Simple Question re Premiere CS5

[jkholmes]

Been using Premiere for many years. Heard about queueing in CS5 and love the idea. However in videos I have seen, when they show format, I do not see wmv in the list. 90% of my output is wmv, and if I cannot queue clips, in fact it looks like I cannot even render one at a time as I do now, from what I have seen, then CS5 would not be worth the investment to me.

I am currently using CS3 which is fine, just wanted to queue clips in wmv format.

Am I correct that CS5 Media Encoder no longer has wmv capability?

I'd appreciate any inf on this. Sure glad I found out before I bought it. If it is indeed true

Thanks

[poisondeathray]

yes it does , at least on PC version of CS5

the videos you watched may have been done on a Mac - they wouldn't have access to wmv

[jkholmes]

Aha! that is good news indeed. I thought it was quite odd.

The person who sent me the video tuts links is a Mac guy so that may explain it.

So if you don't mind clarifying, as I am actually planning to get a newer computer as well, for PC users like moi, new system will be windows 7, its same old, same old.
CS5 will have wmv, and even my presets from CS3 will likely work?

Thanks for the input. It was good to hear.

[poisondeathray]

note you need a 64-bit OS for CS5 , so if you upgrade to Win7 make sure it's not x86 version

what do you mean by "my presets from CS3 will likely work? " do you mean export presets ? It comes with a bunch of export presets but you can customize and save your own as well. I don't know if the CS3 presets can be loaded directly

[jkholmes]

note you need a 64-bit OS for CS5 , so if you upgrade to Win7 make sure it's not x86 version

what do you mean by "my presets from CS3 will likely work? " do you mean export presets ? It comes with a bunch of export presets but you can customize and save your own as well. I don't know if the CS3 presets can be loaded directly

Thanks, yes the 64 bit is why I am considering a new machine and it will be win7 professional I think, unless that one step up from pro is better, not sure..

So I can do the queueing of wmv clips. and just have them render overnight or in the background. I make a bunch of 2-3 min clips from mpeg on the timeline to wmv. And its a real pain having to wait for each one to render before I can create the next one. This queueing is brilliant. I luvit!

Re presets, in the past I have found if you have your own custom presets, and you upgrade premiere, you can copy those custom ones to the correct folder in the upgraded premeire and it shows them. But even if I cannot, its not a biggie, I will just redo them in CS5.

[poisondeathray]

I would recommend getting a Nvidia cuda enabled GFX card, this way you can use full power of mercury playback engine. You don't need a $3000 quadro. There is a list of "offically supported" cards on Adobe site, but you can actually use a cheap $100 card with the MPE hack (google it)

yes the render queue was actually added in cs4 , and you can continue to work on other projects

wmv is quite outdated now, and slow to encode. h264 provides more efficient compression (better quality, smaller filesizes), especially if this is for online videos like flash . You have a much wider audience with flash as well (anyone that can watch youtube can watch flash videos, and it has 99% market penetration) , but mac users cannot view wmv videos very easily, you're basically limited to PC users.

[jkholmes]

the company I am talking to, which I have had very good luck with, Puget Systems, has a config tool of course, I chose this 2nd card in this list, but I have a feeling it might not be right. I personally never had much luck over the many years with ATI cards, not sure why, but everytime I get one, it is screwed, and I have to return it. Which of these would you recommend. I don't know what CUDA means, are any of these CUDA?

Thanks for your advice. BTW I don't do any HD. Just not needed for my work. My wmvs are fairly high quality, typicallly 768kb/sec or 1mb/sec I also do a lot of FLVs for promotional stuff on various sites. FLVs are great, I just put them on the server then import them itno the flash cs3 project, and publish. Use the <object> and <embed> on the page and voila, flash video.

Though oddly Joomla which I use a lot, strips out the embed part, but it still works. Never have figured that out!

