Premiere Pro CS5 not detecting correct footage duration

[Eccen]

I'm not sure if this should have gone here, or in the Video Editing section - but there is a problem here and I'm almost at my wit's end trying to figure it out!

Why is Premiere Pro CS5 detecting incorrect footage length?

Specifics:
-30.5GB file
-Lagarith compression
-1280x720 (upscaled from 640x360 using "Video Enhancer")
-Actual duration of 30 minutes, 19 seconds
*54582 total frames @30FPS

Once this file is imported into Premiere Pro CS5, it's duration is listed as about 1 minute and 41 seconds (just over 3000 total frames). This also happens when the footage is imported into After Effects CS5.

MediaInfo lists the correct duration (both in timecode and total frames), MPC-HC plays the whole file without issue, VDub/AVIMux/etc. all seem to play nice with the file - but PPro/AE do not see the entire length of the footage. Why is this?

If more information is needed, feel free to ask, and I will provide it. Any help would be very much appreciated!

[aedipuss]

in my experience it happens with video files that have a bad/broken/lost frame type spot in them. is this happening to all your files of this type or just this one?

[Eccen]

Actually, this isn't happening to all similar files of this type. Let me give a bit of history;

1. I have 3 files that started out as direct-feed 640x360 recordings from a 3D application through a *nix app called GLC.

2. Said GLCs had their raw video and audio streams extracted (Y4M and multichannel WAVEX, respectively).

3. WAVs were stripped down to stereo, and video was compressed using Lagarith via an AVS script through VirtualDub.

(Everything above here shouldn't have an effect, I don't think)

4. Resulting videos were passed through an app called "Video Enhancer", in order to rescale the footage to 1280x720 using a high-quality resizing algorithm. Video files were transcoded from Lagarith to Lagarith - audio remained untouched uncompressed PCM.

Finally 5. The 640x360 Lagarith files work perfectly in Premiere Pro, however two of the three rescaled videos do not;

>The first original file is 27:32, at 4.44GB. Rescaled, it comes out to 27.3GB - all of it imports correctly into Premiere Pro.
>The second original file is 30:19 at 4.60GB. Rescaled, it comes out to 30.5GB - only the first 1:42 imports correctly into Premiere Pro (approximately ~3000 frames @30FPS), the rest of the file apparently doesn't exist according to Premiere Pro.
>The third original file is 17:49, at 2.88GB. Rescaled, it comes out to 18.4GB - again, only the first minute or so is read correctly, the rest of the footage doesn't show up in Premiere Pro.

Any ideas? Need more info? I've tried almost everything I can think of this get this to import correctly in Premiere Pro CS5!

[aedipuss]

i'd make sure the source files for the bad 2 import correctly and play through in pp first. then redo the conversion, as i suspect they are corrupt at the point they fail.

[Eccen]

Note that in my first reply I mentioned that the original 640x360 files work correctly, and without any issue in PPro CS5. Something seems to be happening to the files after I run them through Video Enhancer - something that makes those resultant files read incorrectly in PPro, but just fine in every single other app I have tried with them.

I even took that 30.5GB file, loaded it up in VDub, and split it right down the middle into two segments - with identical frame counts. Both of those showed up as ~50 seconds long, instead of ~15 minutes. Notice something interesting? 50x2=100 seconds=1m40s. Weird, huh?

What else can I do!

[aedipuss]

ditch video enhancer as it is the problem and use pp to upscale.

[Eccen]

Though that's the obvious solution, PPro does not have the same rescaling abilities that "Video Enhancer" does.

Granted, I could use some crazy AVS scripts to get something close - however most of the really nice stuff takes literally 5x longer than Video Enhancer. I am looking for a way to fix the resulting video files, if at all possible - since every other app besides PPro/AE has no issue at all with said files.

[lordsmurf]

Try another codec for HD -- or go uncompressed.
Maybe Lagarith is the issue?

[Eccen]

I actually tried transcoding to UT lossless, thinking it may be a codec issue as well - but I still encountered the exact same error.

