Formats that Premiere Doesn't Need To Conform?

[Matt DeJonge]

Here's my situation:

I use Premiere Pro 2.0. I want to give my audio engineer a relatively small file of the feature we're working on (1h26m) so he can do some work in Premiere Elements. I want him to have a decent quality file, so I've given him an H.264 MOV file (420MB) @ 360 x 240. The problem is, when he imports it into Elements, it has to conform the file and takes several hours to do so (P4 2.4GHz, 1 GB RAM).

So, my question is, which types of files will Premiere use and NOT have to conform? Is the conforming happening due the resolution being 50%, or is this because of it being a QT file and Premiere only likes to work with AVIs or something? This is a new workflow process for us, and will be needed heavily in the future. I figured you all may know and could save me the time of having to test this with tons of different files.

[Chris Harris]

I'm not really sure about this, so take it with a grain of salt, but I think if you don't use the DV preset as your PPro project, you can have it not conform. But that's just speculation on my part, I haven't tried it. Could be wrong, just throwing out an idea.

[Pete Bauer]

I've never used Elements. But at least within PPro, my understanding is that if the audio is not in the sample rate for the project (48kHz for DV and HDV) and 32-bit floating point, it will be conformed to that. I'm guessing that if Elements is conforming the audio as PPro does, it probably uses the same engine. That would lead me to believe if you export your "proxy" file for your audio engineer using 48kHz/32-bit -- or actually, whatever his Elements project file settings will be for the audio tracks -- it ought to import without conforming. Try a short sample doing that and let us know if it works.

[Matt DeJonge]

Well, after spending a couple hours tinkering with formats, I've realized that WMV is the best file for the job. Technically, Premiere Elements still has to conform the file, but it only take a couple of minutes for the entire 1h26m file. Thanks all for your input.

[Barry Gribble]

I would love to know more about this... anything else you learned.

Conforming audio files is one of the biggest pains in my behind ever. It takes forever, and it eats up disc space. And worse yet, I've had it conform have the vids in my project, crash, and then have to conform them all over again even though the conformed audio file is right where it should be.

Is it really about sampling rate? That would solve a lot if that were it.

[Matt DeJonge]

Hi Barry... Well, here're the specs for the file (1h26m long):
- 320 x 240
- Audio: 329kbps bitrate, 16-bit Stereo 44.1kHz
- Video: 250kbps bitrate, 24-bit sample size
- Cinepak encoding
- Size: 151 MB

As for the conversion:
- Output the file as an uncompressed DV AVI file
- Launch Windows Media Encoder 9
- Select the "Convert a file" Wizard
- Select the Source and Output files
- On the "Content Distribution" screen, I select "File downlaod (computer playback)"
- Change the Video quality to: "VHS quality video (250 Kbps VBR)"
- Change the Audio qulaity to: "CD quality audio (VBR)"
- Complete the Wizard.

That's it. The video's not that great, but good enough for what me and my audio engineer is doing. I think the file takes me about 20 minutes to convert, but it's even faster if I use the CBR settings for the Video and Audio quality, but it produces a file that's about 50MB bigger.

Hope this helps.

[Christopher Lefchik]

Matt,

Just wondering, is there any particular reason you first export a DV AVI file and then use Windows Media Encoder to convert it to WMV, even though Premiere Pro can output WMV directly from the Timeline through the Adobe Media Encoder?

[Matt DeJonge]

It's really more habit than anything else. I usually want a DV file because I can then bring it into Encoder, QuickTime, or any other application at full resolution. I find Premiere to be slower usually than the native encoders / compressors, so I hate having to output directly from Premiere (and the overhead on my system of Premiere Pro vs., for example, QuickTime is conciderable). Maybe that's just me being set in my ways. ;)

[Christopher Lefchik]

Part of the reason Premiere Pro is slower when encoding is that for any rendered segments of the Timeline it goes back to the original elements instead of using the preview files. This generates the highest quality possible encode.

[Barry Gribble]

I do the same thing. I output an AVI that I can use for many purposes, and then I create the WMV from that in Windows Media Encoder. Part of it for me is that the encoder is so much better for me in terms of options, control and status reporting.