Summary of my Adobe workflow gripes

[Tim Morten]

Firstly, my hat is off to Red and Adobe for creating a Premiere workflow at all -- everyone should recognize that this workflow is still officially categorized as Beta, so some hitches are to be expected. This workflow has tremendous potential, and I did manage to get my project finished, but there are a handful of things I ran into that I'm hoping will get addressed in a future update.

The project: A 4 minute short film, shot on Red at 4K 2:1

The software/hardware: CS4 Master Collection with all the latest updates, 3ghz quad-core w/ 4GB RAM running XP.

Issues I ran into:

1. Changing Resolution - The Red plug-in is set up so that you can work at one resolution (that performs well on your PC), and do your final output at a higher quality. You have to exit Premiere in order to have the change take effect (less than ideal, but just a minor inconvenience). However, when you re-open Premiere, you must create a new sequence with the correct frame size, and copy/paste the edits from your previous sequence into it. This makes it more cumbersome to switch back and forth to adjust edits after viewing the final. It would be much preferable to have Adobe automatically change the frame size when the resolution in the Red plug-in is changed.
2. Changing Framerate - If, in the process of copying your edits into a new timeline when you change resolution, you also change frame-rate (from 23.98 to 24 in my case), black frames are introduced between edits to compensate. I guess I was naive to think that Premiere would automatically scale cleanly, or fix up edits that were now bad, but I had to discover the issue through viewing -- a warning box would have been helpful, so I could have known I was creating an issue, and simply stuck with the original frame-rate.
3. Encoder Freezes - Adobe Media Encoder freezes in multiple circumstances using Red footage; this has also been encountered by some other users. In my case, freezes happened with two title sequences on black, with a JPG on black, and with one title sequence overlaid on video. There seems to be a bug lurking here...
4. Encoder Quality - When I did get the encode working, I tried some Quicktime H.264 encodes. Every time an encode was started the bitrate defaulted to the minimum, and the output looked aweful. I suppose it's fair to make the user check their settings, but it would be preferable if those settings were persistent, so that they don't have to be re-examined every single time.
5. Encore / Output to DVD - When I try to make a DVD of my project, Encore gets 20% of the way through making the image, and then says "Encode Failed". Changing the transcode settings doesn't seem to help. I tried to import my H.264 output, and that simply froze up both Premiere and Encore. Seems like there's a bug here that needs to be fixed. Meanwhile, I'm going to try a transcode to MPEG2 in Encoder, and then create an Encore project with no dynamic links to Premiere... hopefully that will work.

(Note that I didn't try After Effects, so there may be issues in that pipeline that I didn't encounter.)

Anyhow, I want to emphasize that Red and Adobe are awesome for providing this workflow at all, and that we should all have patience while it is still in Beta. I had a frustrating experience, and I was just working with a 4 minute piece, but I have faith that the kinks will get worked out over time. Hopefully this email provides some food for thought, with regard to implementing improvements down the line.

Thanks,
Tim

 

[Stefan Scherperel]

A few notes on your issues, that may help you out. i have been working with this workflow since it was released as well, and have my own set of things I would like to see improved, but in keeping with your issues.

1. If you do not like the copy/paste procedure and want to keep everything in one sequence, try the following. Start a new sequence and make sure that you set it up with the final output resolution you want. Import your r3D files to your project, and then set them to your WORKING resolution, meaning 1k, 512. Exit premeriere and re-open. Now when you drag a clip onto the timeline it will end up in the center of your larger frame that you previously set. Set your zoom level on your viewer to 100% and you now are just looking at your clip (you may have to resize your windows). When you are ready to then render the clips, reset the working resolution to your sequence size and the clips will automatically fill up the full frame.

2. You should not be changing frame rates between timelines. Pick the frame rate that you shot at or your going to introduce frame blending and other artifacts that are not desireable.

3. Try rendering to an uncompressed or visually lossless codec first.

 

[Alexander Mejia]

• Encoder Quality - When I did get the encode working, I tried some Quicktime H.264 encodes. Every time an encode was started the bitrate defaulted to the minimum, and the output looked aweful. I suppose it's fair to make the user check their settings, but it would be preferable if those settings were persistent, so that they don't have to be re-examined every single time.
• Encore / Output to DVD - When I try to make a DVD of my project, Encore gets 20% of the way through making the image, and then says "Encode Failed". Changing the transcode settings doesn't seem to help. I tried to import my H.264 output, and that simply froze up both Premiere and Encore. Seems like there's a bug here that needs to be fixed. Meanwhile, I'm going to try a transcode to MPEG2 in Encoder, and then create an Encore project with no dynamic links to Premiere... hopefully that will work.

