compatible "progressive" source/export codec for Premiere Pro?

[Vchat20]

Simple enough question here I'm hoping someone can help me answer. I am a hardcore Premiere Pro user when it comes to doing editing work. Mostly because of the direct integration with Photoshop PSD's and the flexibility that makes even the most basic functions such as video crossfading really stand out in a professional stance.

Anyhow, the only real gripe I have with premiere is it only works in native DV which in itself is an interlaced codec. Now considering all my work usually ends up sourced from a progressive xvid source AND exported/encoded as a progressive xvid source, im really losing a bit of quality here in dealing with premiere because to even get any work done in a smooth manner, I have to convert all my source material to DV first which interlaces it by design, then import it all into premiere, edit it, then I have to export it and even if I use like uncompressed avi, due to the source dv material it's all interlaced anyhow. So it provides no help over the default DV export.

I also tried using MJPEG (encoded through ffdshow via vdubmod) as a source and it just made both preview and export real choppy and hiccupy at best. I also tried mainconcept's dvcpro50 codec which I originally /THOUGHT/ would have done progressive, but I was mistaken. Only advantage it holds at this moment is the improved colorspace at the 50mbit rate.

Any other Premiere officianado here know if there's a much better codec other than DV out there I can use in these cases? I'm about at the end of my rope here. Thanks for any help. =)

[smok3]

you can do sort of an offline editing, what you do is convert your sources to huff(or lagarith) and to dv, then work with dv files over the edit session and just before export you would replace them with huff brothers..., however this does not answer your interlaced question.

[Vchat20]

Well, I think I /MAY/ have found a sort of partial solution here. I just made sure to set up a new video project for Desktop editing mode, no fields (progressive), 30fps timecode, and the render/encode format was set to non-DV avi with the codec being huffyuv.

The above method works somewhat well. I can drop huffyuv encoded clips right into premiere and save for some rare program crashes when trying to jog over the clips and the fact it still has to render an unedited clip completely (though being lossless huffyuv in both cases, it's not a loss quality-wise anyhow), it seems to work ok thus far.

Unfortunately my major beef is trying to live preview stuff is REALLY sluggish. Even though the cpu usage during preview playback keeps under 90% on my 1.4ghz Celeron M, the preview window becomes real choppy.

I could probably do uncompressed as my target videos are usually only about 8 minutes tops and usually fall just under 5 so with the source clips and renders and the final encode, it should have no problem fitting on my 120GB drive here, but I'd rather avoid editing in uncompressed mode as much as possible.

Anyone got any other ideas here? I think I've tracked down with the above option how to properly get premiere to allow me to work in progressive mode, I just need to find a suitable codec as DV's not capable of working in a progressive workspace.

Thanks. =)

[krisq]

did you tried DebugMode Frameserver (http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/)? Frameserve uncompressed output to any program you want without exporting it :)

[smok3]

live preview stuff is REALLY sluggish
Vchat20, use dv material during editing, and just before export replace the clips with uncompressed version.