After 3 1/2 hours, the render process has made it to the bottom of my 270 item folder.  All the thumbnails have rendered and the looping appears to have stopped.  ?????

File structure is the only thing I can think of as the problem.  Camera was a Panasonic GH2.  I did not copy the SD card structure exactly.  (I believe the ability to view card structure directly is new to CS6?)  Anyway, the original structure is as follows:  3 folders on the SD: DCIM, MISC, PRIVATE.

The video files reside under PRIVATE, so I copied that folder structure with all its subfolders to the hard drive.  When viewing the .mts files with the media browser, I would negotiate to the following directory:

PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM/*.mts

Files are mostly 720p at 29.97fps, 20-200mb's in size

The problem comes when viewing all the *.mts files in the STREAM folder.  I usually don't want to import the entire folder, but want to select specific clips to import, so I need the thumbnails and ability to hover scrub.

BTW, thanks for your prompt attention.  I've been encouraged by Adobe's recent focus on customer support!

Thanks for the followup, but unfortunately, that doesn't explain the looping situation at all.  For instance, as the thumbnails are being created, the system starts over and regenerates the ones it already generated after about 10 or so thumbnails.  If I scroll down to the bottom of the list, every time the "loop" happens, it jumps me back up to the top of the list, so I don't even have the ability to stay at the bottom of the file list.  It's highly irritating and virtually impossible to use.  It's like that web video where you try to chase a fly around on the screen with your mouse.  :-) 

Obviously, because the thumbnail generation loops every 10 or so new thumbnails, that explains why it takes so long to generate all the thumbnails.  They're being regenerated hundreds of times!  In other words, it doesn't take the system long to generate each individual thumbnail: that looks about the speed one would expect, but it's this looping behavior thats the problem, not rendering speed.

Jim Simon wrote:

 

There is aknown CS6 behavior where Media Browser scrolling jumps to the top of the icon list when it is loading multiple files & user tries to preview icons farther down the list

 

Yes, that's the issue.

 

 

it's just an annoyance as seen by us

 

We are annoyed, too.  Please fix it.

Actually, it's more than an annoyance, because this thing keeps looping back to the top, ad infinitum, regenerating thumbnails from the beginning each time.  It can take a ridiculous length of time before every thumbnail gets rendered.  I can't be sitting around waiting 3 hours for thumbnails to render in a folder before I can use it!  And here's the KEY point: ALL the thumbnails in the folder must be rendered that first time, before the folder begins to work properly.  If I leave the folder in frustration before it gets to the bottom of the file list, then I have to start the whole process over again the next time I visit the folder.

You gave me a BIG clue: you said the list jumps back to the top when multiple files are being processed.  Well, we know with AVCHD that there are multiple files for every video stream that contain metadata and other info.  Perhaps it is the linking up of all these files to a stream that causes the issue?  Once CS6 gets all those files linked properly to the stream, then perhaps things begin to work properly?

Long story short, this isn't just an irritation, it is a DEAL BREAKER.  There MUST be a workaround for this problem, or Premiere CS6 is just worthless as a production tool.  (and so far, I LOVE everything else about this release!)

jstrawn wrote:

 

I can understand your frustration, and I have elevated the priority of the open issue.

 

The problem occurs when trying to preview many files (like, 100's) at once in the media browser. So the workaround is to view them in the media browser in smaller chunks, by sub-direcorizing them beforehand OR just importing them all and using the project panel/icon view for preview. Also, as I mentioned, we have the product 'Bridge' (which you should already have if you installed any of the suites or the prpro family prodcut) which is made for this sort of high-volume file previewing before opening them in any of our apps.

 

Is there some reason why non of those workarouns is sutiable. Is there anything else I could realisitcally do at this time to rectify your problem?

Well, I appreciate the workaround suggestions, and they do work, of course, but the productivity drop is extremely significant and not on par with the stated improvements in CS6 that prompted me to pay Adobe big bucks. (to me anyway)  :-)

For instance:  Viewing in Bridge does work properly, as I have tried that.  Of course I can't scrub (the big draw in CS6)  And I'd have to sit down and make a list of all the files and their names so I could go back into Premiere and import just the ones I need.  Not very productive.

As for splitting the files up into smaller folders: the problem is AVCHD.  Have you tried to move all the pertinent files for each stream from all the different folders to another folder and keep everything straight?  Yuck!

