PPro CS3 and AVISynth Plugin issues

[evilc]

I have been using AVISynth and PPro together for years. Mainly to do the Deinterlace Smooth plugin that lets you create 50p footage from 25i source, enabling silky smooth slowmos.

I started using PPro CS3 recently, and when I try to do this, PPro starts getting clunky.

I am using Tom Ford's (http://urchin.earth.li/~tomford/avisynth/index.html) plugin at the moment, but I have tried others, and also the AMVPack which contains an older version of Tom Ford's plugin and a load of other goodies. In there it talks about an alternative ffdshow method as well, and also using AVIS to make fake AVIs, none of which I can get to work.

I can get the plugin to work though, but it causes issues...
The clips I am using at the moment are long takes (4-5 mins) with multiple bits I want to use from each. To keep track of things, I duplicate clips in PPro so I can name each clip. One way or another, the whole thing seems to crap out when it is opening more than a small number of files. CPU usage in PPro pegs at 99% for ages, but no disk activity. This especially happens when you open a PPro project. If you rename files so PPro can't see them and offline them at startup, then point PPro to them once the project is opened, it works, but this is a real pain to do every time you load a project, esp if PPro crashed on you (again).

There are so many bits of information I could give you to help me here, but at the moment this is more of a cursorary "Has anyone else had this issue and solved it?" type of post. Besides, it's lovely outside, and I have to go out and ride! I had to wait 5 days to make any kind of post, I just wanted to get something up for now, more info will be forthcoming if anyone decides to try and help me out.

If anyone wants to try and recreate, sample source file that I would use is here (http://www.evilc.com/tmp/deint_smooth_me.avi) (My new camera saves as PAL DivX AVI to it's SD card) and all the avisynth scripts are the same, like this:

#ASYNTHER Deinterlace Smooth
AVISource("deint_smooth_me.avi")
SmoothDeinterlace(tff=true, doublerate=true)


Ideally I am going to be wanting to frameserve 30 odd clips like that into PPro CS3 ranging from 1 min to 5mins+

TIA!

[Blue_MiSfit]

Avisynth input to Premiere is a little dicey. I dont think the creators of Avisynth really envisioned say 20 instances of it being open at the same time.

My advice to you is to save all your clips as lossless AVIs first - maybe Lagarith. Just do whatever deinterlacer you like and save the result. Then operate directly off those clips in Premiere.

Do make sure you've got the project configured correctly - I.E. it's not set up as a DV project but a desktop video project - progressive frames etc etc...

~MiSfit

[GrofLuigi]

I would go that route too - create intermediate files. Premiere doesn't play nice with avisynth, I don't know whether intentionally or not.

GL

[evilc]

Yeah, I know creating intermediates works, and I have had some success with using lots of avs files with older versions of premiere, I just wanted to know what the deal was with cs3 really.
It's all rather annoying really, as the only thing I really need avisynth to do is the deinterlace smooth. My other angle of attack is to find an NLE that can do the deinterlace smooth internally. I have a thread here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=137861) if anyone knows one that does.

Cheers for your replies anyway guys.

[Leak]

I would go that route too - create intermediate files. Premiere doesn't play nice with avisynth, I don't know whether intentionally or not.
I don't think Premiere intentionally "doesn't play nice with avisynth", but rather it's all filters of all AviSynth scripts being initialised on opening that takes a lot of time (and memory, of course, since many AviSynth filters allocate quite a lot of memory when they're instantiated) which delays everything a lot.

And that's nothing that can be changed on either the Premiere or AviSynth side since it's mostly in all the random filter plugins available for AviSynth, which can't all be magically changed...

[evilc]

Hmm, so you reckon removing all the filters from the plugin directory apart from deinterlacesmooth might help?
I see you are tagged as a "ffdshow/AviSynth wrangler" - I saw something about an ffdshow alternative? With AVIS? Couldn't get that to work, should I maybe be able to do it like that instead of using the avisynth plugin for ppro? I think maybe the plugin is one of the things causing the problem, so I would be interested to see what happened if I eliminated that.

[smok3]

if you can use the original avi's as sources, then why not just frameserve 2 avisynth&deinterlacesmooth the final edit (and just edit things interlaced)?

[evilc]

mm, ok, then open the avs in vdub to compress it?
not sure how that would work, could give it a go... I never compress in ppro anyway, divx rendering always seem to bork. I use debugmode frameserver to fs to vdub. I suppose I could fs to avisynth using debugmode, wrap that in an avs to deinterlace then compress in vdub.

Interesting angle, thanks.

[Leak]

Hmm, so you reckon removing all the filters from the plugin directory apart from deinterlacesmooth might help?
No, that won't really help.

You'd have to remove all the filters from your script, but that'd be missing the point, obviously.

I see you are tagged as a "ffdshow/AviSynth wrangler" - I saw something about an ffdshow alternative? With AVIS?
The MakeAVIS wrapper will exhibit the exact same problem - it's all the filters that are being used being loaded that makes things slow. The only thing to "fix" this is, as was already said, to render the AviSynth scripts into some lossless intermediate file.

[smok3]

I suppose I could fs to avisynth using debugmode, wrap that in an avs to deinterlace then compress in vdub.
yes, thats what i do from time to time.

[evilc]

yes, thats what i do from time to time.

I cannot get this to work...
If I slow down an interlaced clip in premiere, when it comes to frameserving that bit out, I get 2 frames forwards, 1 frame back as soon as I process it in avisynth.
I made sure I turned off frame blending in premiere and the project is interlaced, it definately seems to be smooth, just it intserts the wrong frame every now and then.

To replicate:

Take the deint_smooth_me.avi I linked above.
Drop into PPro
Right click, untick "Frame Blend"
Right click, Speed/Duration, set to 50%

Render movie:
I am using DebugMode Frameserver, set to RGB32 mode.
In "Keyframe and Rendering", I tried "upper field first" and "lower field first"
Take the signpost AVI, wrap in avs:


AVISource("Sequence 01.avi")
SmoothDeinterlace(tff=true, doublerate=true)


Import that avs into vdub - this is where I see the error.

I can change the avisynth script to

AVISource("Sequence 01.avi")
ComplementParity
SeparateFields


And I still see the issue in vdub.
I guess premiere is just handling the slowdown of the interlaced clip less than gracefully :(

[smok3]

shame, i do recall fighting similar issues, but i cannot recall what was the solution...