percoplus wrote:
I was told recently that I should convert my video files to something else to improve rendering and exporting times. I shoot HDV, and recently started usung a DN60 for a tapeless workflow. I have CS6 and a reasonably fast computer.
I was under the impression that Premiere and AME handled HDV and all the other filetypes natively. Why then am I experiencing slow performance after all I have done to improve my system? What should I convert to? And wouldn't that be a time-consuming process in itself?
Long-GOP codecs are more CPU intensive, so yes, you will experience slowness you wouldn't with intraframe codecs, due to the CPU ops needed to render each frame to your display in real-time.
Yes, it will take time to transcode, and it will eat up drive space, but you may make up the lost time in the editorial process. My general rule is the shorter the project and less the footage, the more incentive to edit native. Otherwise, transcode.
My impression (not scientific) is that working on Long-GOP codecs is only going to be more painless on the fastest of multi-core systems. "Reasonably fast computer" may not be good enough. Try transcoding to AVI, Cineform, DNxHD or ProRes, and see for yourself what works best for you.
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