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1. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
Todd_Kopriva Jul 23, 2011 9:33 AM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)> - Since it's marked yellow, not red, I can't render a preview.
That's not true. You just need to use a different command (Render Entire Work Area) to render previews in this case. See the section "how the render bars relate to playback commands" in this article for details.
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2. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
Fuzzy Barsik Jul 23, 2011 10:03 AM (in response to Todd_Kopriva)...I can't render a preview...
If Render Entire Work Area is grey, just click any clip on the timeline and copy it into clipboard Ctrl/Cmd + C, and option turns black (i.e. becomes accessible) -
3. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable Jul 23, 2011 11:00 AM (in response to Fuzzy Barsik)If
Render Entire Work Area is grey, just click any clip on the timeline
and copy it into clipboard Ctrl/Cmd + C, and option turns black (i.e.
accessible)
OK, that's what's going on...
Still, the underlying issue remains.
None of this would be an issue if the file reader modules weren't made of
molasses. Right now we have graphics cards capable of rendering enormous
filter stacks on HD material, if only we could get the HD material off the
disks...
P
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4. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
Fuzzy Barsik Jul 23, 2011 11:15 AM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)Not sure I follow you...
Are you still unable to get access to Render Entire Work Area option or rendering Entire Work Area doesn't help?
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5. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable Jul 24, 2011 5:19 AM (in response to Fuzzy Barsik)Not sure I follow you...
Are you still unable to get access to Render Entire Work Area option
or rendering Entire Work Area doesn't help?
It does help, but it's a workaround to a problem that shouldn't exist, and
it can be very finickity to do. If I have, for instance, a timeline on
which roughly half of all shots fail to play in realtime, I'm faced with
the option of either rendering twice as much stuff as I need to render, or
manually placing the work area over every individual clip and doing a
"render entire", which takes forever. This also causes other problems with
disk bandwidth: normally you'd have your scratch disks set to somewhere
other than your main media drive, but then if it's rendering uncompressed
previews, they need to be on a fast disk - what a can of worms! Why on
earth did they change the behaviour of the "return" key... why can't we
have access to the "render what needs rendering" logic?
The underlying problem is that this stuff should all be renderable in
realtime. One HD clip in about the most undemanding codec you can imagine
(a raw DPX or R210 AVI) with a single CUDA accelerated color corrector on
it should not be a performance problem.
P
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6. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
Fuzzy Barsik Jul 24, 2011 5:48 AM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)...I'm faced with the option of either rendering twice as much stuff as I need to render, or manually placing the work area over every individual clip and doing a "render entire"...
This is not true in general.
You are able to adjust Work Area to your needs at any time, and PrPro never renders twice what has already been rendered until you change that piece.
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7. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable Jul 24, 2011 6:15 AM (in response to Fuzzy Barsik)PrPro never render twice what has already been rendered until you change
that piece.
Yes, but if it hasn't been rendered, and doesn't need to be, doing a
"render entire" will render all of it regardless, which is time consuming
and a waste of disk space.
It used to work better than this.
P
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8. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
Fuzzy Barsik Jul 24, 2011 6:23 AM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)As I have already mentioned, you are able to adjust Work Area to your needs at any time.
PrPro won't render anything outside your Work Area borders, so no extra work.
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9. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
Bill Gehrke Jul 24, 2011 6:37 AM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)To me it sounds like you do not have the horsepower (CPU, RAM, Disks, and/or Tuning) to preview a yellow bar clip.
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10. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
Fuzzy Barsik Jul 24, 2011 6:56 AM (in response to Bill Gehrke)This is also a bit of delusion... See Todd's link above
yellow: This segment of the sequence does not have a rendered preview file associated with it. Playback will play by rendering each frame just before the CTI reaches it. Playback at full quality will probably be in real time (but it might not be)
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11. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable Jul 24, 2011 7:41 AM (in response to Bill Gehrke)To me it sounds like you do not have the horsepower (CPU, RAM, Disks,
and/or Tuning) to preview a yellow bar clip.
