Cineform .mov chokes my Premiere CS5, .avi version OK

[Ed Kishel]

Figured before I bother support I would try and see if this is a known issue and/or a fix.....

I am trying out Studio Premium to turn AVCHD .mts files (from my AF100) into cineform .mov files to edit it Premiere CS5. My ideal workflow is to:

1) first convert, then use firstlight to make any general corrections (like white balance)
2) import .mov files w/ new meta data corrections into Premiere, edit as usual
3) export XML for use in Resolve Lite for grading (Resolve will only see Cineform .mov, not .avi)
4) grade- then send back to premiere via XML for final render

...problem is that although Premiere can edit the .avi wrapped Cinform like butter, the .mov wrapped file chokes it something awful. Vegas 10 on the other hand edits both versions equally well, but Premiere? Yikes. I can't even play them in the trim window in realtime without it dropping to like 4 fps- and then it hangs completely. I am editing in the Cineform 1920x1080 24p seq preset in Premiere.

And I have the most up-to-date versions of Premiere (v5.0.3) GoPro CineformStudio Premium (v1.1.2.100) Quicktime (7.7) and Nvidia drivers (295.73). I'm on Windows 7 64bit AMD 6core 16GB Ram.

[David Newman]

Running CS5 Premiere 5.0.3 with 1920x1080 p25 sources, AVI or MOV I get exactly the same awesome, smooth performance. So it is not a wide spread bug, please email support@cineform.com to arrange a remote session. I expect something is missing and Premiere is using QuickTime to decode the image (that is death to media, quality and performance) rather than other 64-bit native CineForm MOV components under CS5.

The importer need should be :
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS5\MediaCore\CineForm\CFHD_MOV_Importer.prm

[Ed Kishel]

I think I might have fixed it...

I dug up an old thread in the Adobe forum dealing with cineform .mov importing issues w/ Premiere:
Adobe Forums: PremPro CS5/ Quicktime (ANIM) import trouble.

and so decided to delete the following file:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS5\MediaCore\CineForm\CFHD_MOV_Importer.prm

...then restarted Premiere. Now I can scrub around the .mov files just as easily as the .avi version- and can play them on the timeline in realtime. Is it safe to have deleted that .prm file?

I will double check this w/ support and if they are good with it, I am good with it :)

[David Newman]

It is not safe useless your PC Is fast enough to support full resolution playback. Without that .prm your system is forced to use the QuickTime importer which doesn't support native scaling (no 1/2 or 1/4 res playback.)

Second issue is our .prm files support deep pixels, 16-bit and 32-bit float for the highest quality renders. I'm not sure if the Adobe Quicktime component does that as very few QuickTime codec support more than 8-bit.

[Ed Kishel]

ok, I put the .prm file back (I never deleted it- just temporarily moved it). Now we are back to 2fps playback on the .mov file. Weird thing- I was still able to choose 1/2 and 1/4 resolution quality playback within Premiere.

will wait for support then....

[Ed Kishel]

fixed, thanks Cineform!! I had a bad quicktime component I guess.

BTW- I notice that all my cineform files now show the waveform on them, even the ones I made months ago before installing Studio Premium. I only turned that function on for one file a couple weeks ago. I thought anything you did to a video via firstlight stayed with just that file.

[Dmitry Kitsov]

Tools overlay is a global. Right click on CF daemon in a task-bar and un-check "tools"