Is anyone able to edit NX5U footage in either Premiere CS4 or Edius?

[Marshall Levy]

While the video plays fine in Premiere CS4 and Edius 5 just fine, the audio is completely screwed up and essentially non-existent. Apparently it has something to do with LPCM support, but no one, on any forum, seems to have any success with this.

Within Sony's Content Mgmt. software, the audio/video is great. That's as far as it goes.

In addition, the workflow documents don't discuss any of this.

Does anyone have any success with this?

Thanks!

[Mark Von Lanken]

Hi Marshall,

I used Edius Neo 2.5 for the testing I did with the NX5U. I was so focused on the visuals that I did not experiment with the audio. In the second online clip I posted you can hear me doing on camera commentary and that audio sounded fine. You can hear it on this clip.

Sony NX5U Back Focus Issue on Vimeo

While the NX5U was sent back to the Sony Demo Pool, I still have the footage. I can go through the footage from the weekend, but tell me what I am looking for.

[Marshall Levy]

Hey, Mark. Remember the recall I started on the Z7U a few years back? There were quite a few issues, including a "side" focusing issue where the focusing, similar to a back focus, would be existent on a horizontal plane from left to right. Really bizarre and it had something to do with the circuitry between the lens and the camera, so they said.

As for this issue, the waveform of audio is just solid hiss. Someone mentioned (on VU) to change Dolby settings, but not sure what that was in reference to.

[Mark Von Lanken]

Hi Marshall,

Yes I remember that big issue with the Z7. Bad memories. That's why I am hoping the back focus problem with the NX5U is just a few isolated cases and not as wide spread as the Z7 problems.

I used the LPCM audio and not the Dolby audio. At the time, I do not have Edius 5 on any of my four systems. I have Edius 4.6 on a couple of towers and Edius Neo 2.5 on a couple of laptops, so I can't test the footage with Edius 5, but from the clip, you can hear that the audio was just fine in Neo 2.5 and the LPCM mode.

[Casey Krugman]

The Dolby you're referring to is the different streams of audio that is possible within the codec. It can use either Dolby Digital or Linear PCM. I haven't tested it within CS4 yet, but that might make the difference in the way that ther audio is processed for the program.

Hope this helps...

[Marshall Levy]

Theoretically, one would assume that the dolby encoding setting on the camera to that of Premiere, for instance, would work - but I haven't tried it as everything was filmed with the lpcm setting. Thus, I'm guessing that there's no inherent codec (audio-related) support as of yet, and what I therefore don't understand is what everyone else is doing to get this working properly.

I've since figured out a way to ingest the footage to my computer, run it through ProCoder, import back to Premiere...works fine. However, not only is this one of the most illogical methods, it's averaging close to 480% larger file sizes and about 3x the amount of time than HDV or anything else. Something doesn't make sense.

[Ron Evans]

I import with the Sony management software, then place in the Edius 5 bin and the sound is fine in LPCM. Video will not play for long before my PC stops as it is not powerful enough certainly with Edius 5. Same files play fine in Vegas Pro 9. Looking forward to the booster software on Edius Pro xxx.

Ron Evans

[Todd Austin]

I can't seem to get the timecode to import in either Premiere cs4 or Vegas 9 from the NX5U is anyone else able to. All clips have a start time of 0. It's annoying. I use Sony CMU for import.

[Colin Browell]

The LPCM problems seems to be just an endianism issue, and it is very easy to fix at the code level. Adobe really should be able to fix this very easily.

Re Premeier and timecode - see the other timecode thread in this forum.

[Marshall Levy]

Originally Posted by Colin Browell

The LPCM problems seems to be just an endianism issue, and it is very easy to fix at the code level. Adobe really should be able to fix this very easily.

Re Premeier and timecode - see the other timecode thread in this forum.

I think the discrepency by many stem from the instructions Sony provides for the steps required to work with the footage in all of the software platforms. While the instructions are fine, they forego the fact that the footage isn't supported properly in many of them, and the constant reference back to them doesn't go anywhere. So, yes, hopefully Adobe (and others) will update their programs accordingly in the near future.

[Alex Gimenez]

I am very curious to see the outcome of this discussion. I actually called Adobe about it, and their tech support guy mentioned that the NX5U format is fully supported by Adobe. So I wonder if Marshall Levy ever managed to get the audio out.

[Marshall Levy]

Alex >>> I have a very powerful system and can stroll through 4 streams in realtime. However, lpcm audio isn't supported so this is my illogical setup for the time being...

>copy/transfer files to computer
>transcode to uncompressed in edius.
>either import and edit in edius or premiere

There's a 479% file increase to all of this mess which is proving to be a bit crazy.

As I'm in the middle of filming a sitcom with ABC, and doing two episodes per week. These cameras are proving to work just fine, but the editing of the files is horrendous due to the lack of software support at the moment.

[Ron Evans]

LPCM is supported on my Vegas Pro 9 ( 32 or 64 bit versions) and Edius 5.12. Edius 5.12 also reports the time code correctly whereas Vegas starts all clips at 0. Conversion to Canopus HQ Fine( which also supports LPCM) is about half realtime on my Q9450 quad core with 8G RAM running Vista 64 and after NAB Edius will upgrade to 5.5 with realtime Booster support as in Neo.

Ron Evans

[Alex Gimenez]

Thanks guys for the quick update.

Now, Marshall, you say you must go through this whole transcoding pain because LPCM is not supported... What if you used Dolby audio instead? Would that work?

[Jeff Glass]

Premere CS4 does not support LPCM audio. I am told CS5 should. I went into the setup menu of the NX5 and changed the audio to dolby and it works with no problems.