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  1. Member
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    Hi!

    From my experience, importing a MPEG-2 to Adobe Premiere for editing is a pain..

    Basically Premiere takes more time to response comparing to e.g. AVI-DV or MOV-DV.

    I know that MPEG-2 is designed for distribution, but I'm find hard to find on the internet the technical explication for that.

    I need to give technical feedback/reason to a client, so any help much appreciated.

    Thanks!
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  2. Rancid User ron spencer's Avatar
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    cause with mpeg and you do lots editing, etc. you need to compress whole stream. DV you can rerender only parts that changed.
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  3. I'm a MEGA Super Moderator Baldrick's Avatar
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    Some few mpeg2 editors can also rerender only parts that changed like mpeg video wizard and the MainConcept MPEG Pro HD for premiere pro.

    But I don't know what technical explication you are searching for.
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  4. Member
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    MPEG compression is a heavy-handed event that "hurts" a video stream pretty badly. In effect, you are removing detail and other video attributes to yield the compressed result. It's important to avoid this more than once in the process of creating a final output. You should do everything you can to avoid reencoding your video. You can cut and join and reauthor without reencoding your mpeg file. Your choice of tools should have this in mind.
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  5. The Old One SatStorm's Avatar
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    Tell him that Premiere is not designed to work with mpeg2. For mpeg2, other alternatives do linear editing better and faster. Mpeg2VCR for example, or videoredo.
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  6. Rancid User ron spencer's Avatar
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    videoredo is nice..but I only archive in DV
    'Do I look absolutely divine and regal, and yet at the same time very pretty and rather accessible?' - Queenie
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  7. Originally Posted by totalfreedom
    From my experience, importing a MPEG-2 to Adobe Premiere for editing is a pain..

    Basically Premiere takes more time to response comparing to e.g. AVI-DV or MOV-DV.

    I know that MPEG-2 is designed for distribution, but I'm find hard to find on the internet the technical explication for that.
    MPEG2 is based on Groups Of Frames (GOP) that consiste of a keyframe (an entire image compressed very much like a JPEG file) and then about 15 frames that only encode the differences between frames. To reconstruct a random frame requires that the program seek to the keyframe before the requested frame, decompress that frame, then add all the changes from all the intermediate frames. I suspect that Premiere simply wasn't written with this type of video in mind and its MPEG support is inelegantly patched into it's old design. MPEG4 files are even worse. They often contain as many as 300 frames in a GOP.

    In DV files every frame is self contained. You can reconstruct any frame simply by seaking to the start of that frame and decompressing it.
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  8. The Old One SatStorm's Avatar
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    DVD Video has GOP limitations, not mpeg2.
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  9. Member turk690's Avatar
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    Yes MPEG-2 can be edited in Premiere Pro 2.0, but for any reasonable editing experience (low latency, etc.) it has to be done with brute-force hardware: at least an E6850 Core2Duo on either a P35 or 38 mainboard, 4GB of memory, an 8800GT nVidia display card with 512MB, all the correct drivers for AHCI SATA, and XP Pro (NOT Vista), etc. I regularly capture DVB streams from my TwinHan 1034 CI sat card, which are automatically put in the folder of my choice as bonafide MPEG-2 program streams. At first, with the notion that Premiere is not ideally suited for editing MPEG in mind, I would use TMPGenc Express 3 to cut and dice them. But one day, I had Premiere open (to edit DV AVI clips it captured F5) and I put an MPEG-2 file (544x576 video, 128kp/s audio) in a sequence, but instead of the expected standing still to render galore, it behaved just like the DV AVI: I could scrub and cut and dice without missing a beat. I repeated it quite a few times & now can do more than cutting clips that I used to in TMPGenc. Whether the quality went up or down is another debate. Then I tried the same on a Pentium 4 HT system with 1GB of memory and Premiere did exhibit its reputed behaviour, re MPEG streams.
    For the nth time, with the possible exception of certain Intel processors, I don't have/ever owned anything whose name starts with "i".
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  10. Member
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    Thank you very much guys!

