.mxf Files Mishandled in Premiere CS4 CS5

[Tim Kolb]

Sorry Mark, I should have quoted William on the 90s thing...I maybe should have reacted to the assessment that late 90s versions were "abominations."

Originally Posted by William Urschel

...given Premiere's past performance after new versions are brought out,a timely fix of current bugs might be a bit too much to hope for. I'm sure we have
all seen the many opinions expressed that in the Adobe family, Photoshop is the
stellar center, while Premiere is the poor stepchild - from what I've seen, I'd have
to agree, particularly with the abomination of some Premiere editions in the late
90's...

There is this one hangup...on this one file type...and suddenly this kind of thing. I'm not saying we should live with the issue, it needs to be fixed, I'm just saying that for the moment, I verified his issue and it wasn't like there was no recognition of the file or that it couldn't be altered. I believe Vegas handles nearly, if not all the video file formats that PPro does...it sounds like this might be William's best answer.

If William wants to be mad at Premiere Pro, please be mad at CS5 or CS4, or at least something real that can be fixed. Bringing up the versions released in the 90s and "the opinions we've all heard expressed" about "poor stepchildren" and all that is just silliness. CS3 had more native editing modes at the end of its life cycle than it did in the beginning...that's a recent and more pertinent version of "Premiere's past performance after new versions are brought out."

BTW, Premiere Pro CS5 does pretty well on a decent CPU without any GPU augmentation. Today I was editing on a year or two old Mac Dual Quad Core Xeon 2.26 GHz with no GPU help. It wasn't like I was limping by any means. The 'necessity' of a GPU has been overstated by many who either 1.) Haven't actually edited with CS5 yet or 2.) are trying to duplicate Adobe's shiny-object demos of 8 layers of P2 720p with effects...

(I won't further hijack the thread on proprietary hardware video editing systems, which I have nothing against, though I bought plenty of them and I don't remember them being less expensive overall than the "super duty" general application workstations we all run now...)

[William Urschel]

Well! Gentlemen, what can I say! Except I really appreciate all of your comments, and will respond to some of them here before I run out the door......

WARNING - this may not be short, and it certainly isn't organized or necessarily pertinent - so much for mea culpas. And if you get lost in my details, its certainly understandable.

To begin with, to clarify one issue (I hope for clarity rather than obsfucation), during the prior year I was running Premiere CS4 (well, the whole Production Premium CS4) on Vista Ultimate 64 bit, and was just as pleased as punch! EVERYTHING worked effectively and almost flawlessly in importing, editing, and exporting the files straight off the SxS files from the Sony EX1 - the ONLY exception was when I attempted to ingest MPEG2 HD codec files generated within Adobe Media Encoder into Adobe Encore, but there was a very simple and easy work around for that. I innocently hummed along and was just so happy to have the
beautiful, uninterrupted, flawless, effective workflow running on my BOXX 4850! BUT, I was still unhappy with the final product on the big screen (again, 109 inch front projection, 42 inch LCD flat panel, etc, as test venues) because of some artifacts and particularly unacceptable interline twitter on fine horizontal lines and sharp edges, when finally shown on my test screens and those of many of my customers. I invested a lot of time, money, and agony in using six different apps to generate more effective final codecs for BluRay, and finally went back to all the Adobe products. And yes, I tried ALL the tricks of the trade with EX1 Camera Profiles and gaussian blur and other devices in edit, and the loss of resolution of the output of the superb EX1 was just not acceptable.

Then along came nanoFlash! And I ran some test shots with it (again, 1080x1920 30p, mostly at 1/60 second, and sometimes 1/120 second, 100Mbps, Long GOP), and I ran these in Premiere Pro CS4, and
ALL the problems I had seen with the original production from the EX1 were absent, plus, as you all know,
much better definition, color fidelity, etc., etc. - and I will either use the nanoFlash on the EX1, or I am done.

