelines that they're in move seamlessly between all 5 apps. They also can be acquired via On Location. Media Encoder will handle your MXF clips. After Effects won't. The other apps I haven't tested and I don't know if On location would make any sense with the nanoFlash. I can check Encore later today. As for After Effects if you have no contact with the development team I can ask my contacts in the video group who to talk to over there if you'd like me to. It's probably too late for CS4 but not for CS5. For CS4 the only workaround would be to render and replace the MC MXFs with an Ae supported codec.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

sure it does. you could monitor the live signal coming out of the nanoFlash to make sure you're getting a good recording on flash.

But how would you imput the signal to the laptop? AFAIK CS4 OL only accepts firewire as an input. It's one of the limitations of OL. Of course this may change with CS5.

Oh well. I've never used it so I wasn't aware of that. I thought maybe with a SDI input on your computer you could monitor the signal with OnLocation.

I suppose if your camera had a FW out, monitoring the FW signal with OnLocation and recording the SDI with a nano would still beat no monitoring at all, wouldn't you agree?

I think it will make sense if you really need monitoring via a laptop or desktop computer. Many newer cameras are providing waveform and/or histogram display in the viewfinder/LCD. For most field work this is a more practical solution.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

Wow. I can't believe Mainconcept would screw up so badly by not supporting AE. I have a feeling that many people who buy their plug-in will be extremely ticked off.

Back to .MOV files - I can't believe these files don't playback in Premiere easily. Can anyone else confirm this as I was planning to use the Calibrated XD software and record .MOV in the Nanoflash at least until CS5 comes out. I remember testing the greenscreen .MOV clip from CD's site within AE CS4 and had no problem playing it back. And yes, AE was set to full res.