Ripped MPEG2 stutters in Premiere Pro

[dwallersv]

Woe is the newb... :(

I want to cut out a small scene from a Star Trek original series DVD and use it in a video I'm making for my kids (they're the stars).

So, I rip an M2V (MPEG2) file from the DVD with DVDDecrypter of the chapter I want. Convert the audio to a WAV file. Video plays in WMP just fine -- just the way it looks on the DVD.

Import the M2V and WAV file in to Adobe Premiere Pro, and put them in a timeline. Play it. At various points in playing, groups of frames seem to repeat, looking jerky. I thought maybe I needed to render the whole thing, so I render it down to an AVI. Play it back in WMP, and those jerky repeated frames are there. What gives?

Does this have something to do with the fact that the video is 24 frame film? Premiere Pro can seem to tell this from the M2V file (shows up in the asset properties), so I would expect it would know how to deal with this.

Anyway, I suspect there is simply something I need to configure in Adobe Premiere to make this work right. Any help is greatly appreciated!!

[jeffareid]

I'm guessing that it could be due to encoded frames. I don't know if dvdecrypter removes the encoding. I tried the same thing with the same results. Here's what works though.

Use dvddecrypter to read in the VOB files. Use dgindex (dgdecoder / dgmpgdec) to convert VOB into m2v and wav files. You use the save project / demux video option to do this. Website for dgindex:

http://neuron2.net/dgmpgdec/dgmpgdec.html

Import the mwv and wav files into Adobe Premiere. Right click on the m2v file and change interpret footage to dv1 widescreen (pixel ratio 1.2).

If the video isn't going back to DVD but just staying on the computer as a WMV or similar video file you can crop off the black bars by setting project size to 720(wide screen) x 368. Here is a table of movie aspect ratios versus project size assuming you use a pixel aspect ratio of 1.2:1 (dv widescreen option in premiere):

2.35:1 => 720x368
2.00:1 => 720x432
1.85:1 => 720x468
1.80:1 => 720x480

If you're making a DVD, leave the project at 720x480.

[dwallersv]

Thanks for your quick and helpful response, Jeff... I'll give that a try right away.

A question, though: What are "encoded frames"? What is their purpose?

EDIT: Also, is it possible to produce a DV format avi file from Gordian Knot / AutoGK / DGIndex, etc., suitable for editing in PPro? MPEG is a lousy format for linear editing for some reason (playback really poor).

The ideal would be to end up with an avi with video and audio that is essentially the same as the DV format that comes off my video camera (and appears to be uncompressed).

[jeffareid]

Maybe if you use Virtual Dub to create an AVI file, and DGIndex to create a wav file the audio will be synced up.

[ammck55]

Premiere Pro is infamous for choking on imported MPEG-2 files and the accompanying audio. Here's a link to an Adobe document that has a little info on Conforming Audio (http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/317366.html), but your main source of solutions for Adobe products will be the Adobe User to User Forums (http://www.adobe.com/support/forums/main.html). You'll have to take the time to create an account before you can access the forums, but it's no big deal. Like any forum, the first set of instructions at the top of their forums will tell you to read all of the FAQ's and Sticky's before posting. There are at least one, and maybe two FAQ/Sticky doc's in the Premiere Pro sub-fora that deal strictly with imported audio issues. Take your time, go through these methodically, and you'll find a fix; you might not find it on your first run-through, but don't let that discourage you, keep on digging, it'll be there, somewhere.

If you post in the Adobe forums, be sure to have your facts lined up and present as much troubleshooting information as possible; silly posts or ones including little evidence of "self-help" might be ignored, or even get the seat of your pants heated up a bit. ;)

ammck55

[dwallersv]

Premiere Pro is infamous for choking on imported MPEG-2 files and the accompanying audio. Here's a link to an Adobe document that has a little info on Conforming Audio (http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/317366.html), but your main source of solutions for Adobe products will be the Adobe User to User Forums (http://www.adobe.com/support/forums/main.html). You'll have to take the time to create an account before you can access the forums, but it's no big deal. Like any forum, the first set of instructions at the top of their forums will tell you to read all of the FAQ's and Sticky's before posting. There are at least one, and maybe two FAQ/Sticky doc's in the Premiere Pro sub-fora that deal strictly with imported audio issues. Take your time, go through these methodically, and you'll find a fix; you might not find it on your first run-through, but don't let that discourage you, keep on digging, it'll be there, somewhere.