NVIDIA GeForce 210 512MB QUIET (MSI) [subtract $41.94]
***NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 1GB QUIET (Zotac)
ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB (XFX) [add $20.90]
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 1GB (EVGA, Zotac) [add $64.79]
ATI Radeon HD 6850 1GB (Asus, MSI or XFX) [add $137.80]
ATI Radeon HD 6870 1GB (Asus, MSI or XFX) [add $214.00]
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB (EVGA) [add $220.19]
ATI Radeon HD 6950 2GB (XFX, Asus, MSI, or Sapphire) [add $259.13]
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 1.3GB (Zotac, MSI, EVGA) [add $351.95]
ATI Radeon HD 6970 2GB (XFX, Asus, MSI, or Sapphire) [add $404.70]
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB (Zotac, EVGA, Asus, MSI) [add $555.15]
ATI Radeon HD 5970 2GB (MSI or XFX) [add $613.55]

[poisondeathray]

CUDA is basically GPU computing enabled on certain Nvidia cards . Certain effects and processes are accelerated in PP CS5 with CUDA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA

ATI cards don't work with MPE acceleration

The GT 430 1GB, or the GTS450 1GB will work with the MPE hack . You need at least 768MB memory so that rules out the GeForce 210 on that list

Thanks for your advice. BTW I don't do any HD. Just not needed for my work. My wmvs are fairly high quality, typicallly 768kb/sec or 1mb/sec I also do a lot of FLVs for promotional stuff on various sites. FLVs are great, I just put them on the server then import them itno the flash cs3 project, and publish. Use the <object> and <embed> on the page and voila, flash video.

The FLV's you're using are probably h263 or vp6 compression - both are a low quality, inefficient type of compression used in old flash videos. The only reason to use vp6 nowadays is if you are using alpha channel (vp6a and transparent videos).

At low bitrates, you will find h.264 extraordinarily better than WMV or vp6 - especially if you use a good AVC/h.264 encoder like x264 . The bundled AVC encoder in AME isn't the greatest, but still better than WMV3 or WVC1 . Experiment when you get a chance. I bet you'll be surprised

[jkholmes]

I looked at my AME flash preset, and its using something I installed long ago called On2VP6. It is 400kb/sec 360w 288 height I do PAL mostly. Though I am in Calif, my biz partner is in the UK and does our shoots. He then captures them, converts to mpg and upload to our server, which I then download and edit.

What I don't know about codecs could and does fill volumes. Are you suggesting there might be better quality with some other codec?

You seem quite well informed on a lot of stuff I am not. I am even willing to hire you as a consultant. I am very technically minded, retired IBM Engineer, but I am not well informed on this "new age stuff"

I didn't see a way to PM you or would have, but you may be a good asset to my biz, if you are interested. Even if I had some other codec, I wouldn't have a clue how to make premeiere recognize it etc. I spent my life working on IBM IT Mainframes, the CPUs that businesses like Bank of America, NASA Ames Research Center and others buiilt their biz around. Both of those were some of my clients. But with the PC, though I have my natural tech savvy, there is a lot of stuff I don't know about.

[poisondeathray]

Yes , I'm saying there are better formats you can use. (And better practices you should be doing - for example, your partner uploading as a mpg - assuming you mean MPEG2 - is a lossy stage that should be eliminated or at least improved upon. MPEG2 compression is even worse than VP6 or WMV...)

On2VP6 is what I referred to as "VP6" in the post above. It's really an older format, and only has 1 specific use these days - only for alpha channel

Most sites that used to use WMV or VP6 for compression have switched to h.264. Wider audience, compatiblity with mobile devices, and the money alone you can save on bandwidth makes it a good business case and worth it. There is no reason to use those legacy formats anymore (with that 1 exception with alpha channel, and perhaps DRM if your business uses that sort of thing - it's easier to implement DRM into WMV)

I'm not available for consulting, but I'm glad to help you if I'm around. If you need someone, I can pass you along some names that do this sort of stuff, including backend stuff like coding , setting up encoding farms, etc... To PM on this board, there is a little icon underneath the user name that looks like an envelope letter

[jkholmes]

Ok thanks. For tonight signing off. but will be in touch tomorrow. Maybe get some names from you or get advice from you, as you have given.

Thanks mucho for your time and advice.