    Really helpful.
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  11. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Mainconcept sells plug-ins for Premiere to allow a native MPeg2 project as Baldrick mentioned. The plug-in for Premiere Pro CS3 sells for $449 but the version for Premiere Elements is only $66.
    http://www.mainconcept.com/site/prosumer-products-4/mpeg-pro-hd-3-7850/information-7862.html
    http://www.mainconcept.com/site/prosumer-products-4/mpeg-elements-6875/information-6887.html
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  12. The Old One SatStorm's Avatar
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    mpeg2vcr cost 35$...
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  13. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by SatStorm
    mpeg2vcr cost 35$...
    Yeah but you can't do the special effects or compositing of Vegas/Premiere. If you don't want that there is no reason to use Vegas/Premiere.

    This is a creator vs repurpose divide.
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  14. Member vhelp's Avatar
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    From my experience, importing a MPEG-2 to Adobe Premiere for editing is a pain..
    A -- who is the possesor of the source (mpeg-2) clips, you ? or the client ?

    B -- So, you are having prob with editing the mpeg-2 clips but a) the client can only give you mpeg-2,
    and b) your bouts with mpeg-2 in adobe were brought to your clients attention, but they are insist'nt
    but don't understand why you have prob's and prob don't care unless you can better explain to them
    in tech terms they can understand, hence the purpose of your visit here but, even if you can
    explain to them I'm afraid that they are only able to give you mpeg-2 sources.

    Sounds like a futile situation. Otherwise..

    C -- Do you think you can convense your client(s) to use another format, pref DV or other format you
    have in mind ?

    However, if you want to archive your clients video's, in a more managable format and pref'bly,
    lossless one, there will prob be some slight generation loss when you perform the converion to the
    other (new) chosen archival format, though after that, then you have what one would consider the
    new master copy of which you do your new layouts and things with.

    But, fwiw, lets assume this is the case, I would say to bare in mind the following notes..

    (Even if you convert this format to another and then arhive it, and then later, convert it to yet
    another format and there will be slight generation loss (mostly noticable brightness levels is the
    first signs of gen loss) this are (or can be) minor details of comprimises to accept)

    So, you have an MPEG-2 master source and want to convert it to your new master archival source,
    and then later, you might change it, bla bla bla..

    Now: --> MPEG-2[yuv.420] -> New_Master DV[yuv.411] (ie, your new master archval format)
    Later: --> DV[yuv.411] -> MPEG-2[yuv.420], or DV[yuv.411] -> AVC[yuv.420] or VC1[yuv.420]

    So, basically, to get from your original master's mpeg-2 source you will go from:

    YUV.420 to YUV.411 and then YUV.411 to (ie) YUV.420

    Baring in mind what jagabo mentioned earlier about how the mpeg-2 are processed
    (or decoded) to individual frames.

    Then, there is the other issue with the new archive master, in this case, the DV format which
    is YUV.411 ( that's 4:1:1 a color space sub-sampling scheme used in the NTSC dv format, PAL
    generally uses 4:2:0 for dv ) and most DV decoder algorithem entail a routine to upsample
    the DV's chroma, the NTSC 1:1 or PAL 2:0 sampling -to- 4:2:2 for optimal chroma manipulation
    or other purposes. So, there could be two to three sub-sampling processes taking place at
    their respective times.

    There are many kinds of PC builds and they also include various driver/decoder support in them.
    And these drivers and/or decoders all come in various versions or builds. Some versions have
    upgraded or better decoding (or sub-sampling) algorithms and so on. And when you attempt
    to run one of your projects in the above conversion procedures your results will be reflected
    upon based on the above and your mileage will certainly vary from source to source and/or
    project to project, and so on, though its all a game of hit or miss, trial n error, etc.

    So, as I indicated earlier, the first signs of generation loss is the video's brightness levels. This
    is the easiest thing to spot. The video will seem slightly brighter. This is partly due on account
    of the decoding of the mpeg-2 and re-sub-sampling back and forth to other video formats as
    noted above.

    -vhelp 4563
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