Ready to thow in the towel on Premiere... need Mac advice

[Daniel Alexander]

Geoff, I found Edius to run very smoothly even with effects on. The reason i wouldnt use it yet (and this is just what ive heard, i could be wrong) is because you need to buy special hardware to monitor HD footage from the timeline, there is a lack of third party plug ins and no 1920x1080 settings for full ex1 footage. Like i said i may be wrong, but thats what i've heard.

[James Huenergardt]

I'm going to jump in here as I'm looking to buy a MacBook Pro and wondering if I should get the glossy screen? I'm going 17" 2.6 with 200GB 7200RPM drive.

BTW, on the Premiere side of things (back to the thread topic), have you tried Cineform?

I use Prospect HD with Premiere Pro CS3 and my EX1 footage and it works great. I haven't edited anything more than a 3 minute short film, but it works well for me.

[Geoff Addis]

I can confirm that with Edius you will not be able to to get real-time HD Playback to an external monitor from the timeline on any laptop. To get real-time playback from Edius you will need the Edius NX hardware and this may only be fitted in a desktop machine, either a PC or a current MacPro running Window under Bootcamp. As far as I know, no other editing program will allow you to directly playback in realtime from the time-line on any laptop without external hardware. The AJA Io HD is a suitable interface for FCP/MBP systems, but it costs over £2000 and you still don't get the realtime performance and rendering speeds that you will with Edius.

Edius supports full 1920 x 1080p editing, but at the moment the Edius hardware outputs 1920 x 1080i from an 1920 x 1080p timeline.

When it is necessary to edit EX footage using my laptop I download the video files to the laptop, either onto its second internal HD or, usually, to an external HD, edit as necessary and then transfer to the MacPro for any special FX treatment at a later stage. Normally I don't indulge myself in that many FX and Edius has enough for my style of production. Running Edius on the MacPro is a joy and with the Edius NX cards installed I get excellent real-time HD from the timeline!

I'm trying to be unbiased in comparing the two systems and I use both Edius and FCP software. Both programs have their strengths and weaknesses, and certainly FCP has some features that are presently missing in Edius, but its software coding is much less efficient than that of Edius and I cannot see it surviving many more updates in its present incarnation.

Cheers

Geoff

[Ray Bell]

And after you tweak with Colorista.... then fine tune with LOOKS.... :-)

Cineform and CS3 rules... at least for PC, it isn't cheap but you pay for
quality and ease of use.... try it, but be warned, you'll like it.

[Jeremy Hughes]

I've moved over to the mac for my editing here in the past few months. Mainly bc thats all they use where I've been contracting. I've made the switch now from Premiere though. The workflow just in many cases forces you to be more careful in FCP which is a good thing. EX1 footage works fantastic in it as well, native or in Prores. I have Prospect/Premiere as well and run it off a 64bit Vista system that's pretty stacked due to all the 3D I do - lots of RAM but I still have a lot of lag - too much for editing. I love it as an intermediate and its great for pushing between the mac and PC but the lag when using JKL is too long for me and the skipping audio I get.

[David Hadden]

Originally Posted by Geoff Addis

As far as I know, no other editing program will allow you to directly playback in realtime from the time-line on any laptop without external hardware. The AJA Io HD is a suitable interface for FCP/MBP systems, but it costs over £2000 and you still don't get the realtime performance and rendering speeds that you will with Edius.

Geoff

I can do this in Vegas with my HDMI output as secondary monitor from my laptop with no problem, It's realtime, and unless I do a bunch of FX full frame rate playback isn't a problem either. That's not HDSDI, but HDMI is not a far cry from it and is certainly an acceptable means of viewing footage for work with Color Correction etc...

Just FYI.

Dave

[Alister Chapman]

How do you check for field order errors using HDMI and I assume LCD or Plasma displays?

I switched from PC to Mac last year and have never looked back. I have a rock solid, stable edit system (FCP) that I can use on my Macbook or MacPro. It works with just about any type of video I have come across. Has excellent low cost hardware support from AJA and BMD giving every flavour of I/O option. I can work native with all the major formats in realtime with multiple layers of effects. In addition I have stunning grading tools (color) plus easy to use graphics tools (motion, livetype). I don't have any issues trying to make this plugin work with that driver, just install and go.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Geoff Addis

Save yourself a lot of heart-ache, install Edius Pro (Broadcast version). This runs under Windows XP (via Bootcamp on a Mac) and is very much better in real-time and rendering performance than FCP; it is also a very stable program.

Got to agree with you -- Edius is a great NLE for either pc or mac hardware that won't require a steep learning curve. (Unlike Vegas which uses an audio editing gui.)

But, CineForm will let you get the best out of Premiere because it not only is a new codec is gives Premiere a whole new -- and much need -- rendering engine.

I think Cineform, also has a demo. It makes Premiere fly.

[Bill Heslip]

I must be hallucinating...will a week from tomorrow be soon enough?

http://digitalcontentproducer.com/de...th/nab_update/

Adobe fumbled big time (I blame it in part on the Mac port) in regards to codec issues. Sony struck back at Panasonic with the EX1. Let's hope Adobe learned something and gives PPro users something to smile about.

Bill

http://treehousemedia.net

[Randy Strome]

Originally Posted by Bill Heslip

I must be hallucinating...will a week from tomorrow be soon enough?
[/url]

Wow Bill,

Thanks for the link! That would be excellent. EX1 MXF in Premiere and After Effects.

Very nice

[Paul Newman]

mmmm, yum, just what AE needed - .mxf support for Sony Cameras - umm, mp4 drag and drop from EX1 clip browser files perhaps? I doubt it... but..


Paul

[Barry J. Weckesser]

Originally Posted by Paul Newman

mmmm, yum, just what AE needed - .mxf support for Sony Cameras - umm, mp4 drag and drop from EX1 clip browser files perhaps? I doubt it... but..


Paul

That is the way it works (mp4 drag and drop) in Edius Broadcast 4.6 - in fact clip browser opens up from within the program (has a preset for "open xdcam-ex clip browser from within the capture menu.)

[Geoff Addis]

Originally Posted by David Hadden

I can do this in Vegas with my HDMI output as secondary monitor from my laptop with no problem, It's realtime, and unless I do a bunch of FX full frame rate playback isn't a problem either. That's not HDSDI, but HDMI is not a far cry from it and is certainly an acceptable means of viewing footage for work with Color Correction etc...

Just FYI.

Dave

Dave,

I have a high regard for Vegas and in my opinion it is a much under-rated program; I often use it for editing the audio content after editing the video with Edius. However I'm not sure that what you are getting out of the HDMI connector is anything more than an overlay without the true video colour-space that one would get using dedicated hardware such as the MXO or Io HD in conjunction with FCP. If I'm wrong, then please tell me. I should add that I have had both Vegas and Edius on my laptop and also use FCP on my workstation, but even so, I still maintain that I get the best rendering and real time performance with Edius.


Geoff