17 Replies Latest reply: Oct 28, 2010 1:32 AM by Scadge Productions RSS

    Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?

    claudioparoli Community Member

      I've acquired some 3 hours of continuous footage recorded by my Sony PMW-EX3 XDCAM onto Sony's external hard disk unit PHU-60, designed for the EX3. The hard disk records in segments under 4GB; in the Sony XDCAM Clip Browser the segments appear stitched together into a single file, and whether I import them through Premiere's Media Browser or the entire folders through Windows Explorer I get a single file.

       

      This single file is easily imported - but then it will not show in Source Monitor nor, if I place a segment on the timeline, will it appear in the Program Monitor. If I play the segment on the timeline, Premiere will hesitate for several seconds then play the audio - no vision. Checking the clip in XDCAM Clip Browser (as well as in the camera) confirms that the pictures are there.

       

      The clip is an MP4, 1920x1080, frame rate 25p, square pixel, video frame 25p. The average data rate is between 1.1MB/s and half that value (different clips), which seems very low.

       

      I've tried a range of settings for my sequences, starting from the obvious, matching the  - it does not seem to make any difference

       

      Hardware is i7-920/12GB RAM/ndivia FX1700, Velociraptor 300 for O/S & programs and Samsung Spinpoint 1T for media. O/S is Win7-64, Premiere is 4.1.2.

       

      Can anyone come up with some explanation? Thanks

       

      claudio

        • 1. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
          Bill Hunt CommunityMVP

          Claudio,

           

          I've Imported 2 hr. SD (DV-AVI Type II's), and never had an issue with the Clip's Duration. Now, you are talking HD here, but I think that it's more an issue with the source footage, and your system/setup, than with Duration.

           

          As I do not use XDCAM footage, others will need to help you address any issues there.

           

          One other bit of info, that might be useful will be your I/O sub-system, i.e. your HDD's, their size, speed, controller type, free space and how they are allocated. I/O is very instrumental in playback, and other editing aspects.

           

          Good luck,

           

          Hunt

          • 2. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
            John T Smith CommunityMVP

            Followup to Bill... only 2 drives for HD might be a bit light duty

             

            Read Harm on drive setup http://forums.adobe.com/thread/662972?tstart=0

             

            Also... importing but not showing MAY mean a mis-match between your project settings and the actual video

            • 3. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
              Jeff.Goin Community Member

              Claudio,

               

              I've found that cs4 chokes with either really long HD clips or too many of them (thousands).

               

              Consider using HDV Split to capture them. It creates separate files every time it detects a scene change.

               

              Jeff G.

              FootFlyer.com

              • 4. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                claudioparoli Community Member

                Thanks Bill, helpful as usual. Is an FX1700 not enough for HD in your experience?

                claudio

                • 5. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                  claudioparoli Community Member

                  Thanks for your comments John. Don't you thing though that if the HDD setup were the problem there'd be delays, stutter and so on but SOME play... I can't get a picture at all, although I can get sound off the timeline, and I can't even get the clip into the source monitor. I'm no expert at all as you guys might've guessed (I'm actually a journalist who shoots and edits), but a mismatch seems the more likely reason. Premiere identifies the clips as MP4s off an XDCAM EX3 camera, 1930x1080, F/R 25 progressive and so I picked the XDCAM EX3 preset 1080pHQ for the sequence. Here's the Mediainfo report on one of the clips that make up the long clip:

                  General

                  Complete name :F:\footage\sicilstories\BPAV\CLPR\frm-0255_09\frm-0255_09.MP4
                  Format :MPEG-4
                  Format_Commercial_IfAny :XDCAM EX 35
                  Format profile :Base Media / Version 2
                  Codec ID :mp42
                  File size :3.47 GiB
                  Duration :13mn 38s
                  Overall bit rate :36.5 Mbps
                  Encoded date :UTC 2010-06-21 02:18:07
                  Tagged date :UTC 2010-06-21 02:18:07

                  Video

                  ID :1
                  Format :MPEG Video
                  Format_Commercial_IfAny :XDCAM EX 35
                  Format version :Version 2
                  Format profile :Main@High
                  Format settings, BVOP :Yes
                  Format settings, Matrix :Default
                  Format settings, GOP :M=3, N=12
                  Codec ID :61
                  Duration :480ms
                  Bit rate mode :Variable
                  Bit rate :35.0 Mbps
                  Width :1 920 pixels
                  Height :1 080 pixels
                  Display aspect ratio :16:9
                  Frame rate mode :Constant
                  Frame rate :25.000 fps
                  Standard :Component
                  Color space :YUV
                  Chroma subsampling :4:2:0
                  Bit depth :8 bits
                  Scan type :Progressive
                  Bits/(Pixel*Frame) :0.675
                  Stream size :3.33 GiB (96%)
                  Language :English
                  Encoded date :UTC 2010-06-21 02:18:07
                  Tagged date :UTC 2010-06-21 02:18:07

                  Audio

                  ID :2
                  Format :PCM
                  Format settings, Endianness :Big
                  Format settings, Sign :Signed
                  Codec ID :twos
                  Duration :13mn 38s
                  Bit rate mode :Constant
                  Bit rate :1 536 Kbps
                  Channel(s) :2 channels
                  Sampling rate :48.0 KHz
                  Bit depth :16 bits
                  Stream size :150 MiB (4%)
                  Language :English
                  Encoded date :UTC 2010-06-21 02:18:07
                  Tagged date :UTC 2010-06-21 02:18:07

                   

                  I cannot see where they differ... Are there any other settings, apart from sequence settings, that may affect clip behaviour?