This is not the issue. I've said this before (links in the first post) but
I'll recap it here: it'll play format X, which is for instance a 10-bit
format, but you'll then find it won't play format Y, which is the 8 bit
equivalent, and thus less demanding. The list of what it can play and what
it can't does not relate to how hard those formats actually are to play,
in terms of disk bandwidth. This is without any effects at all.
The RAID benchmarks at (as of right now, in the current fragmentation
state) 380MB/s, which is very nearly twice what's required for
uncompressed 1080p25 10-bit RGB. Lots of other programs, including VLC,
Blackmagic Framelink, and my own code, read DPX sequences at 40 frames per
second or more.
The hardware is more than adequate. The software is failing. I'm not a
full time software engineer, so if I can write a DPX file reader in C#
that hits rate, you'd have thought the combined might of Adobe might be
able to do a bit better than this.
P
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12. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable Jul 24, 2011 7:46 AM (in response to Fuzzy Barsik)PrPro won't render anything outside your Work Area borders, so no extra
work.
Yes, but it -will- insist on rendering -absolutely everything- inside the
work area, whether it's required or not, which is time consuming, a waste
of storage space, and should be completely unnecessary.
The old behaviour of the return key was much more useful: render anything
that has effects on it. Then, if you still had trouble, you could force
render the whole work area, but as a practical matter, that was rarely an
issue. Now we have the choice between render nothing and render everything
- the old "render clips with effects" logic is no longer available.
There are many fixes for this. Adobe could provide an "always render"
dummy effect that ensured a clip went red-bar. They could restore the old
functionality of the return key. They could set a keyboard shortcut for
that functionality (CTRL+RETURN?), and they could fix the red/yellow/green
bar system to actually reflect the playability of the clip (especially
after the system has had a chance to actually try playing the clip, which
should give it all the information it needs).
But the best fix is to make it actually able to play in realtime what it
claims it can. Make it faster. Especially make the uncompressed file
readers suck less.
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13. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
Fuzzy Barsik Jul 24, 2011 8:02 AM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)But the best fix is to make it actually able to play in realtime what it claims it can
It DOES play in real time what it claims it can - i.e. green and gray sections.
Sorry, no use to continue. Unsubscribed.
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14. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
Jeff Bellune Jul 24, 2011 8:13 AM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)Adobe could provide an "always render" dummy effect that ensured a clip went red-bar.
Any non-accelerated effect that has default values that are essentially null will work. I like the Broadcast Colors effect for most footage. Save it as a Preset and call it "Always Render". Then it'll always be available, and at the top of the Effects panel as well.
But the best fix is to make it actually able to play in realtime what it claims it can. Make it faster.
Steve Hoeg already told you in another thread that a DPX sequence made up of your sample DPX file played without dropped frames on his system. I think another look at your hardware configuration and components as compared to his would help you and Adobe. It's obvious your disk setup is fast, so something else is throwing Pr for a loop on your system. If it was a generic problem intrinsic to the DPX importer, then it would show up everywhere. You mentioned BM R210 AVI files; so I assume you've got BM hardware installed on your system? I'd start there.
-Jeff
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15. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable Jul 24, 2011 8:24 AM (in response to Jeff Bellune)Steve Hoeg already told you in another thread that a DPX sequence made
up of your sample DPX file played without dropped frames on his system.
We know this. If you give it about a gigabyte a second of disk bandwidth,
it'll just about hit rate. The argument is not that we can't make it work,
the argument is that the requirements are unreasonable.
Media Express, VLC and my own code plays these files fine. The only
remaining variable is Premiere Pro.
P
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16. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
JSS1138 Jul 24, 2011 9:12 AM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)One HD clip in about the most undemanding codec you can imagine (a raw DPX or R210 AVI) with a single CUDA accelerated color corrector on it should not be a performance problem.
I'd probably agree, but since it is a problem, perhaps some experimenting with others might be in order.
UT is a lossless and free codec that seems to work very well in HD resolutions for PP, especially in YUV mode. Try some clips using that codec, just to see what the performance is like. Report back the results.