I suppose importing all the files into the Project is an option.  (and one I haven't tried)  But that would burden the project with a ton of unneeded cruft.  This suggestion is probably the most viable because I could set up a workflow to import all, then scrub through the files and remove the unneeded ones from the project.  (sort of a backwards approach)  Since I haven't tried that yet, I'm not even sure if that would workaround the thumbnail loop issue.  And that would make the initial project HUGE.

Here again, I think the anomaly I'm seeing is different from the one you're seeing.  Once that folder gets fully processed that first time, Premiere works just as envisioned from that point forward, ON THAT PARTICULAR FOLDER.  There is something else going on here.  Give me a day or so and I will try to throw a video up on youtube so you can see the precise issue.  I think you'll be surprised. First, I'll show how it works properly on a pre-processed folder.  Then, I'll show the anomaly.

Well, I'm sorry to say that importing all the AVCHD files is no workaround.  Now, granted, there are a lot of clips.  (short though) Perhaps 600 in all.  Once I import them, I get a message on the bottom right status bar of the project screen that says "conforming ...######.mts"  This display scrolls through all the file numbers, taking 5-20 seconds per file.

The thumbnails are rendering in an excruciatingly slow manner in the project, even slower than before.  But, there's no looping!  (small victories)  It looks like it's going to take hours for all the project thumbnails to render.  This seems awfully slow, considering my computer specs.  Any ideas???

----------------------------------

UPDATE: The total importing, thumbnail rendering, and "conforming" time for this 600 clip project ran about 40 minutes.  Not horrible, I suppose, but certainly not what one would call a productive rate.  At least there was no more "looping" going on.

The great irony of this, is that once the clips are in the project, Premiere runs like a scalded dog.  I love it.  It would truly be a shame if importing and thumbnail rendering ends up being Premiere's "bottleneck."

I'm not trying to make excuses for the Media Browser -- because there IS a bug that needs to be addressed -- but when we're talking about 600+ HD-size files (720p or not) there's going to be some bottle-necking until you get everything into the app and cahed. Once that's done, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how well it's handled for editing and playback.

I tend to agree.  (btw, my prproj file is 7mb; not bad)  Whatever the "bug" is, it's very transient.  In fact, when I went to film my "demo video" I couldn't get the looping issue to occur, since I had already browsed most of my folders enough times that all the thumbnails had previously rendered.  (which in my case, seems to "fix" the looping issue)

My big fear with the bug will be on future jobs, where I might have to make a rough edit of a day's project for viewing the next day.  The long thumbnail rendering times could be very disruptive when I need to get work out in a timely manner.  No doubt the "looping bug" should get a high priority, because the media browser is still the best workflow solution when thumbnails render properly.  Thanks again for taking prompt action in reporting this bug to your team.  Hopefully Abobe's "exterminators" can squash this bug quickly.  We need some way to AT LEAST generate thumbnails quickly so we can ID clips and filter.

I also wonder if this issue is centered mainly on AVCHD, since the codec is very processor intensive.

@Jim: What was the codec of your files that triggered the looping issue?

LOL!  We must be linked empathically.  The Prelude option dawned on me about 40 minutes ago and I am currently experimenting with it as we speak.  :-)

I've already noticed a couple of very interesting things:

1) Thumbnails render randomly instead of sequentially.  So far, I haven't experienced any "looping" but then again this is the same folder that now "works" in Premiere after the thumbnails rendered the first time.  I guess I need to reload a "virgin" folder to the hard drive in order to see if the looping re-occurs, but so far, fingers crossed.

2) This may be BY FAR the best ingest workflow.  Kudos to Adobe for this new tool!

I'll report more later, but this MIGHT be the perfect workaround/final solution.

I'm going to try making a backup to see how Prelude copies AVCHD files.  Since they are notoriously hard to work with (due to all the subfolders and metadata files) I'm considering a change in workflow to transcode all my Panasonic GH2 files to a "better" codec.

If I chose to do that, what, in your opinion would be the "best" codec to use?  And what, if any disadvantages would it pose to transcode out of the native codec?

I know everyone's got a different opinion on this, but I'd be curious to hear your feedback on a codec that Premiere and After Effects "likes" the best, that would balance the following features:

1) low resource usage

2) single file clips

3) compression size vs. quality

Thanks!

@jstrawn: Any opinions on transcoding?