If you post in the Adobe forums, be sure to have your facts lined up and present as much troubleshooting information as possible; silly posts or ones including little evidence of "self-help" might be ignored, or even get the seat of your pants heated up a bit. ;)
Thanks for the followup. A few clarifications though...

I'm not having trouble with the audio. I'm experiencing what seem to be extra, repeated frames in the M2V ripped directly off the DVD with DVDDecrypter, only when imported into Premier Pre. If I render the clip to an uncompressed AVI, the extra repeating frames are still there.

I don't see any of this if I just play the ripped M2V in WMP. So, I suspect some sort of codec issue. Jeff's guess at some sort of "encoded frames" (which I'm ignorant to) sounds plausible.

The ultimate question is, though why can't PPro interpret/decode the M2V the same way as WMP? Is there a codec I need to get into PPro somehow?

A workaround is to simply recode any clips I want to import using GKnot, and use the transcoded versions. This works, but is is annoyingly time-consuming, degrades quality, and in theory shouldn't be necessary.

Adobe forums: I am a member, and have posted this issue twice there. No useful response.

[ammck55]

Take a look at this info I found on the Mainconcept MPEG-2 Plugin (http://www.abcdv.com/article/articleview/291/1/81). If it works as like it's supposed to, apparently you can import and edit MPEG-2 files without the need to convert to DV or uncompressed AVI, first.

Here's input from the PPro Wiki FAQ on the Adobe site, you might have already seen it...How do I import "xyz" format? (http://ppro.wikicities.com/wiki/FAQ#How_do_I_import_.E2.80.9Cxyz.E2.80.9D_format_files.3F) This info pretty much supports what you've found on your own, so far.

I've not used the MPEG-2 plugin for the Mainconcept Encoder so I don't personally know how much of this info is in conflict, there seems to be plenty of that going on with PPro and MPEG-2 import. Wish I had a magic bullet to hand over....

ammck55

[dwallersv]

Take a look at this info I found on the Mainconcept MPEG-2 Plugin (http://www.abcdv.com/article/articleview/291/1/81). If it works as like it's supposed to, apparently you can import and edit MPEG-2 files without the need to convert to DV or uncompressed AVI, first.

Here's input from the PPro Wiki FAQ on the Adobe site, you might have already seen it...How do I import "xyz" format? (http://ppro.wikicities.com/wiki/FAQ#How_do_I_import_.E2.80.9Cxyz.E2.80.9D_format_files.3F) This info pretty much supports what you've found on your own, so far.

I've not used the MPEG-2 plugin for the Mainconcept Encoder so I don't personally know how much of this info is in conflict, there seems to be plenty of that going on with PPro and MPEG-2 import. Wish I had a magic bullet to hand over....Hey, thanks man! That looks cool. It is the "ultimate" solution, if it actually works. I haven't tried it yet -- will today.

However, thanks to Jeff's advice which set me off in the right direction, I have more or less solved the problem. Not the "ultimate" solution, but close.

Basically, I needed a DV codec. Went over to www.free-codecs.com (http://www.free-codecs.com), and grapped the Panasonic DV codec (http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Panasonic_DV_Codec.htm).

Then, a two-step process: Use BeSweet (fot it as part of the Gordian Knot distribution) to transcode the audio from AC3 to WAV (PCM). The, use VirtualDubMod (again part of the Gordian Knot distribution) to transcode the M2V Video to DV, and wrap it with the aforementioned WAV audio stream in an AVI.

On my machine it works out to being roughly a real-time process, so there's that annoying extra step that takes as long as the running time of the target video, but I can live with it -- the resulting DV AVI edits in Premiere Pro just like the footage that comes off my camera.

Anyone reading who would like me to post a detailed step-by-step of how to do this, speak up, and I'll write it up in a response.

Thanks to jeffareid and ammck55 for their help and advice!

