Choosing right settings for editing HD .mov files in CS4 Premier-PC environ

[Downing32]

I just shot my first canon 7D Video. It shoots .mov files. Imported them into Adobe Premier to edit and they are just stuck.
Can't scrub through them because they won't even play in that scrub window. So I converted them in Adobe Media Encoder to MPEG2 files 1080P-30. Now they are half the size but still too much for my system. How do we know what the proper setting is to be able to work in HD. I love the footage but can't edit it. Working with 3GB RAM. PC- Windows XP.
Thanks

[poisondeathray]

If your listed system specs are correct, unfortunately, you will need a hardware upgrade. I think it doesn't even meet the minimum specs required to run CS4

one way around this might be to use offline editing or proxy editing (i.e. make a tiny resolution copy and use that to edit, then swap to full quality on final render)

many people use a cineform intermediate to do 7d edits , but you need at least a dual core or better

[Downing32]

Thank you, I knew this was coming eventually. I've been fine with Std Video. This is just stuck.
Are you willing to make a few suggestions about appropriate set-up.

I am very concerned about moving to Windows 7 and having a new set of issues with Adobe Premier.

Your thoughts are welcome and encouraged.
Thanks

[edDV]

The Canon 7D outputs AVCHD format. "Mov" is the Quicktime wrapper.

Premiere CS4 has a native AVCHD edit project mode. A Core2 quad core up (i7) is still going to have some lag on the timeline. Your system is hopeless. To speed things up the Cineform Neoscene digital intermediate codec is often used with AVCHD on CS4. With the digital intermediate you might get away with an upper range Core2 Duo. 4GB Ram is adequate. More won't affect speed.

[Downing32]

Do you all think if I switched machines to my Dell, it would be enough of an improvement, still below Adobe min suggested though:

IntelCore 2CPU 6400 2.13 GHz -2.13 GHz, ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro. 4GB Ram- Vista 32it OS. It's been in a closet cause I hate Vista....

[Downing32]

Follow Up.....If I buy the system with the following specs will I be flying? AND is there a real benefit to my desire for the 64BIT OS when running Adobe Premier CS4 and Lightroom? If not, Why?

Thank you! Here are the specs I am considering:
DELL OptiPlex 980, Intel Core i5 Dual Core Processor 670 with VT (3.46GHz, 4M),
8GB,Non-ECC,1333MHz DDR3,4x2GB,Dell OptiPlex 980, 1 GB NVIDIA GeForce GT330 Graphics w/ Single DP & Single DVI, 6x Blu-ray Disc (BD) Burner, 2 SATA 320 GB Hard Drive configured as RAID-ZERO. Windows 7 Professional, Media, 64-bit,

[poisondeathray]

No, not for native 7d footage. It should be sufficient if you use cineform

You need CS5 and a gtx285 / or / gtx480 graphics card . CS5 has much better optimized playback engine. You can play multiple streams, PIP, overlays, color correction and still get realtime playback. An i7 @4Ghz almost struggles with 1 stream without any effects in CS4 (it can do 1 stream, but will struggle as soon as you add transitions and effects). Some people have hacked a way to use lower end graphics cards with CS5, I'll leave you to finding those threads should you choose to go that route

And not to nit-pick, but the 7d doesn't shoot true AVCHD , it's related and uses h.264 as well, but it's beyond the bitrate specs of AVCHD 24Mb/s , and doesn't quite conform to the specs

[edDV]

Follow Up.....If I buy the system with the following specs will I be flying? AND is there a real benefit to my desire for the 64BIT OS when running Adobe Premier CS4 and Lightroom? If not, Why?

Thank you! Here are the specs I am considering:
DELL OptiPlex 980, Intel Core i5 Dual Core Processor 670 with VT (3.46GHz, 4M),
8GB,Non-ECC,1333MHz DDR3,4x2GB,Dell OptiPlex 980, 1 GB NVIDIA GeForce GT330 Graphics w/ Single DP & Single DVI, 6x Blu-ray Disc (BD) Burner, 2 SATA 320 GB Hard Drive configured as RAID-ZERO. Windows 7 Professional, Media, 64-bit,

It would not "fly" with native AVCHD project settings. It would run nice with Cineform codec.

64 bit offers no advantage other than >4GB RAM which is not needed. Not sure about Lightroom.

8GB RAM will help when running multiple applications simultaneously but it won't speed processing.

