Replacing footage in PPRO CS4

[sterankin]

I'm doing a bit of proxy editing again. I have a lot of MTS AVCHD files and I converted them all the mpeg2 to act as proxy files.

So in the same folder I have files: 001.MTS, 001.mpg, 002.MTS, 002.mpg etc etc. I must have at least 60+ clips but they are all short most less than 1 minute.

Now in PPRO I edit the mpg files and once completed I want to swap in the MTS files. To do this I open the pproj file in notpad and "Replace All" -> replace .mpg with .MTS.

I then open the project, which does open after about 5 mins. Problem is - I cannot export I keep getting an unknown error in AME. It seems to error when it reaches the first MTS clip.

So I am thinking maybe there is a better way to swap the footage without editing the project file? I know in premiere you can right-click on a file and choose "Replace footage" - but to do this for 60+ clips would take an age - is there some sort of batch way to do this? Is using "replace footage" different than editing the pproj file in notepad?

Also - is it a problem all the files are in the same folder? The reason I say this is beace PPro creates an XMP file in the same folder also. It creates the xmp file based on the file name of the clip. e.g. 001.xmp, 002.xmp etc etc

BUT

Will PPro beconfused - will it think the xmp file is for the mpg, but when I swap back in the MTS files, since the xmp filename will match the MTS filename - will this be a problem? (I'm not sure what information these xmp files have). So when I load the project with MTS files, will PPro look at the xmp files and they will contain information for the mpegs?

Does this make sense?

[sterankin]

Just had a thought that might make this easier - If I change all the AVCHD MTS files extension from .MTS to .mpg - will this be ok?

Then I could have two folders - one for proxies and one for HD. I could thne make the proxies "offline" and then link media to the HD mpg files (as I think this only works if the file names are exact - including extension?>)

Thoughts?

[poisondeathray]

Try it out .

When I did proxy edits in the past, my proxies were DV-AVI and the masters were v210 (AVI container also) , and they Premiere relinked them all from pointing at 1 file . This is the copy & paste method of proxy editing (i.e. edit in SD timeline, copy, paste into "master" timeline, close premiere, rename the proxy folder, restart & relink to the master folder) . It might need to be the same extension to do it automatically. If it does, you could re-wrap your .mpg into .m2ts with tsmuxer . .m2ts transport stream extension can be renamed to .mts , but mpeg program stream (.mpg) usually cannot. If you use the ffmpeg method, it can batch generate all your proxies or masters in a mts container. If you're already done your edits, you can batch rewrap with ffmpeg as well

[sterankin]

OK Will try this when I get home later.
I will change and .mts to be .mpg and see if it still plays and imports correctly into premiere.
I have a program called rename-it - so I could rename all the MTS files to mpg if that worked.

Failing that will see if TSMuxer can do 100 or so clips in one fell swoop and change them to m2ts. As long as it doent demux them as I've already done mye edits.

[poisondeathray]

Well the mpeg-ps (.mpg) is very different than mpeg-ts (transport stream, .mts, .m2ts, .ts) , I suspect just re-naming it might not work.

I think TSMuxer has a batch function through the CLI interface, but not sure how to use it , failing that you can use FFMPEG to batch re-wrap with a .bat file

[sterankin]

I loaded my wedding project which I was able to export ok (after similar difficulties - but I can't remember what fixed it as I did so many things!).

I imported this new troublesome project (which has 299 clips) into my recent working project and tried to export from there. I have tried many different ways to export - with and without XMP data etc but it simply fails with the unknown error message in AME.


It takes an absolute age to start the "encoding" - it says "loading myProject.pproj" for about 10 minutes before it even starts to try to encode at which point it fails. The last time I tried it (by importing into the previous project) I found the the preview window in AME was green.

So I restarted the computer and tried the same method and it started to "encode" in AME after loading rhe project for 15mins - and then did nothing. Just a black preview screen with nothing happening. No CPU or RAM being used.

I looked at my Premiere project and clicked on one of MTS files in the bin - and it plays GREEN in the small preview window in the top left! Any ideas why??

I'm notsure why this project isnt working when the last on did and it was also using proxy editing and swapping of MTS files. I remember I had the same error but I'm not sure what I did if anyhing to cure it...

[poisondeathray]

sorry , not sure why. I've never had or seen pure green screen or black preivew screen in premiere

I was thinking since you nested projects, that maybe you mixed up some paths (maybe move some of the older assets to another location or drive for example) , but premiere would just say the asset is missing, not pure green screen

does the green screen occur with all the assets? from old project and new ones ?

can you load the old project alone without problems ?

[sterankin]

Yeah the old project loaded fine. That was my wedding project. This is my honeymoon project.

I decided to open the new honeymoon project again - this time with the proxy mpg files in place and not the MTS. I created a new sequence - but this time used DV PAL Widescreen (to match the mpgs). I copied the original edited sequence files from the timeline and pasted into this new sequence to see if this would export in AME. Took 8 mns to load project in AME but it started encoding ok.

Unfortunately its not going to be great quality.

So whats the issue with the MTS files? Any clues here?

[sterankin]

New test.

