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Premiere Pro CC 2014 Possable Smooth Playback Solution

Cuda setting in premier pro
Hi All,

Happy holidays.  So I just updated my PPro to the lasted version as I saw a news blast they had released an update this week to build 8.2.0.  I tried an earlier v8.1 pre build 65 version and it had really bad playback – very choppy.  All excited, I launched the new version… and……. CRAP!!!!!  same thing.  However, I did catch something that I maybe didn’t see before:  Once you have updated to the latest version it appears the playback engine defaults to OpenCL instead of CUDA for accelerated playback and rendering.

I created a new project and switched the settings at startup and voila… the new project was playing back perfectly.  I then closed that new project and re-opened my older project that was stuttering and now it was playing back nicely too.  

I also did a quick export with matching sequence settings and it went about 3x speed.  Conversion to H264 was pretty slow taking roughly 16 minutes for a 2 minute piece.  1920 x 1080 30p  5D/GoPro mixed footage.


Well, I hope this helps a little.  I was searching for a while for this and got close but never saw anything about the playback engine.  I did the rollback to 8.0.1 once last time but now I’ll stick with the newest version as it seems to be working =)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays,

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Mavericks update vs Mountain Lion 10.8.5

Well it looks like we have a new OSX.  And Apple has left the “big cat” naming convention behind…  Ironically I just gave them $20 for the last Mountain Lion version 10.8.5.  I slurped the Cool-aid last week and joined the Adode family with the Creative Cloud solution.  I’m a little ticked that the sales person said “sure, you can run CC in 10.6.8”  and you can – as long as you don’t work in the video or audio business…  So off to the app store I went and upgrade I did.  And, everything was going swimmingly until about an hour ago when I restarted and was met with a big grey screen on all my monitors.  The lovely shade of grey (just one) seem to permanently stick there forever.  

  • I gave it a few minutes and then powered off.  
  • Restart. 
  • Restart….
  • Shutdown….
  • Restart with P+R+command+option – no luck.  
  • Now Restart with command+R and go for a recovery…

I’m now in the last 20 minutes of reloading a whole new OS from the recovery options.  I’m hopeful…  If no joy I have a full back up I did last week and won’t really loose anything important.  I’ll just have to bump back down to 10.6.8 and then find a copy of 10.8.4 or jump to Mavericks…

So I’m open to thoughts and suggestions here.  I’m running most of the usual suspects from Adobe: Ps, Pr, Ae, Au, Ame.  I have been told by someone who was using the developers version of Mavericks that it’s awesome with CC. I have also had the last hour to read on blogs that people are having problems with their CS6 and Mavericks.  So I don’t know if I want to make the leap just yet…

I did have the Adobe Applications Manager auto update this morning on the CPU in question… so maybe that has something to do with it???

Anyway.  Just thought I would put this up as I have a little time to kill (5 minutes remaining)

Hope you all are doing well out there and having a great day.

Until next time – Good Shooting (and editing or at least computing)

TDTrey

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Blackmagic Design has big announcements from IBC

Some really cool stuff coming from Blackmagic Design at this year’s IBC.  Looks like the new Beta 10 version of DaVinci Resolve is now available for download at Blackmagic Design Support.  This is the all new version that was originally announced at NAB earlier this year.  Some of the cool new features are:
  • Resolve Live-live grading of the incoming video signal from the camera
  • Enhanced editing features
  • Multitrack editing with support for up to 16 tracks of audio per clip
  • Expanded support for more NLE’s via XML and EDL
  • Support for OpenFX plugins
  • Support for mixed frame rates and media types
  • Fantastic updated to limiting, qualifiers and power windows
  • Outstanding workflow features for window burns, file naming overlay and audio syncing of secondary tracks to picture
  • and much more
Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design was quoted saying:

 “We are extremely excited to have this public beta of DaVinci Resolve 10 ready for download from the Blackmagic Design web site,” said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. “This is an important update for all DaVinci Resolve customers and dramatically boosts the ease of workflow in the television industry. This new public beta is available for high end DaVinci Resolve systems as well as the exciting free of charge DaVinci Resolve Lite edition which now includes support for UHD timelines and rendering. This is an exciting moment for DaVinci Resolve because its the biggest update to a DaVinci product line in 30 years!”

Another cool announcement was regarding the new Desktop Video version 10.  With the onset of 4K coming faster and faster BMD felt it was time to completely revamp the Desktop Video architecture from the ground up. Aimed at helping the UltraStudio 4K and the DeckLink 4 products, this upgrade will make the ever changing job of managing signals around the edit bay, design center, paint and color correction rooms a breeze.