In Terms of these two points: I always reccomend that Quicktime not be used for the h.264 encoder. Mainconcept's h.264 encoder is much better and built into Premiere Pro. It can maintain compatibility with Quicktime Player, and results in no Quicktime Gamma Shift

As for Adobe Encore, it is not a piece of software you want for professional recoding, or DVD/Blu-Ray Authoring. They claim professional authoring, but I've had nothing but memory restriction headaches and lots of software limitations when it comes to actually authoring discs. If you must use Encore, always make sure to transcode all of your media before hand to the proper file format otherwise you'll run out of memory for any large framed projects. In Adobe Media Encoder you can use "Blu-Ray h.264" presets to get blu-ray compatible files ready for encore, so no transcoding has to take place.


What irks me about the Adobe workflow is the issue with the null frame when doing a debayer at 4k resolution. This makes it impossible to motion track footage which is what I do mostly in After Effects.

 

[Tim Morten]

1. If you do not like the copy/paste procedure and want to keep everything in one sequence, try the following. Start a new sequence and make sure that you set it up with the final output resolution you want. Import your r3D files to your project, and then set them to your WORKING resolution, meaning 1k, 512. Exit premeriere and re-open. Now when you drag a clip onto the timeline it will end up in the center of your larger frame that you previously set. Set your zoom level on your viewer to 100% and you now are just looking at your clip (you may have to resize your windows). When you are ready to then render the clips, reset the working resolution to your sequence size and the clips will automatically fill up the full frame.

Thanks for your suggestions! I did try this first one while I was editing, but unfortunately if my frame size is set to 2K (my desired output resolution), the playback failed, no matter how low I set the Red plug-in. I'm running on a 4-core/4GB with an nVidia 8800, so I was suprised that my system couldn't even playback 512 in a 2K frame, but perhaps it's the addition of Magic Bullet Looks that put me over the top? In any event, I can't edit if I can't playback, so I had to abandon that route. Here's hoping there is some optimization that can be done to playback to enable systems with less than 8 cores to playback 2K frames (even if the Red plug-in resolution needs to be lower than 2K)!

2. You should not be changing frame rates between timelines. Pick the frame rate that you shot at or your going to introduce frame blending and other artifacts that are not desireable.

Fair enough; I defintely won't make that mistake a second time. That said, I still strongly encourage Red/Adobe to put up a warning when users do this. Corrupting edits throughout the timeline is not something that should just happen with no warning, even if it's the result of a user-originated action.

3. Try rendering to an uncompressed or visually lossless codec first.

It turns out that my Encoder feeze happened regardless of codec, but in general going to uncompressed seems like a good suggestion, and I appreciate it.

Thanks again for taking the time to read through and post!

Best,
Tim

 

[Tim Morten]

As for Adobe Encore, it is not a piece of software you want for professional recoding, or DVD/Blu-Ray Authoring. They claim professional authoring, but I've had nothing but memory restriction headaches and lots of software limitations when it comes to actually authoring discs. If you must use Encore, always make sure to transcode all of your media before hand to the proper file format otherwise you'll run out of memory for any large framed projects. In Adobe Media Encoder you can use "Blu-Ray h.264" presets to get blu-ray compatible files ready for encore, so no transcoding has to take place.

Good advice; I finally wound up doing the MPEG2 encode in Encoder and then importing that into Encore without the dynamic link, and that worked just fine.

Best,
Tim

 

[Obin Olson]

agree 100% on number one of your gripes..

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Have to agree with #1, 3, 4 the most. #1 is just a pain in the ass. #3, well let's just say that Media Encoder needs a lot of help. I shouldn't have to render everything through AE, which in turn creates other problems. Especially with my first trip through CS4 and not realizing a lot of these issues. And then #4, encoder quality. Have to agree, the mainconcept codec is garbage. Not happy with any of the results at all. I now like to render my Premiere project by importing it into After Effects and I render out to the Animation codec or Uncompressed 10bit 4:2:2 or image sequences... Then I'll use Apple compressor or something else to build my h264 file or whatever else I can use that isn't a mainconcept codec. Adobe, you really need to come up with something better here if you want to seriously compete on the high-end without annoying a lot of your customers with the need for third-party codec software. And get Media Encoder fixed.... WTF? Not acceptable, it even crashes a lot of the times rendering a dissolve between titles generated in Premiere and a friggin ProRes file.

 

[Jason Osterday]

I don't think you need 8 cores for 2K playback. I get perfect playback with my Q9550, dual 8800gt, and 8 gig memory. Playing off standard sata drive it runs realtime in redcine, CS4 and FCP, with the respective plugins of course.

 

[Brian Kaz]

Any idea when we'll get control over metadata? This is the single biggest piece of the puzzle that's missing IMO.