                  Next I'll follow up on another suggestion and split up the clip... stay tuned... and thanks again

                  claudio

                  • 6. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                    JSS1138 CommunityMVP

                    Can anyone come up with some explanation?

                     

                    My first thought is that you're simply not waiting for Indexing and Conforming to finish.

                    • 7. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                      claudioparoli Community Member

                      Thanks, Jim, I actually made a point of waiting for the process to finish. Then whenever I tried to access any clips Premiere froze. I've tried using a very short clip recoreded (by mistake) during the same session and there's no problem in viewing, playing etc. So the size of the clip - perhaps combined with the limitations of my hardware - may be the problem.

                      • 8. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                        claudioparoli Community Member

                        Thanks Jeff, I'll try splitting the clips next.

                        • 9. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                          RDA972 Community Member

                          For what it is worth, I have just imported a file shot on my Sony PMW-350K which is about 3 hours and 30 minutes long.

                          The picture is fine but as mentioned in past posts the original 4 channel audio tuns into 2 channel gibberish.

                          The solution so far has been to convert those troublesome files into MXF files.

                          I understand a fix is forthcoming but in the meantime I suggest you convert your long files into MXF files using Sony's Clip Browser and proceed from there.

                          • 10. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                            claudioparoli Community Member

                            Thanks Robert, I've tried the conversion to MXF through Sony Clip Browser and it did work, with the two stereo audio channels becoming 4 mono channels. However this does defies the purpose of using a tapeless format, as the conversion takes longer than acquisition ex tape would have...

                            I wonder whether anyone from Adobe wants to chip in?

                            • 11. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                              RDA972 Community Member
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                              claudioparoli wrote:

                              However this does defies the purpose of using a tapeless format, as the conversion takes longer than acquisition ex tape would have...


                              Something must be wrong. I converted the 3-hour 30-minute long clip in just 12 minutes using the latest vesion of Clip Browse, which is vesion 2.6.

                              Are you using the latest version as well?

                              If not, I strongly suggest you do as it is significantly faster than previous versions in terms of converting XDCAM EX files into MXF files.

                              • 12. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                                claudioparoli Community Member

                                Thanks Robert, obviously THERE IS something wrong, it took much longer. I'm

                                actually using v2.6. As soon as I can I'll try using different HHD's (still

                                internal, SATA 2) to do the conversion, as I had to use read and write on

                                the same hard disk. I can't think of anything else, given the hardware

                                that's adequate rather than ideal, i7 920/12GB RAM/FX1700 and no RAID.

                                • 13. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                                  RDA972 Community Member

                                  Definitely use SATA 2 drives for the conversion.

                                  Good luck, as Bill would say.

                                  • 14. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                                    Bill Hunt CommunityMVP
                                    Good luck, as Bill would say.

                                     

                                     

                                     

                                    Back when I played competitive tennis, I'd always start each match with "good luck, and play well," to my opponents. At some tournament, my competitor approached my team-mates and said, "you know, I think that he actually means that." I did. I wanted each to play their best, get as many lucky breaks as I got, and then beat the heck out of them. Same with golf. I do not want to beat people having a bad day. I want to beat them on their best day.

                                     

                                    Hunt

                                    • 15. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                                      Scadge Productions Community Member

                                      I'm having exactly the same problem. I've got EX3 1080P footage from an event which took 2 hours so ended up with a file split across 10 extents. And I've tried everything I can think of for nearly 3 days to try and get Premiere CS4 to read the file, including getting Sony EX3 clip browser to render out an MXF file which still didn't play properly on the timeline.

                                       

                                      Finally I downloaded the trial version of Sony Vegas Pro 10 which read the files perfectly happily, played them in the timeline and rendered them out no problem.

                                       

                                      After investing in Adobe products for 6 years I've finally decided that the only product worth having is After Effects. I'm going to ditch the rest.

                                      • 16. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                                        RDA972 Community Member

                                        Why don't you give CS5 a shot?

                                        It now plays back beautifully all the different flavors of XDCAM EX including the files from the Sony PMW- 350/320 cameras.

                                        • 17. Re: Does Premiere dislike VERY long clips?
                                          Scadge Productions Community Member

                                          Yes, that old motto of the software development world "It's in the next release..." - I'll take it if it's free...