Given the insoluable problem I experienced with audio in Premiere CS4 (YES, utilizing the appropriate MainConcept plug in for high data rate mxf files!), I waited with Norman Bates' breath for Premiere CS5 (well, Adobe Production Premium CS5 upgrade) and ordered it as soon as it was out, and decided for another clean install, so wiped the hard drive, installed WIN 7 Ultimate 64bit (64 bit is ALL I've ever used on the BOXX), installed Production Premium CS5, installed all other necessary programs, updated EVERYTHING, all drivers, etc., current, blah, blah...........

And Arrrrggggg, the same problem showed up just as before, as I have here described ad nauseum.
But unless I just quit the field, I am stuck to Windows, I am using ONLY WIN7 Ultimate 64 bit, and Adobe CS5, if I can make Adobe work. I am NOT ever going back to VISTA or CS4. I have not switched back and forth and back and forth, and will not do so. So there!

As an ancillary comment in the midst of all these ancillary comments (well, I warned you this wouldn't be organized!) I seem to be the ONLY one on the planet with the kind of issue I have! No one else here, or on other sites, such as Adobe's, COW, etc.. At this point, unless I can "fix" me with Premiere, or successfully switch to Vegas, I may shoot my $7,200 BOXX and retire to another field! But seriously, at this juncture, if I continue, I will probably end up being a humble student of Vegas Pro 9.

And before aspersions are cast upon the innocent, it was I who brought up the abominable state of Premiere in the late 90's. In 1997 I spent over two months with then insoluable problems with the latest iteration of Premiere, dealing with over 120 phone calls with Sony (who produced my computer) and Adobe - and mainly what they did was point the finger (or the gun, or whatever) at each other, and I do not hesitate to say as a fact that I was lied to outright so many times on both ends that my compatriots just wondered why I didn't quit. And that is not slander, that is the TRUTH. I finally saw the light and had true Salvation (!) by going on one of the then burgeoning Internet Boards, such as this, enumerating the issue, and WOW!, within two hours I was given a total solution to my issue. I stayed on that board for another year at least, and every time that someone posted the same problem which I had had, I sent along the solution that I was so intelligently and kindly given!

There I go again....back to the point.

TIM: In my faulty installation, apparently unlike yours, I am able to play the sound out from the source window and the bin, as well as the timeline. I just can't edit it.

STEVE: That is ONE machine you have! I will run the memtest86 which you suggested, this weekend and try your suggestion of running everything on just one hard drive. But I become pretty agitated when even considering "removing the battery....". Sorry about my evidently confusing "but in the timeline of both PP CS4 and CS5, the video and audio show up ONLY in the video timeline." To wit, I hope this provides some clarification - there is only ONE bar in the timeline, which contains both the video and audio, and it is in the track labled VID 1 in the timeline. In the AUD 1 or any other audio line below the video lines, there appears NOTHING. In that single bar which includes both the video and audio, I can edit the video portion just fine, lay out the graphical representation of the timeline frame by frame, etc., etc., BUT when it comes to audio I am totally defeated in doing ANYTHING, except right clicking on that video track in the timeline, and as stated before, taking it into Soundbooth and then bringing the editted audio back into the Premier video/audio bar - but then nor at any other time am I able to apply any audio effects, transitions, etc. To say it another way, there is a single bar in the video timeline in which both video and audio are found - in the lower audio portion of the timeline, there is no bar, there is nothing, and yes, I have CAREFULLY checked all of the audio set-ups in Preferences and Clip controls, and reviewed all empty audio tracks on the timeline (including the Master Audio track), and there is nothing.

Excuse me, I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (I'm qualified to say that, not only as one who studied EE at Purdue, but who is a licensed Clinical Psychologist, etc), and as most OCDs I am proud of it and unwilling to change! Sooooo thank you all for your responses and consideration, and until next time, I remain your faithful servent, J. William>

[William Urschel]

Problem solved! I just ordered Sony's upgrade, Vegas Pro 9!!!!!!! I understand, both from the Sony site as well as the folks at CD that there are some probable issues with 9, but I assume they'll be taken care of by the time I get to speed up on it. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR COMMENTS AND YOUR ASSISTANCE!