The only way I have found the footage to work in PPro; is if I save out the video as a segmented AVI file, with segments no larger than 2000MB (under 2048MB), then imported them sequentially into PPro. Even though this displays the correct duration, it does not let me "replace footage", making the segments useless unless merged. To top that off, importing said segments into PPro to try and merge them using PPro results in an encoding error and subsequent crash.

I don't think I'll ever get these files to work. ):

[Todd_Kopriva]

> PPro does not have the same rescaling abilities that "Video Enhancer" does.

You might want to look into the details of scaling for CS5 (and later). You can get really good results from Premiere Pro now (which wasn't true for CS4 and earlier).

[KeyMaster]

I'm actually having this same problem, except I am not trying to scale up a video. The video I'm using is a .mkv of 22 minutes in length with 1280x720 res. All I'm doing is using AviSynth to pass it through VirtualDub, converting it into a lossless avi using the UT codec and this is happening on 26 different files all of the same length and quality that I am converting with only ~30 seconds and a few frames being recognized by PP after importing them into the project. I believe that rules out Video Enhancer and leaves the suspects at Virtual Dub, AviSynth, a codec problem, or a problem with PP itself.

I'm just as dumbfounded as the OP, every other piece of software on my computer confirms and plays the full 22 minute duration of each video; PP and AE are the only rogue programs. Even Adobe Bridge recognizes the full duration.

For software reference I'm working with the CS5 versions of AE and PP.

[Eccen]

Todd, I actually have read that article in an effort to determine what I should use to rescale my footage. There are two issues with using PPro CS5 for the rescaling job.

1. If I import the 640x360 footage into a 1280x720 composition, then use an effect to rescale the footage - I have absolutely no information regarding what method is being used to perform that rescale. For example; if I use the "Motion" effect available on all footage to do said rescale, I get odd banding that shows up as horizontal/vertical lines that are transparent to a degree - this tells me that the rescaling method being used is exceptionally low quality. This happens with any footage rescaled in this manner.

If I use the "Distort/Transform" effect to rescale my footage, then such an issue does not present itself. This quite clearly shows that PPro CS5 does not do all rescales equal, and this is reflected in other posts by other people if a search is done regarding rescaling issues in PPro.

2. I am also under the impression that those rescaling methods might not be the ideal way to adjust the size of my footage, and instead I should import the 640x360 footage as-is, then under the output settings, change the resolution to 1280x720. Even if this does indeed invoke the Lanczos2 + bicubic resampling method, it is still visually inferior to the rescaled footage I am getting out of Video Enhancer, as it samples adjacent frames to rescale the current frame. PPro does not.

Keymaster, I have used VDub to transcode other files for use with PPro with no issue, as well as AVISynth to test out other rescaling methods - and those too import correctly. Even changing the codec from Lagarith to UT lossless results in exactly the same issue, so it cannot be a codec problem.

Though in my case it appears the Video Enhancer app is doing something to make these files import incorrectly into PPro/AE, those are also the only two applications I have tried (out of nearly 20) that will not parse the file correctly. This leads me to conclude that there is a serious importing error in Adobe's format parsing engine that needs to be identified and fixed.

[lordsmurf]

Adobe is strict to specs. Sometimes limited to subsets of specs (as is the case with Encore).
Are you sure Lagarith is supposed to be used for HD content?

[Eccen]

lordsmurf, I have read countless forum threads/guides/anecdotes with regards to using Lagarith in Premiere, and none of them have identified a limitation with regards to either resolution or Premiere compatibility. Encore I can understand as having strict guidelines with regards to footage, as Encore is primarily used to author content, which needs to conform to certain specs in order to play on various hardware or software.

I don't recall if I mentioned it in this thread, but I did try transcoding to another lossless codec (UT video) and encountered the exact same issue - lending credence to the likelihood that Adobe's method for importing footage is to blame. I don't 100% blame Adobe on this, as Video Enhancer is obviously mucking with the output in some way as to make it incompatible with Premiere. However as I mentioned previously, only Adobe apps are having a hard time with said output - literally every other application I have tried to read, edit, or fix the offending footage has either detected no errors, or has let me edit without consequence.