RAID-Zero is not needed for AVCHD. Any single capture capture drive will work. Separate OS and capture drives.

[Downing32]

I am grateful that you are both taking so much time to help me. I am very new to video editing and CS4 was a very recent purchase, so updating isn't likely very soon. I am guessing I should leave the old Dell in the closet for this. Do you think what I am looking at will do the job or do I have to get to that i7 4GHz to get close?

It disturbs me when I spend nearly $2,000 on software only to find out that IT is part of the editing problem, not just my hardware gear. You both keep referring to Cineform CODEC, would you be willing to explain that a bit more?

Adobe tech guy insisted that working from the same hard drive as my operating system and Premier for editing as opposed to pulling video from a separate hard drive would somehow speed things up. This confused me.

I have been told that I should convert those 7D .mov files to MPEG2 files in Adobe Encoder before editing them. Does this have any merit at all?

What do you mean by single capture drive. (Hard Drive?)

"And not to nit-pick, but the 7d doesn't shoot true AVCHD , it's related and uses h.264 as well, but it's beyond the bitrate specs of AVCHD 24Mb/s , and doesn't quite conform to the specs"
I can only ask you for the link that might let the dummy (me) read, to even know what you are talking about here.

Hope you remain patient with me, some of this is not to be found in any manual, I am appreciative!

[edDV]

I am grateful that you are both taking so much time to help me. I am very new to video editing and CS4 was a very recent purchase, so updating isn't likely very soon. I am guessing I should leave the old Dell in the closet for this. Do you think what I am looking at will do the job or do I have to get to that i7 4GHz to get close?

It disturbs me when I spend nearly $2,000 on software only to find out that IT is part of the editing problem, not just my hardware gear. You both keep referring to Cineform CODEC, would you be willing to explain that a bit more?

Several good questions. I'll try to answer them in order as the evening progresses. Cooking supper

The minimum acceptable CPU depends on your patience and the type of editing you intend to do. You wouldn't be buying CS4 to simply cut edit. H.264 is difficult to play 1x and even more difficult to search/scan/scrub to an edit point. Most previews will need a "workspace render" before they can be previewed. This all goes faster with more CPU power.

The Cineform codec converts the highly compressed h.264 into unique frames that can be decoded on the fly for faster timeline search and faster preview calculation. The inside frame (intraframe) wavelet compression also allows higher performance and better quality when filtering and/or resizing with less generation loss. Also, 24p telecine source can be inverse telecined during import conversion to Cineform.

With the Cineform codec you get faster performance on an i5/i7 or minimally adequate performance on a Core2Duo.

[Downing32]

I will wait for additional responses before following up. Keep it coming guys, I appreciate it.

[edDV]

Adobe tech guy insisted that working from the same hard drive as my operating system and Premier for editing as opposed to pulling video from a separate hard drive would somehow speed things up. This confused me.

This gets into the best way to set the "scratch disk" or tmp files and the best location for video files.

If you put everything on the C:\ drive with the OS, all the applications and OS functions are accessing the same drive. There is contention. It can be argued that an AVCHD project is so CPU bound that disk speed is secondary. But if you are scrubbing a timeline and the OS needs the disk for a background task with higher priority, your CS4 operation may pause while Windows accesses the drive. If you have all your video and scratch files on a separate drive, OS and CS4 processes can take place in separation. Bus mastering allows separated disk operations.

An alternate view may be that if everything is on a fast SSD RAM drive or RAID, the added speed may overcome process interrupt delays.

[poisondeathray]

It really is a software issue

For example, Edius can edit AVCHD and h.264 from 7D in real time even on a dual core, with a crappy gfx. card (it basically does what the mercury playback engine does for CS5) . A dual core at the same clock speed is many times faster on CS5 for editing than CS4, because of the way the software is optimized (and GPU assist with CUDA)

The "AVCHD" label distinction isn't that important for editing ; but you get red render bar when using a AVCHD preset in CS4 (CS5 has a sequence preset for 7D, and no red render bar). Where the label does become pertient is when you make AVCHD compliant discs (either on DVD media or blu-ray). The 40-45Mb/s data rate of 7D footage exceeds the max rate for AVCHD. With true AVCHD cameras, you can put that footage directly on optical media and it will play on most standalone players; you can't with 7D footage.

And that tech guy is wrong. You should separate drives, especially video content

[edDV]

I have been told that I should convert those 7D .mov files to MPEG2 files in Adobe Encoder before editing them. Does this have any merit at all?

