Problems encoding video with MainConcept TotalCode Studio - Any Advise?

[jrodefeld]

I'm not sure if this is even the best place to ask this particular question, but I figured I'd give it a shot.

I've done some pretty complex editing in Adobe Premiere CC 2015, and my usual practice is to frameserve the timeline with Advanced Frameserver and encode the video with MainConcept TotalCode Studio. I'm very picky about the quality of my encodes and I like the TotalCode Studio program as it gives me more options over the encode and better resulting quality.

Nevertheless, I've had a very frustrating time recently where my encode just stops before the entire encode is completed. It actually says "Done" at the bottom but the "Preview" window shows a frame where the encode has stopped, about 15 minutes before the film is finished. I can play the video fine, but it plays for about 1 hour and 31 minutes while the entire film is supposed to run for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Just for the record, I already made completely sure that I have selected the ENTIRE film in my Premiere timeline before frameserving it. There isn't any problem with the footage around where the encode stops that I am aware of.


The other option of course would be to export the timeline as a lossless AVI file and then load that file into TotalCode Studio. But I've tried that and TotalCode Studio will not recognize any of the video codecs. Not Lagarith, not UTVideo, not Huffyuv, not regular uncompressed AVI files, nothing. It shows up as audio only.


I'd really appreciate any help I could get on this issue. I've got a deadline to finish a project and I've been messing around the last few days trying to get my final encode, but to no avail.

[El Heggunte]

Assuming TotalCode is *similar enough* to the old MainConcept Reference,
it should accept Avisynth scripts. So, try frameserving the lossless intermediate AVI with AVISource(),
and tell us what happens.

[poisondeathray]

It works with all AVI files. If you can open an AVI video in vdub with the default AVI driver (not some vdub import plugin), Totalcode will be able to "see" it. Are you sure you have those codecs installed?

It also accepts .avs as El Heggunte suggested, but you shouldn't have to use avisynth just to get it to open

Frameserving can be buggy in PP; various other issues like sync, audio crackling, missing frames, aborted encode like yours. For some people it just doesn't work well. But others can get it to work for whatever reason. Nobody can figure out why or what causes it to fail on one system but not another. But you can try advanced frameserver instead of debugmode which seems to work better for some people. Safest way for sure is using an intermediate

[jrodefeld]

Assuming TotalCode is *similar enough* to the old MainConcept Reference,
it should accept Avisynth scripts. So, try frameserving the lossless intermediate AVI with AVISource(),
and tell us what happens.

That seems to have fixed it. I didn't know why I didn't think to use an Avisynth script before. But it's encoding now and hopefully it will fully complete without any issue.

This is a rather inconvenient way of doing things, first having to create a lossless AVI file, then having to create an Avisynth script just to get it to import into TotalCode Studio. But if it works, I'll take it at this point. I just need this one project done.

I didn't mention before, but my timeline was filled with DPX image sequence files that have VERY large file sizes so maybe that would explain the trouble I was having during frameserving? Other projects seem to frameserve just fine for me, but I have had problems in the past.

I did some extensive restoration on some damaged footage using The Pixel Farm's PFClean software and the DPX files that I exported from that program take up tons of space.

My entire film, in DPX format, probably takes up just over 1 terabyte of space. That might very well cause problems, but I am just speculating.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. I'll post again when my encode is finished saying whether it worked okay or not.

[lordsmurf]

I figured it out.

See my post here:
http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/video-conversion/7015-problems-encoding-mainconcept.html#post44169

Standard 64- vs. 32-bit issues, but made more complex with Huffyuv's lousy naming scheme.

[smrpix]

Doesn't Premiere/Adobe Media Encoder use the same Main Concept codecs as Totalcode? Why frameserve?

[lordsmurf]

Doesn't Premiere/Adobe Media Encoder use the same Main Concept codecs as Totalcode? Why frameserve?

Premiere is the frameserve for AME.
But you don't need a frameserve for TotalCode if the codec setup is right.
And my other post shows how/why.