Some Tips & Tricks for Adobe Premiere Pro when working with HDV
Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 is the main NLE (non-linear editing system) I use. Many others exist (Vegas, Avid, Final Cut Pro), but starting CS3, Adobe did a pretty good job with Premiere Pro. It is fully compatible on Mac and PC, it’s easy to use and the file projects can easily be imported in After Effects without any rendering. As any software, Premiere Pro isn’t perfect and it can encounter some errors.
Capturing
Capturing with Premiere can be a real pain, especially with HDV footage (like Canon’s HV series). The scene detection somewhat works, with its abort drop frame option. Also, during capturing, the preview window will not work. It will display a screen in multiple languages, telling you that the media cannot be shown. Some of these bugs have been fixed in CS4, but I still recommend using HDVSplit.
HDVSplit is free and performs way better. Read about it in this post.
Pre-processing
Once you have your footage ready and you import it in Premiere, the software will perform automatically 3 crucial tasks.
1. Indexing
2. Audio conforming
3. Generating peak file
This process can take forever and depends of the length of your footage. A progress bar is shown at the lower right corner of Premiere. You won’t be able to use or edit the footage until the process is finished. It is extremely import not to mess up this process, because you will generate errors. Don’t touch the window and don’t close Premiere. Have some patience and wait for the process to finish. If the software crashes or you couldn’t help yourself messing around with it, you still have some hope. If you realize that once you reopen Premiere is continuously loops the progress bar, it might be because an error has been generated. Close Premiere and go to the saved folder (the place you saved your Premiere project) and locate the extra files that were created. Usually these files have a .xmp extension. Delete them and restart Premiere. Load your project and don’t touch anything!
Unsynchronized Audio
This is a huge bug that occurred to me lately. I import the footage, everything looks OK, but at some point I realize that my audio is not in sync. This can get really frustrating and takes lots of time to resolve. If your HDV file has any dropouts, audio will become out of sync.
The easiest fix is to export your video’s source audio in WAV format with the software of your choice. TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress can do this (this is the software I recommended for the 24P workflow).
Other than these little issues, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 is great a software. Adobe has always created great products and with its 64bit version for CS5, performance will be increased drastically.
Anyone havening other issues with Premiere?
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I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
And you et an account on Twitter?
@zebra29: Sure you can. Please let me know your blog’s address.
Hi, can you clarify- when you’re having problems syncing, is the reason for the unsynced audio only dropped frames? In other words, if you don’t have any dropped frames, there aren’t sync issues? I’ve never set premiere to abort capture on dropped frames, it just never occured to me, what a GREAT idea! I can’t tell you how many hours i’ve spent sifting through a video looking for where the dropped frames are so i can cut and resync (to audio and the other cameras). Premiere doesn’t tell you how many times frames were dropped or where they are located, just that it dropped X frames.. Thanks for the tip.
FWIW i don’t have problems seeing the capture preview in premiere (cs3) but then, i’m on windows..
@Rob Trujillo: I had some audio syncs issues other than dropped frames. When I play the footage in a player like VLC, everything is fine. When I import it in Premiere, at a certain point I have a red screen. At that point I start having audio syncs. It is a bug in Premiere CS4. I think this does not happened in CS3.
In general, if your footage is ok, you are better off exporting the audio in Wave before importing the footage to your NLE.
Premiere doesn’t tell you anything about dropped frames, unless you capture your footage directly from the camera with it.
I am on Windows and Mac. What camera are you using? Again it might be CS3.
Over an hour on a dual quad core with 16GB of RAM for CS5 to index a 20 minute , 4GB .m2t file ? Doesn’t seem right – especially since CPU / core usage is at 5-10% ? Are there any settings or tweaks to be done? (The .m2t files are on a Sony HVR-DR60 HDD hooked up to an HVR-V1U and fed to the computer via FireWire…
@Robin Majumdar: Did you transfer the files to your computer’s internal HDD or esata drive? Never edit over usb/firewire…way too slow.
I haven’t used CS5 yet, but I don’t believe that is the factor for what you are having. I have an overcloked i7 (3.6GHZ) with 12GB of DDR3 1600Mhz. I don’t work anymore with my HV30 (sold it), so no more m2t files for me. I am going the DSLR route.
If I recall my indexing, it was not taking so long. Maybe your HDD is really slow (5.6k??). 7.2k at least is needed. I have two Raptor HDD in Raid. If you want inexpensive fast drives, go with WD 1TB Black Edition. They are super fast (have over 6 of them for backup/archiving).
what should be minimum memory to work with hd clips.
when i try to preview clip imported from canon xh a1. the preview is jerky.
i have 2 gigs of ram
win7 32 bit
@vipul: I am not sure.
What I know is that Win 7 requires 1Gb of Ram.http://windows.microsoft.com/systemrequirements
You also need a good CPU. HD clips vary depending on their encoder. If ever you don’t want to invest in RAM, try Neo Scene. http://www.cineform.com/neoscene/
I convert all my HDV and AVCHD footage.
More RAM is always good, and DDR2 is extremely cheap.
I work on a i7 overclocked to 3.6Ghz with 16Gb of DDR3 and everything works like a charm.
Premiere cs 3 is an absolute disaster.
Capturing hd, audio is SECONDS out of sync.
They can’t fix it.
They should be called aDopey.
Never again i buy another dopey product!
@Hate adobe: Yea they always have bugs. I still edit everything in Premiere, but my main tool is After Effects. If I was to work 10h a day in Premier I would most probably go crazy, but AE rules for post.
You can try Vegas, it is a widely used tool.
Or go the pro way with Avid.
Here is a list of some NLE apps: http://ae.tutsplus.com/articles/roundup/12-non-linear-editing-apps-you-should-know-of/