Please check out all the new goodies at BlackmagicDesign.com

Until next time, Good Shooting
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ATOMOS Samurai Blade

So, the afternoon that the Samurai Blade was first in stock at B&H, I ordered it.  I had been waiting a while for it to be available and was happy it was finally on it’s way.
At CineGear I was able to check out quite a few recorders including the Atomos Samurai Blade and the Convergent Design Odyssey 7.  Both are excellent recorders.  Both have terrific feature sets.  Both are priced at $1295 USD. 
I went with the Blade.
      • It’s 5.5″ screen makes it a nice tiny recorder to hang on any rig.
      • It has a non proprietary storage media solution. (the Odyssey uses Convergent Design’s own SSDs to ensure compatibility with the recorder)
      • With the Blade, you can use SSDs or spinning 2.5″ hard drives right from your local computer store (as long as they meet the specs required by Atomos)  The fact that you can use spinning drives is one of the main reasons I went with the blade.  I can use a 500 gig laptop drive for tripod shoots and it will only cost me $60 or so and yields almost 5 hours of ProRes HQ.  For “run and gun” I’ll probably want to use SSDs because of the risk of shock to the drives.
      • I can run all day on a couple Sony NP-F970 batteries.
      • The Blade works well with both my EX3’s SDI out and my 5D3’s HDMI out.  For the HDMI from the Canon 5D3 I use the Atomos H2S converter.  It converts HDMI to HD-SDI and does 3:2 pulldown removal in real time.
      • The focus assist features work like my Zacuto EVF and SmallHD AC7 monitor.  I can see the focal plan coming my way as I roll through focus.
      • The waveform feature is very handy and pretty much a necessity these days on DSLR shoots.
        One of the other things I’ve been waiting for in a recorder is the ability to delay the audio coming into the recorder to compensate for the 5 frame LAG the Canon 5D3 has on it’s clean HDMI output.  When feeding the recorder audio directly you’ll end up with your picture behind your audio 5 frames.  Those clips will then need to be slipped back into sync on the timeline during editing.  However, (this was great) I wrote Atomos about the LAG and asked if there was anything in the works at Atomos to help.  The next day (at 3:02 am) Tech support sent me an e-mail saying they had released a new firmware update that morning and added an audio delay function and way better audio meters.  I was stoked as those were really the last 2 minor things that disappointed me about the Blade.

        The Convergent Design Odyssey 7 and 7Q look like excellent recorders as well.  At the time I needed my recorder the Odyssey units weren’t shipping and did not yet offer ProRes.  They are projected to ship a little later this year.  The 7Q will be able to do up to 4K resolutions  and also record in camera raw formats.
        All in all I think the Atomos Samurai Blade is a great choice for a flexible external field recorder and one that I will be able to use for some time to come.  As we all move ever closer to the 4K world new technology is going to keep sneaking up on us.  But for now HD recorders are a great way to go.

        Until next time – Good shooting

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        Adobe CS6 Production Suite and The Animated Fairytale

        Well, we just finished recording the narration for our new animated short – working title: “The Birthday Princess”.  It’s a cute story about a princess and her mother, the queen.  The princess learns many life lessons during one wonderful afternoon.

        We recorded at Stewart Sound in Santa Ana, California using ProTools as our DAW.  All the files are in straight AIFF.  Dave Myslek, “Wookie”, our engineer was awesome!!!  From there we will move almost completely into the Adobe Production Premium CS6 suite. We are editing the dialog in Adobe Audition for the rough cut.  We’ll also use Audition for the final sound design and mix out at the end of the project.  In the middle we will use a combination of Premiere Pro 6 and After Effects to bring the animation to life.
        Once the dialog is roughed in we will be giving it to our animators.  We’ll continue the sound design during the animation process and give them the final audio locked dialog + M&E tracks in the home stretch for fine tuning.  We’ll then use Premiere to do the final video edit and layback of the mix.  Output will be done with Adobe Media Encoder.
        We are using Smart Sound to create the music. Their product, Sonic Fire, is a fantastic tool to create an “almost” original score.  If you haven’t checked this software out yet, I highly recommend it.  You can create very original sounding pieces of music from their library and tailor the cues to meet and match your project.  Add hits, mood changes and even variations in side of one long piece of music.  We pulled our temp tracks while we were editing the narration selects – Very Cool.
        This is one of the new projects we are starting for 2013 at Polydactyl Pictures.  We hope to have good luck with it at the festivals.  It will also allow us to build “the machine” a little more before jumping into some of the larger projects we have on the horizon.

