Import MP4 into Adobe Premiere Pro

[wereHamster]

I'm using the mainconcept plugin to export my video to MP4/H264, but that plugin won't let me import MP4 files :(
Is there another plugin that I need to install? or isn't it possible at all?

[Zero1]

The only thing that springs to mind is AVISynth. Install the AVISynth plugin for Premiere Pro and create a script that loads the file using directshowsource.

Of course directshowsource isn't frame accurate, so it's not a good idea to edit with it, but you can import the same AVS into Virtualdub and export a lossless AVI using FFDShow, Lagarith or the original HuffYUV.

[wereHamster]

...but you can import the same AVS into Virtualdub and export a lossless AVI ..

Since the AVI is >2GB even when encoded with FFV1 and Adobe Premiere Pro can't handle AVI files larger than that, that's not an option :angry:

I have this nice ~2GB MP4 file encoded with lossless H264 and I'd like to edit it, cut, add some music and export it back into MP4/H264. mainconcept has a plugin for premiere that lets me export the video, but I can't import the MP4 file :(

[Zero1]

I would double check that, I have used Premiere Pro 1.0 and 1.5, and both are fine with large AVI files. For example one source file of mine was 62GB.

I think it's more likely to be a case of whether the decoder is enabled in FFDShow or not. If in doubt, encode with the standalone Lagarith codec, and disable Lagarith decoding in ffdshow.

I see what you're saying about lossless H.264, but there are several things. First off is that AVISynth's Directshowsource is not frame accurate (so you might cut something on a scene change, come to export it later and find its totally wrong), and I do not know of any import filters for H.264. On top of that editing with lossless H.264 might be slow for some people due to CPU usage. Lagarith is probably a much more sane way to do it.

Lossless H.264 is really just suitable for achival purposes right now, for example exporting your Premiere Pro work to a lossless codec, then transcoding to lossless H.264 for storing on CD or DVD.

[wereHamster]

Thanks, I ended up extracting the MP4 to raw AVI and then importing into Premiere. But another problem was that Premiere can't handle VFR video, the A/V sync was off by more than 1 minute at the end of my clip (~18min), so I had to extract the MP4 again and set a CFR.