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17. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
JSS1138 Jul 24, 2011 9:16 AM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)Adobe could provide an "always render"
dummy effect that ensured a clip went red-bar.
Many non-accelerated effects are good for this. Just don't change the parameters from their default, which essentially leaves you with a null effect, but still turns the bar red.
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18. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
Bill Gehrke Jul 24, 2011 10:49 AM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)Media Express, VLC and my own code plays these files fine. The only
remaining variable is Premiere Pro.
P
Guess what none of those is capable of editing!
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19. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable Jul 24, 2011 3:54 PM (in response to Bill Gehrke)Guess what none of those is capable of editing!
Quite so. And Premiere is incapable of playing the files, which leaves us
at rather an impasse.
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20. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
JSS1138 Jul 24, 2011 4:15 PM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)Well, since the DPX files at least seem to work for someone else just fine, it leaves "you" more than "us" at an impasse.
So the direction of inquiry here might need to change from "What is Adobe doing to fix things?" into "What is wrong with my system?" That's why I recommend testing the UT codec. I know from several others that such files work fine, even from a single hard drive. If they also give you playback issues, that's a reeeeeally good sign that the problem is with your system.
And if they do work fine, then you have at least an alternative work flow which allows production to continue, even though the mystery remains unsolved with the problem codecs.
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21. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable Jul 24, 2011 4:40 PM (in response to JSS1138)So the direction of inquiry here might need to change from "What is
Adobe doing to fix things?" into "What is wrong with my system?" That's
why I recommend testing the UT codec.
OK, I can do that, but I already have some codecs that work, and others
that don't.
Therefore it's a software issue. I've tried to be as polite about this,
but to put it plainly: it doesn't work right, and it is impossible to
avoid the conclusion that it's Premiere that's wrong because it's the sole
remaining variable.
P
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22. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
JSS1138 Jul 24, 2011 6:33 PM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)It's also difficult to avoid the reality that if it truly were a PP problem, it would happen for others.
That it doesn't kind of throws a monkey wrench into that idea. That's why we're looking for other, hidden variables.
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23. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
Jeff Bellune Jul 24, 2011 6:51 PM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that it's Premiere that's wrong because it's the sole remaining variable.
So, if I understand you correctly, you're saying that there is no possible way that the hardware you have installed on your system, and the driver software that interfaces with that hardware, could be interfering with or affecting Premiere's playback or rendering of the video? You may be right, but that's a pretty bold statement.
I've tried to be as polite about this
Considering the frustration this must be causing you, you've actually been *very* polite compared to some posters we've had over the years.
-Jeff
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24. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
Bill Gehrke Jul 24, 2011 6:58 PM (in response to OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable)We have a very simple way to check your configuration, Premiere Pro BenchMark (PPBM5)
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25. Re: Can't preview "yellow bar" stuff
OneOfTheseWillBeAvailable Jul 25, 2011 11:11 AM (in response to Jeff Bellune)>> it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that it's Premiere that's
>> wrong because it's the sole remaining variable.
So, if I understand you correctly, you're saying that there is no
Sort of. At some point, it is the responsibility of the software to be
reasonably compatible with a range of environments. If I had several other
pieces of software giving the same trouble, I would be making these points
elsewhere, but that's not the case - everything else works fine. If some
microscopic sub-option of configuration is causing this - as is of course
entirely likely to be the case - then I would be overwhelmed with joy to
work constructively with someone to figure it out - but the only someone
who can really do that is Adobe.
And on another level, it is absolutely a disk bandwidth issue. If you
throw a ridiculous amount of bandwidth at it, Premiere works fine with all
codecs. Everything else works fine, and Premiere works fine on some codecs
without demanding excessive bandwidth. These facts localize the problem
really rather well to Premiere's file demuxer and codec handling modules,
and that's not a political point made in anger, that's just an engineering
deduction.
We have a very simple way to check your configuration, http://ppbm5.com
I'll look at that as soon as I get a free couple of hours.
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