That is using MPeg2 as a "poor man's" digital intermediate. MPeg2 (including HDV and XDCAM) is faster than h.264 but since they are still MPeg GOP based, they aren't as fast as Cineform.

[edDV]

I haven't used the 7D but the big brother 5D lists the video format as AVCHD. As poisondeathray points out, if the 7D deviates from the AVCHD spec, it may disable smart render in a CS4 AVCHD project setting (red bar) forcing everything to be rendered to RGB for preview. This is very time consuming.

CS5 may be more tolerant of other h.264 variations. I'm not sure.

OK I'm done for this round.

[edDV]

One thing that might not be clear, the reason highly compressed h.264 is used for acquisition on these cameras is to allow use of flash media. The main flash media constraints are the write bit rate and card capacity. To fit these cards, very high compression is necessary. When one wants to play the resulting files 1x, a fast hardware (or software assisted) decoder is necessary. To view these files at greater than 1x speed, a very fast CPU is needed. If h.264 is used as the project timeline, decode computation mostly falls to the CPU with some assist from the display card's GPU.

Pro camcorders sidestep this extreme GOP based compression by recording to less compressed tape or to more expensive parallel flash cards that accept higher bit rates. For example the AVC-Intra standard records separate frames with AVC intraframe only (no GOP) compression. These can be edited directly without need for conversion to a digital intermediate.

[Downing32]

Not sure where to start now. When I was editing avi files life was simple. My system seemed to work fine, was able to scrub through videos, occasionally had red line to render in timeline.Now I am so confused. I have been told to open my projects as AVCHD projects and when I do that and import .mov files, I can't even view them wihtout first rendering the files which takes hours. So I go out and convert them to MPEG2 files which are half the size but still will not run in a scrub viewer, so I still have to render to even begin to edit. In both cases they are showing a Yellow Line.

In encoder I can convert the .mov files from the Canon7D to h.264 or AVI / QT / h264Blue Ray/ MPEG2, etc. The list is long.....
When I open a project the options are endless: AVCHD-1080P 24? 25? 30? Anamporphic? or do I use HDV 1080P 24? 23.97? and so on...Or I can go to general tab and choose from 36 options editing modes or choose Desktop then select frame rates 10-60 fps, then pixel aspect ratio, then etc etc etc......

Where in the world does one go to get an understanding of all these choices,becuase the language used by everyone who has been at this for a long time is so very confusing, it is like a foreign language. Almost every word of the last 3 answers did not make any sense to me at all. I DO NOT WANT TO GIVE UP THOUGH! If you can stand some more perhaps tomorrow I will try again. I cannot give up I have thousands invested in this gear and need to be able to do my own film editing.

[edDV]

Not sure where to start now. When I was editing avi files life was simple. My system seemed to work fine, was able to scrub through videos, occasionally had red line to render in timeline.Now I am so confused. I have been told to open my projects as AVCHD projects and when I do that and import .mov files, I can't even view them wihtout first rendering the files which takes hours. So I go out and convert them to MPEG2 files which are half the size but still will not run in a scrub viewer, so I still have to render to even begin to edit. In both cases they are showing a Yellow Line.

I assume you were using DV-AVI (DV format). DV was an equal challenge back in 1998 with Pentium II processors. Yet it was possible to capture to a single EIDE drive rather than MJPEG to a SCSI RAID the years before. DV format records full 720x480 frames with 5x DCT compression in each frame. Cineform is a similar concept but at larger HD frame sizes. High definition H.264 is much more compressed so requires a large CPU or a hardware decoder to play 1x speed. So, you need a faster CPU and consider a digital intermediate codec.

In encoder I can convert the .mov files from the Canon7D to h.264 or AVI / QT / h264Blue Ray/ MPEG2, etc. The list is long.....
When I open a project the options are endless: AVCHD-1080P 24? 25? 30? Anamporphic? or do I use HDV 1080P 24? 23.97? and so on...Or I can go to general tab and choose from 36 options editing modes or choose Desktop then select frame rates 10-60 fps, then pixel aspect ratio, then etc etc etc......

Where in the world does one go to get an understanding of all these choices,becuase the language used by everyone who has been at this for a long time is so very confusing, it is like a foreign language. Almost every word of the last 3 answers did not make any sense to me at all. I DO NOT WANT TO GIVE UP THOUGH! If you can stand some more perhaps tomorrow I will try again. I cannot give up I have thousands invested in this gear and need to be able to do my own film editing.