I renamed the extensions of all the .MTS files to be .mpg. I then open the project in notepad and change the folder so basically the project points to a different older now - which has the AVCHD mpgs and not the proxy mpgs.

Took some time to load and now is "Conforming" each of the files. Which could take some time considering there is 300 of them (albeit smallish).

Will see what happens when I try to export this...

[sterankin]

Didnt work - same error compiling movie (unknown error)


So I tried just exporting the final 4 mins of this footage to see if it was a problem with the start - but AM tried to encode it then hung and crashed. The resulting encode (what little there was) was a combination of green frames and footage frames jerking backing and forth - I read that this could be a codec fail? Not sure what that means how how to resolve it - whats the codec for MTS?

Anyway I am nowing encoding all my MTS files in AME to MPEG 2 Bluray 1080i - to see if when I swap those out, they will encode.

[poisondeathray]

whats the codec for MTS?

.MTS is a transport stream, it can hold different types of video , e.g. AVC , VC-1, MPEG2 . You can use mediainfo to determine which kind

Wasn't this straight from the camera ? Was it the Sanyo 1080p60 AVC footage or the other PAL 1080i50 footage?

combination of green frames and footage frames jerking backing and forth

green frames usually mean decoder issue (but I've never seen that in premiere, only other programs), jerking back & forth usually means wrong field order issue (e.g. top field first vs. bottom field first)

[sterankin]

This was from the TM300 - so was 25 1080i. I dont know if the issue is with the footage or what but what I will do tomorrow (once it has finished encoding all the files) is to start a new project and import an MTS file and see if I can encode it alone from the timeline on its own. It it fails I'm not sure what this will tell me.

Just not sure what the issue is since I just completed a very similar project. Although I did have a similar issue what that, I'm not sure how I resolved it as I did so many different thngs (uninstalling codec packs, updating quicktime, creating Premiere shortcuts in dynamic link library, reinstalling premiere, unticking XMP data).

[sterankin]

Well its not any better - I used AME to encode all my footage to MPEG BLU RAY 1080I PAL - and tried to swap in the resulting .m2t files.

The footage shows up as RED on the preview window and timelime, like the colour red. A red X in the bottom right of the windo tells me "MPEG decode error around fram 17" - but this is for every clip (obviously the frame number changes for each clip).

Whats going on here?

[sterankin]

More tests.

Started a new project, imported a MTS file and placed it on timeline. Exported it to MPEG2 via AME - worked ok no problem.
Imported a .m2t file. Premiere doesnt like it (bad frames) and it was red on the timeline. Perhaps they were converted wrong by AME?

[poisondeathray]

No idea . It seems like AME didn't do the conversion properly . Does the m2t file play ok in other media players (e.g. mpchc) ?

[sterankin]

plays fine in WMP and VLC...

[Slyce]

I've been through the same MTS AVCHD pain as you are going through. My setup was Premiere Pro CS3 and Premiere Elements 7. PE handled the MTS files without throwing up errors, but video was so choppy made it very difficult to edit. I exported to AVI files and imported those into PPro to do the editing.

Given the volume of your files that might not be practical. Although I would probably do them in batches and combine a bunch of the MTS files into a single AVI export.

I couldn't find any decent transcoding tools to convert MTS to something CS3 could edit. MainConcept Reference was supposed to be able to transcode MTS files but I couldn't get it to detect the audio in my files.

BTW, CS5 with a GTX480 works a treat on MTS files (super smooth editing) but I guess you probably don't want to hear that.

[poisondeathray]

BTW, CS5 with a GTX480 works a treat on MTS files (super smooth editing) but I guess you probably don't want to hear that.

It's not just the editing itself, everything is faster. Even the render/export times are 2-3x faster on average with the exact same hardware and project. Mercury playback engine is phenomenal.

I couldn't find any decent transcoding tools to convert MTS to something CS3 could edit. MainConcept Reference was supposed to be able to transcode MTS files but I couldn't get it to detect the audio in my files.

Theres actually quite a few. ffmpeg is a great tool and you can use batch scripts. I posted instructions in another thread. You can use avisynth batch scripter with vdub batch mode. People in other forums have made utilties to simplify everything as well if you're not already familiar with these tools. (not that you have to anymore with CS5 )



But back to his original problem I have PP CS4 on one of my computers and do not have the same issues. I even did similar workflow with similar video samples in another related thread of his and cannot replicate any of the issues. I suspect there are system or configuration problems

[sterankin]

Yeah could be right there poisondeathray - I managed to get it exported successfully (woop!) and again I'm not sure what was the reason but here is what I did:

- reinstalled CS4 and updated everything including AME.
- installed ffdshow
- deleted a couple of bins from my project which I hadnt used yet, these bins prob contained 250+ unused MTS files. So the only remaining clips were the ones being used in the timeline.

Now - after reinstalling everything it still didnt work. I was still getting the green frames problem in PPro. So I'm not sure if the other things fixed it - could it be that there were just too many files in the project? Originally there were some 600 MTS files (all very short clips of a less than a minute). I think this is why it was slow to open the project as it seemed to load each file individually - about a second for each file, so with 600 files it took 10 mins to load.

Anyway I'm going to split my project out over 3 projects and then maybe mux the output together into a single file. Will see how it goes..