[ammck55]

I'm really interested in this topic so I did more googling. Here's a link to the MainConcept MPEG Pro plugin for Adobe PPro (http://www.mainconcept.com/mpeg_pro.shtml). Looks like the demo watermarks your output, but it would give you a chance to see how it works.

If you'd like to take the time to give us the step-by-step here in Noobs on how you've managed to accomplish this so far, I think it'd be great! It would also be a neat link to point people to that want to accomplish the same.

ammck55

[ammck55]

dwallersv--I just received an e-mail response on this topic from a professional videographer that I met in the forums. He's used the MainConcept Plugin and reports mixed results; sometimes it works like a champ, and sometimes it doesn't. He didn't get down to (and I didn't ask) frame rates or specific input source, but this leads me to believe that for the amateur, or even serious hobbyist, that you'll be better off saving the money and just running your conversions manually prior to import.

Should you try out the demo, please report back on your results.

ammck55

[dwallersv]

Yeah, I D/L'd the Mainconcept plugin and tried it out. My result: Absolutely no difference from the built-in MPEG decoder. Real-time linear editing on a native MPEG was still not practical (can't even play the MPEG smoothly in PPro).

I can't give up though, and here's why: When I load a VOB (or the demuxed M2V) into VirtualDubMod, I can play it just fine, and what's more, I can move forward and backward through it with the time position slider with no problem -- no skipped frames, etc. Just like a DV format source in PPro. Yet, PPro can't do this with the native MPEG codec or the Mainconcept plugin.

Obviously it can be done -- VirtualDubMod does it. I'm pretty sure it all comes down to codecs, and whatever codec VirtualDubMod is using to decode the MPEG is kicking butt on these others. But I don't know enough yet about VDM to figure it out. If on;y I could make PPro use that same codec...

I'll post a writeup of my MPEG->DV conversion process tonight when I get home from work.

[niann]

Adobe Premiere doesn't like .mpg footage. In fact it doesn't really like compressed footage that is compressed with a lossy codec. When you use NLE to edit videos it is hard for the editor to render the frames between keyframes. The same thing happens when you try to use a divx or xvid (etc) compressed clip. It may work it may not, but it will always stutter and appear abnormal on the timeline, even more so if you have an effect or transition applied to it. In any case you have the proper procedure down for getting ripped DVD footage into Premiere. If you want to be real picky you could adjust the framerate of the source footage to match your project. If you are just using small clips you don't have to. Another codec that works well for importing avi files into Premiere is the Huffyuv codec. It is a lossless codec (read HUGE filesize) but it works like a charm.

Cheers!

[dwallersv]

Adobe Premiere doesn't like .mpg footage. In fact it doesn't really like compressed footage that is compressed with a lossy codec. When you use NLE to edit videos it is hard for the editor to render the frames between keyframes. The same thing happens when you try to use a divx or xvid (etc) compressed clip. It may work it may not, but it will always stutter and appear abnormal on the timeline, even more so if you have an effect or transition applied to it. In any case you have the proper procedure down for getting ripped DVD footage into Premiere. If you want to be real picky you could adjust the framerate of the source footage to match your project. If you are just using small clips you don't have to. Another codec that works well for importing avi files into Premiere is the Huffyuv codec. It is a lossless codec (read HUGE filesize) but it works like a charm. Thanks! (this place is awesome :goodpost: )

What I don't understand about this, however, is why programs like DGIndex, etc. can handle this decoding smoothly. I can whip the time slider back and forth there and frames seem to display as I expect. Show the exact same m2v in PPro, and it can't even play it without losing frames.

So, what gives? Seems that a $400 professional linear editing program ought to be able to do what a free hack can do.

[jeffareid]

When I've used DGIndex to demux videos, PPro seems to work with DGIndex'es m2v file just fine. The audio also remains in sync.

[mikecito]

I used to use the avisynth plugin in premiere 6.5 to import m2v files directly ripped from dvds and it worked perfectly. However, I don't know if they make an avisynth plugin for the newest premiere versions. There are AVI wrappers based on avisynth that might just be your best bet. Avisynth does all the work and just hands premiere an uncompressed frame. Like I said, I used it to edit ten or twenty different movies in m2v format and it was frame accurate and perfect all the way.

Sorry this response is 10 months late.

Mike