Some quick likes and dislikes of editing a recent project with Premiere Pro CS6

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Over the last 2 days I cut a short film on Premiere Pro CS6. It was shot on a Canon 5D and I had no time to convert the footage, so I figured Premiere Pro was the way to go because I wouldn’t need to re-compress the footage.

I used Plural Eyes to sync the footage to the external microphone, and it worked, though took some finessing, and some manual syncing and I would say it got about 75% of it.

Then I started cutting and had all the crash issues from my earlier post on the NVIDIA GTX 285, but was able to switch to my NVIDIA QUADRO FX 48000 and mostly cleared up the issues. No more serious Error messages, and no more screen going black. Still some random crashes, but nothing too bad, that a quick restart wouldn’t get running again.

I was running the footage out of premiere pro through my DV deck to an external NTSC monitor, and it looked great.

Now I edit in Apple Final Cut Pro 7 and AVID Media Composer, but have always preferred some things of Final Cut Pro. And there are some things about Premiere Pro that I like and some I don’t.

I don’t like how you can only set a duration for your default transition in Premiere Pro, and you can’t set up a favorites bin of effects either per project or within the system. I would always make a bin of favorites in Final Cut Pro with various lengths, and was quickly able to apply any transition I wanted.

I also don’t like how on a clip in the timeline that is not butted up to another clip, all transitions start at it’s cut and can’t be put center on the cut or ending at the cut. You have to extend the clip to make the transition go further than the cut. Now it is pretty easy if you select the cut first as you can just hit E to extend the clip to the playhead, even if a transition is already on it. And I have set command-D to apply the default transition, so I can easily extend clips and apply the default transition with one hand (awesome), but I still want a bin of my favorite effects, and if not in the effects browser, let me do them in the project like I can do with AVID.

The integration with Adobe After Effects is a thing of beauty. Just being able to make changes so quickly is totally awesome. Once you have either imported a After Effects Sequence or sent files to one from Premiere, you just save changes in AE and they show up in Premiere, and you render in Premiere. AWESOME! This makes Premiere the best program for graphics intensive stuff bar none. I think Premiere Pro should become the premiere program for Direct Response because of this alone!

When Snapping is turned on, why does the cut tool not snap to the playhead. Now it seems to still cut at the playhead if you are close, but if that is the case, why not snap?

I really don’t like the Time Remapping feature within a clips effects pallet. It is a different kind of keyframe, where you split it to make it softer, but doesn’t work nearly as well as just being able to bezier curve it, or even easy ease or or ease in and out. This should be just like it is in After Effects and it just ins’t, and doesn’t work as well because of it!

Honestly I had some trouble with the select all to the right tool (hold down A to activate). It sometimes put tracks out of sync on me. And it only does one track unless you hold down shift and click while holding shift to select all. I like how you would hit A twice to change it in Final Cut, and think having to hold down 2 keys makes it more difficult.

I don’t like the track selection tools. I keymapped the select all audio and video selections, but they don’t seem to always work, and I often had to manually turn tracks on and off. Now this is slightly upset by not having to set tracks to ripple delete gaps between clips, or even when you do an extract, but still I like how you can option click in Final Cut to select just that track, and think Premiere Pro could use that functionality (as well as making the select and deselect all tracks actually work all the time).

I would like the audio waveform in clips to be a tab like it is in Final Cut Pro. I know you can switch it via right clicking and going down a level and selecting Audio Track, but that is making it much more difficult, than just a tab, which can be quickly switched to. It is better than AVID, as I like to see my Audio in the VIewer and not in the Timeline), but still has too many steps to do something I do so often.

And I know it is a problem with audio from 2 sources, but I hate not being able to go into the audio linked to the video and open it in the viewer and put markers in it for where i want to cut. I often work this way in Final cut Pro, as the audio waveform is so much bigger in the viewer than the timeline, but here Ic couldn’t do it as it was linked to different video I think. I would love to be able to wrap the new audio with the video so it acts like a normal clip and you could use it like it is a single piece of audio and video.

Overall I have really enjoyed using Premiere Pro (though some of the keyboard shortcuts still vex me), and would like to see it supplant Final Cut Pro, because while i like AVID, it is still the same old program, and Premiere feels more powerful, and faster (with a CUDA card at least). I plan on posting more impressions on it in the future.

Premiere Pro CS6 having some serious issues with NVIDIA GTX 285

I started on a job today shot on a 5D and didn’t have time to convert to ProRES, so I decided to cut it in Premiere Pro CS6 to save conversion time, plus since I have a compatible PluralEyes to sync off camera audio. It took a bit of time to do the sync, but after I watched my footage and then began cutting, but Premiere Pro could not have been more unstable. I crashed over and over, and was losing time and work. So much that I tried exporting to quicktime, but it was just going to take too long to render the timeline so I could edit.

I found this thread on the Adobe Forums, and found my exact problem.