The formats cover many uses and types of source. Your choices are limited to those appropriate for your camera. For example your source encoding for the 7D include.

640x480p @ 59.94 fps h.264/LPCM audio ... This one may work on your existing machine.
1280x720p @ 59.94 fps h.264/LPCM audio
1920x1080p @29.97 fps h.264/LPCM audio aka 30p
1920x1080p @23.976 fps h.264/LPCM audio aka 24p
http://www.dpreview.com/previews/canoneos7d/page2.asp

Start with 640x480 and get things working. Shoot some test video.

Modify the AVCHD project template for

640x480 square pixels
progressive
59.94 fps

When you get a new computer, you can test the larger formats.

[Downing32]

Thank you again. Doing some reading last night it looks like adobe is trying to address this issue with the new Mercury Playback Engine coupled with NVIDEA Quadro FX3800 +. Watched some video there that shows them editing in smooth real time, straight h.264 files. EXPENSIVE MOVE.

[poisondeathray]

In case it wasn't clear, Mercury Playback Engine is CS5 only

This is why I suggested the cards above, which are on Adobe's list of working cards, but are consumer versions that are a few hundred bucks cheaper than the quadro. Or you could use one of the hacks (others have even coaxed low end cards to work, reportedly even a gt240 - which is a $50-60 card)

This is clearly a software implementation issue with vegas, premiere cs4, most other NLEs. For example, Edius have had a working editor (that works with low end cards) that can edit multiple AVCHD streams for a few months before CS5 was launched. I suspect most newer generation editors will have similar capability, but Grass Valley was really the 1st out of the gates, CS5 and MPE 2nd. I'd be surpised if the next vegas release doesn't have similar capability

[Downing32]

Yes, I am not happy that after buying CS4 just months ago I have to upgrade to edit good video. Very frustrating.
Can you give me the link to see who the compatible cards are with Mercury again? Thank you for your help. I do not see any answer if I am going to work in Adobe on PC other that upgrade the system and do the CS5, mercury thing. I wonder what system requirements would be right with that mercury boost. Adobe tech continues to just read the specs off the box and web site which seems to slow...Dual Core 3 GHz, etc. Your suggested minimums will be appreciated. Thanks again.

[poisondeathray]

The "officially" supported cards are listed on their site (also gtx480, but for some reason , not the gtx470, apparently) , but as I have mentioned previously, other people have got low end cards to work with it. Just search google there are a dozen threads on this topic (it's not super-secret or anything )

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/performance/

I still recommend quad core minimum, preferably an i7, but note even a dual core would work if you have a supported card because most of the decoding is done through CUDA on the GFX card. Just a side note - a dual core with a compatible card is faster at editing tasks with CS5 , than an overclocked hex core i7-980x using CS4. Remember the other part of editing is exporting, and many of the export formats can make use of the multiple cores when encoding. It really is much faster with more cores.

[edDV]

And don't forget Cineform Neoscene as a way to avoid chasing H.264 processing requirements and optimally use your current CS4. It can save you an upgrade and reduce hardware requirements.

Chasing the latest Adobe features is always an experience in buggy frustration. You need to decide whether you want to spend your time beta testing or editing. I mostly ditched Adobe products for more stable Vegas so I could get some real editing work done. I still use Premiere Pro for deeply layered projects mostly because I'm used to it but for general editing, I prefer Vegas.

[BarbSmith]

It is about 2-1/2 years later and I am so glad I came across this thread because I've developed the same problems and with the CS4. I just wanted to say thank you for the "plain English" explanation and for being so patient with Downing32.

My video edits were relative ok via firewire transfer on a government network up until December. I had the occasional de-sync of audio to video, but overall was working ok. Sometime in mid-Dec, something happened and now have nothing but problems. My office purchased a Canon 60D. Which leads me to my problem like Downing32. Will test Camtasia Studio 8 and recommendation above of Vegas. Hope something helps.

Anyway. just wanted to also thank you for the explanation of our troubles.

[BarbSmith]

Just one more note. Working off an external drive seems to work really well for me (now) on my 32-bit Win using CS4. My problem apparently was when a file was loaded directly to the network. Maybe if others are currently having difficulty, an external drive may work for them instead of on their hard drive. Once I uploaded directly from there to my SharePoint site the video plays fine. Just a thought.