Tim - Excuse me, I was typing the post just before this, as you were entering your previous post, correctly identifying me as the culprit re being critical of Adobe in the late 90s, and I again used the word abomination, as well as supplying some supporting data - and you are quite right, my comment is unprofessional in this day of reticence, political correctness, avoidance of calling anything negative for what it is, etc., and even more importantly it may be long gone historical gloop. But it scared the hell out of me to consider paying Adobe up to another $200 for "consultation" about my current issue, and then spending not only the money, but the rest of my life with........... well, you get it. So, I will revert to my "nice" passive persona, here in the future, after one more totally off topic comment. There is out there a software/computer company which in the interests of my being nice now I will not identify - I paid them $250 for "consultation" about one of their software OS/computers with which audio was lagging video on the timeline. They promised, after taking my credit card number to call me back within 24 hours - I never heard from them again, but in the meantime, on one of their "secret" web sites, I found the complete solution to my problem. I got rid of that very expensive computer. By the way, for those of you who have not seen it, don't miss "Pirates of Silicone Valley" which exposes the unbelievable meanness, arrogance, etc. of an individual who runs a very successful idolized cult today - and I'm not referring to Bill Gates!

Again, finally, my accolades and exceptionally deserved praise to Convergent Designs, and such firms as BOXX Technologies, here in Austin, Texas for the superb, timely service which they unerringly provide. If it were not for the few firms such as CD and BOXX, and you fellows, I would have shut down years ago.

[Mark Job]

Originally Posted by Steve Kalle

I agree with Tim - these rants,...give me a break. I have both a tricked out Z800 (dual 6 core Xeons, FX 3800, 24GB ram) and a home-built i7 PC (running at stock speed) and have no problems with CS5 on either.

...Hey Steve: I'm not sure my criticism qualifies as a "rant" per se, but it certainly is negative feedback. Should all negative feedback be called a rant ? You have the ultimate PC running Premiere. (An HP z 800 running 6 cores did you write ?). To me this is an ultimate PC, and a fairly expensive one. What about smaller, boutique independent post houses who may want to run Premiere on a more modest machine ? I think they are now out of the question with Premiere, and soon to be out of the question running Avid Media Composer as well.

[Mark Job]

Originally Posted by William Urschel

Problem solved! I just ordered Sony's upgrade, Vegas Pro 9!!!!!!! I understand, both from the Sony site as well as the folks at CD that there are some probable issues with 9, but I assume they'll be taken care of by the time I get to speed up on it. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR COMMENTS AND YOUR ASSISTANCE!

...Hey Bill:
So problem solved with Adobe Premiere, you purchased another NLE ? (Vegas Pro 9 ?) So you dropped more cash again ?! OK. If you can afford it, then go for it, but I was hoping you could get one or both of your (Expensive Adobe Premiere Suite Packages) working for you. Don't get me wrong - I am happy you have a solution which now works for you :-) But I also feel a bit sad for you, because you have 3 or is it 4 NLE's now (??) to edit Nano Flash video. OK.

[Ron Aerts]

Originally Posted by William Urschel

I understand, both from the Sony site as well as the folks at CD that there are some probable issues with 9, but I assume they'll be taken care of by the time I get to speed up on it.

Oooops, I hope you don't have the green frames like a lot of us are having since Vegas 9.0c with the Nano MXF files.
As I do long recordings I still get green frames every start of a new mxf file. Or am I missing something. Also having sudden artafacts randomly in the recorded NF files.

I do hope this is not a problem with your files...

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Originally Posted by Ron Aerts

Oooops, I hope you don't have the green frames like a lot of us are having since Vegas 9.0c with the Nano MXF files.
As I do long recordings I still get green frames every start of a new mxf file. Or am I missing something. Also having sudden artafacts randomly in the recorded NF files.