        I realized this piece sounds a lot like a sales pitch for many of the software companies – but I really just want to show a step by step of the process.  I want indie filmmakers have yet another road map to follow showing different kinds of projects and their workflows.  Indies (including ourselves) need to have resources at our fingertips to help keep us creative and forward thinking =)

        Stay tuned.  I’ll be posting our progress on “The Birthday Princess” as we go.  When we find out something cool (or problematic) I’ll give you an update and suggestions.

        Until next time, good shooting, editing, animating, mixing….

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        Premiere Pro CS6 and 6.0.1

        OK. So I’ve been on CS6 for about 5 weeks now.  I like a lot of the new features: better trimming, adjustment layers, Warp Stabilizer built in to Premiere Pro directly.  When up and running it’s great.  But in the last week I’ve had some issues with my tower stuttering and freezing.  I called Adobe last Friday at the end of the day and tried to give them a detailed explanation of the issue – they were very kind but kept passing me around from department to department… Frustrating.  Well I did a little more digging on my system and found a few more answers on my own.  Then, low and behold, I got a phone call from one of the lead tech support guys this morning following up as they could see there was not a resolution to the issue yet in the report.  VERY COOL =)

        Well the tech spent almost an hour with me on the phone and went through all the nooks and crannies of my Mac Pro to determine where the problem might be.  We tracked it down to a probable conflict with some behind the scenes apps interfering with the PPro performance.  (Keep in mind that this system is an 8 core, 2.93 Ghz box with 24 gigs of RAM and separate GPU and GUI graphics cards, RAID 5 @ 200MB/sec — not a sleeper)  We set up a ROOT account to log into and ran PPro 6.0.1 with no problems.  This means it must be in the building of my main account – not the Boot Drive or the system.  Good, I don’t have to blow the drive —  bad, I have to pluck out the offending sub apps or slowly bring across my prefs from the old account to the new one and the delete the old one when I’ve got a solid new one… Tic Toc – but doable.

        I’ve been testing 6.0.1 on my 17″ MBP and found it really nice, fast and friendly.  The issues were only with the big tower.  PPro 6 seems a lot like FCP 7 (or 8 =)  I think Adobe is really coming along with this product.  Very happy about that!!!  I’m moving almost 50 percent of my work into DSLR territory and the file size and Xfer/conversion time is a killer on fast turn arounds and on-set reviews.  I love just dropping the native files into PPro and going.  Hoverscrub and JKL functions really help to speed up the process of logging and picking clips on set.  I’m waiting for PluralEyes 3 to come out and everything will be in place.

        The majority of my work these days are talking heads for docs and sound bites so being able to turn them quickly is important.  I cut a series of interviews with CS 6.0 and was very pleased with the adjustment layers and the sound control.  I was prepared to got out to Davinci Resolve and Audition if I needed to but instead elected to stay in Premiere the whole time and make a go of it.  The client was very happy and didn’t need a second round of changes – Yay!!!

        Overall I think Premiere Pro is moving forward quite nicely.  Probably by 6.5 we’ll be in a place that feels a lot like where we left off with FCP7 – Sorry Apple… Still love the computers =)  I’m very happy with the openness of Adobe to listen to our needs and then do there best to get us the updates ASASP.  I think letting Apple do what they want to do – computers and mobile devices and letting software developers work on what the really want to work on will give us the best result in the long run… Too wordy???

        Well that’s it for now. Until next time, good shooting and good editing.

        TDTrey.com

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        Lovin’ Premiere Pro 5.5

        Well we are coming up on a year since Apple decided to improve Final Cut Pro for us… And while there are several sites and sources dedicated to the training needed to learn FCP X, it is still lacking in many of the features that we use every day as editors.

        Like many video professional last summer, I decided to give Premiere Pro (PPro) a try. I figured that if I was going to have learn a new NLE anyway I might as well make it one that is going to be around for a while. Plus Adobe was giving us that really great deal if we were switching from FCP. Who could pass that up?

        So just a couple quick notes on my progress.

        • I like using the FCP keyboard shortcuts. I feel right at home. I hope that they will bring even more of the shortcuts over as the app improves.
        • Bringing in all of my footage with out transcoding is awesome.
        • Knowing I’m using all the horse power under the hood is also great.
        • Dynamic Linking is real handy for moving from app to app in the suite.
        These features along with many of the improvements that are coming down the line are going to make PPro an editing force to be reckoned with.
        That’s just a quick look at Premiere Pro 5.5 from my perspective =)
        Until next time, good shooting.

        TDTrey.com