I’m on a MacPro 4,1, Lion 10.7.4, CS6.0.1, 32GB RAM, GTX 285 with the latest nVidia and CUDA drivers.  I am seeing 2 primary issues:

 

Lots of Serious Error crashes.  This happens without any noticeable pattern – sometimes with the title tool, trim monitor, or simply just scrubbing the timeline.  It seems to happen more frequently with Dynamic Links in the timeline.  Also, I believe it is happening more often (or maybe exclusively)  with the MPE GPU option enabled.  I think in Software Only mode, it may not be present, although further testing required.

 

Also, I am having an issue where Pr will display black only in the source and program monitors, unless I click around the timeline and will get flashes of images.  This is remedied by changing over to Software Only for the MPE.  It seems to be worse if Safari is running.

I was having the same issues exactly, and have the same system setup, but with only 24 GB of RAM, and am running Mountain Lion 10.8.0. I kept having to trash my prefs which worked for about 5 minutes before I crashed again.

So I decided to remove the GTC285 and put in my QUADRO FX 4800. It is old and slow, but still pretty decent. I installed it about 2 hours ago, and Premiere Pro has been rock solid afterwards.

This shows it is either an NVIDIA driver or CUDA issue, or something in the Premiere Code with the GTX 285, as with the QUADRO FX 4800 it is running like a dream.

Adobe and NVIDIA need to fix this fast, because this is a major issue. If it was not for me having a spare video card I would have been SOL, as I have to finish this project and fast!

UPDATE: Had one crash after 3 and a half hours, but I have been saving now, back to the old paranoid saving all the time. Still unbelievable the difference with the different video card!

UPDATE AGAIN: And crashed again! OK, so not rock solid, but still much better than it was with the GTX 285.

Red Giant has released Trapcode Suite 12

Trapcode Suite 12 from Red Giant on Vimeo.

Check it out at Red Giant, where it is $899 or between $99-$499 for an upgrade.

The new upgrade includes Trapcode Mir a brand new motion design tool.

Trapcode Mir from Red Giant on Vimeo.

It now includes 105 Particular/Shine Guru Presets from MoGraph artist David Vinson.

And maintenance updates for Lux, Echospace, Particular and Form.

The Guru presets help, but this doesn’t seem like much of an overall suite upgrade for the price, especially if you already have the guru presets! I mean a new app, that you may or may not use, and no update to the rest of the suite, and the upgrade costs the same as buying the app. Red Giant obviously included the Guru presets to make this seem more worthwhile, but at $99, it seems a bit much when all you get is a maintenance release for all the apps you know and love.

Blackmagic Design released DaVinci Resolve 9 Beta and a new Manual

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You can download it from their web site right now. It is available for Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems.

They have had a significant user interface re-design, automatic 3D eye matching, multi layering timelines, additional xml support, log grading, 16 channels of audio, automatic audio sync, and the ability to have multiple frame rates in a single sequence (if you click a check box). You can read the press release or just download it now.

I built a DIY PVC Tabletop/Skate Dolly with help from DIY Photography

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Here it is in all it’s Glory, a bit different than the one they show, but perfectly adequate and can’t wait to start using it. It seems to roll pretty smoothly.

Check out the article and instructions by Martin Taylor at DIY Photography.

Now I tried following his instructions directly but at Home Depot I could not find a few of the pats, mainly the 4x connectors and the 4 x 3″ risers threaded on both ends (though now I am thinking maybe they are in the sprinklers sections instead of the PVC section).

Anyway, I did it with a couple of pieces of 3/4″ PVC pipe and a hack saw. My cuts weren’t straight, but when I glued them in they were perfectly straight, so it worked fine. It is a little bigger than his example (I had to get connectors for the caps since my 3/4″ didn’t have threads on the ends). And I had to get T parts without threads on the bottom, as I didn’t have the threaded extensions. Luckily having a bigger wheel base might make it a bit more stable.

Also I would change the screws to 1/4″ and 2 inches long instead of 1.5″ long. You could make them smaller with washers, and you could put more washers to make the whole thing more stable. These screws worked, but didn’t leave much space, and I had to shave the whole in the top piece to allow the screw to stick out at all.

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And I had gotten my scooter wheels years back to build a dolly (actually got 8 of them) at the dollar store for $1 for 2. Wish I had bought more now! Overall including a hack saw, the parts, the wheels, the pvc, screws and the glue cost me around $32, but that was with only $2 for wheels, and it could be more like $20. Looks like you can get them at Amazon for $4.99 with $5.34 shipping, though hopefully that would cut down if you ordered more than one set, though not sure. And this obviosly still needs a head, but you can get this one at Amazon for $12.99, or this one with a quick release plate for only 22.95.

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Am already thinking of building a low mode one, that would only go straight (this one can turn either set of wheels) byt taking out the elbow pieces and just going to the middle T, and that way the camera would be lower.

MacMatrix Updates SideEffects to work with Mountain Lion

MacMatrix has updated SideEffects which combines SIMBL and and ColorfulSidebar to return colored icons to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. The best part is having your custom drive icons back (as they really do help you hit them).

The only thing that did not work for me was the finder restart added to your Users startup items, and I had to use my own I made with Automator, but I am back to color icons.

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Don’t these look so much better, and I love my custom icons as well!

I am still have some SIMBL crashes though, but have been in contact with the creator to see if we can clear them up, as I love my color finder icons!