I do hope this is not a problem with your files...

You're right, Ron - the green leading frames are still present with the NF Long-GoP files on Vegas (now 9.0e) timeline.

The random black frames in the I-Frame only clips have been fixed, though.

[David Cherniack]

And out in the field I have a 1400$ Asus notebook with 6GB of ram that runs Premiere CS5 beautifully with multiple layers and RT effects on its 360M GPU (unsupported but works flawlessly.) Adobe has taken a quantum leap with CS5 in stability and performance. In the latter I believe they've jumped past everybody else in the NLE landscape. And this is from someone who was a big critic of CS4.

Plus, I'd guess that the fix for the CD files will be out sooner than later.

David

[Billy Steinberg]

(1) I know this shouldn't make a difference.
(2) I know you just bought (an upgrade to) another piece of editing software.
(3) I only use Macs to edit, so what should I know about PCs anyway.

but the one thing I noticed in your messages was that you were using 64bit versions of the two OSes you tried. I know the advantages of running in 64bit, especially when editing (or using anything Adobe), but just for the sake of it, one day when you have nothing better to do, see if CS5 works for you with the 32bit Windows 7.

(just an un-requested thought).

Billy

[David Cherniack]

Billy,

In CS5 Premiere, After Effects, and Media Encoder are only 64 bits. All three benefit from being free of the limits of working within Microsoft's 32 bit memory space but especially Premiere which could have benefited from going the 64 bit route many versions ago (like in 1.0, in my opinion).

I'd also like to echo Tim's observation that the Mercury playback engine in Premiere CS5 is in real performance enhancer, not the CUDA RT effects, that are great to use, but the the smooth playback and scrubbing of all native codecs on fairly modest equipment is something quite special. Light years beyond CS3 and CS4.

Davi

[William Urschel]

I give up! I'm going to post another new thread asking about those of you who have the LATEST version of Vegas:

MARK: re your 11:32 AM post above, I will be lucky to have one NLE on which to edit nanoFlash files:

RON: Soon after and because I saw your comment about Vegas 9.0c, "sudden artifacts randomly in the recorded NF files", and assuming it was the latest iteration, I refused delivery of the overnight shipment of Vegas 9 and the latest Vegas workshop, so I don't have it. I had heard about a "few green frames at beginning", but your comment about the sudden artifacts did it for me! Then after doing another hour of Internet search I discovered version 9.0d, in which Sony "Implemented various compatability improvements to XDCAM MXF files", and then saw, posted above:

PIOTR's comment "the random black frames in I-Frame only clips have been fixed" in version 9.0e.

As I said, I give up!

[Mark Job]

Hi Bill:
Oh man ! I'm so sorry to learn of your recent misadventure ! This is turning into a Greek Tragedy ! Bill, CD has fixed the 2 frame off sync when files are played back in the Nano Flash, so what about setting up Premiere CS5 to capture realtime via some external hardware capture card ? What about the possibility of picking up a blackmagic declink or something simular, or a MOTU external box and simply capture in realtime via HD-SDI or HDMI straight out of the Nano into Premiere using a codec which is Premiere friendly, and then editing this material in Premiere ? I'm trying to think of possible work arounds for you friend :-) This is just getting too sad.

[Steve Kalle]

Does Cineform's HDLink yet recognize nanoFlash files above 50Mb?

C-D guys: do you know if Cineform is trying to make HDLink and nano files compatible?

What about Edius? I thought that program worked great with Long GOP nano files.

[Bob Grant]

What kind of audio drivers are being used?
I cleared up quite a few problems in both Ppro and AE with audio by simply installing ASIO4ALL.

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Steve,

We tested our files with Edius some time ago, they all worked.

I do not know if we have tested them recently, after we changed our files slightly to match the Sony XDCAM Optical Disk format. This should not have made any difference to Edius.

Sorry, but I do not know if CineForm HDLink currently works or not.

Our MXF Files are the compatible with Sony XDCam Optical Disk Format files.