Interesting editing issue with odd mpeg-2 format in Premiere

[midimidi]

Our company recently purchased an expensive rig for broadcasting MPEG-2 (Synergy's Tilt-Rac). Its a long story, but the setup uses an unknown-to-me board for capturing, and after some un-technical discussions with the sales rep back in November (not too knowledgeable), they had mentioned that it uses a "non-standard format of mpeg-2." They shipped it with M2-Edit Pro for editing.

We now have a nice PC with a Canopus DV Storm2 and Premiere Pro. It works great with AVI's I capture. When I load the mpeg-2's from the tilt-rac however, there's very odd problems, mainly the frame-rate is off (too fast) in the timeline. Exporting the video, either via DV-AVI, Adobe's MPEG-2 plugin, or Caonpus' MPEG-2 plugin, the video is too fast. Oddly, the "length" of the video is the same, but filled with black at the end.

Any clue what this might be? The original videos playback fine in Windows Media Player. Is there any way I can edit this video in Premiere without having to recapture?

[Zetti]

AFAI realized, you're trying to edit MPEG2 files in PP, right ?

It doesn't it natively, it only edits DV files, although it can export the edited file in MPEG2 format (final encoding) using any of what you mentioned;

To edit MPEG2 files in PP, you have to buy the $ 250 Main Concept MPEG PRO plug-in

www.mainconcept.com

If you have M2-edit pro, wouldn't it be better to use it ? Isn't it a pro toll far better than any amateur thing ?

Zetti

[qlizard]

Not sure if it will solve your problem, but if you want to edit mpeg in Premiere pro, you should look at the new mainconcept Mpeg-pro plugin. They have a download trial version.

[midimidi]

AFAI realized, you're trying to edit MPEG2 files in PP, right ?
It doesn't it natively, it only edits DV files, although it can export the edited file in MPEG2 format (final encoding) using any of what you mentioned;

Excellent - will try out Mainconcept's.

The problem with M2 Edit Pro, is it is a very basic editor. I just looked at its outputs, and it only outputs MPEG1/2, WM, and RM.

I just want to be sure that I can load the videos captured into Premiere and edit them beyond simple cuts, fades, etc. which is about all M2 Edit will do. I think its considered high-end only in that it is probably one of the only good tools that can do frame-accurate native editing of mpeg files.

[qlizard]

Just remember that with any mpeg editing you do, unless you are just cutting out, you will lose some quality at the point of the editing. With the mainconcept plug-in or any other mpeg editor, it will re-encode at the point of editing, even if it "smart renders". This may not be a big deal if you are just doing a couple of transitions, but if you are filtering, etc., large chunks of the content, you will suffer quality loss where you apply it.

[midimidi]

Just remember that with any mpeg editing you do...

Understood - thanks everyone! The plugin worked like a charm. A bit of a pain tho - since we're using a Canopus board, I have to basically load Premiere with the MC profile, convert the file to AVI-DV, then reload it in Premiere with the Canopus profile. Works, but can be time consuming. Fortunately, its a smoking PC.

Although I'm sure there will be some quality loss, it should at least give us the best access we need to this material.


Just out of curiosity - is there a better, perhaps Batch-like separate piece of software out there? Or perhaps one that has better decoding (or is this transcoding?) than the MC plugin? Since I have to use the Canopus profile anyway, this has basically become:


"What's the *best quality* way to go from MPEG-2 -> a format editable by premiere"

[bbllc]

Our organization experienced problems importing Mpeg-2 files into Adobe Premiere Pro. The cheapest was to resolve this would be to use Virtualdub-MPEG2. Convert the files to *.avi and you will experience no problems. Just re-encode to Mpeg-2 when finished editing.

[midimidi]

OK - so virtualdub is one...anything else? Its clearly the cheapest solution, but is it the best in converting when it comes to quality?

[qlizard]

I don't think converting mpeg to avi and then re-encoding is a good idea. You will have further quality loss when it gets re-encoded. But maybe since its "non standard" you won't have a choice. I don't understand your situation with having to load the MC and canopus profiles in Premiere. Maybe someone with this kind of board can give you further direction.