CCE Hang at frame 419 on XP with Premiere Pro

[BassPig]

I'm doing some evaluation of Premiere Pro and trying to sort out all of the issues before we consider moving our Win 2K systems over to XP just so that we can enjoy working in YUV color space on Premiere Pro.

We're testing Premiere Pro with CCE 2.64.01.10 on Windows XP with SP1 installed on a Sony VAIO GRX560.

Everything starts off normally when encoding a small test AVI clip of 1620 frames, but the encoder simply stops and sits there at frame 419 during a VBR encode test (video only). It has been sitting there for more than 12 minutes on frame 419 of 1620.

One of the determining factors as to whether we move to Premiere Pro is CCE compatibility. Premiere Pro may address one of the glaring problems we have been complaining about for 3 years: the white clipping that happens during rendered titles and transitions (causing highlights to dim then get bright again during and after a title). The rendering in of YUV in RGB space causes gammut clipping. Premiere Pro is the first Adobe product to work in YUV, so it's something we're looking into.

But we're extremely reluctant to jump on the XP bandwagon for many reasons.

Does anyone have any results using CCE with Premiere Pro on XP?

[buzzqw]

I am a novice with Premiere pro but i successfully encoded same avi-dv files using cce plugin (2.67). I never got a problem

Just for hint:
Could you play all the avi file in MPC ?
Open avi file in VirtualDub (set popup extended option), set direct stream copy, and save it again. Or try with divfix

BHH

[BassPig]

I don't have VirtualDub or any of these other applications.

Our workflow is pretty streamlined--we have been using the Premiere plug-in version of CCE very effectively for the past 18 months on Win 2K. Additional steps to the process would be counterproductive. Nowadays, clients make revisions to the editing, even as we're about to author the DVD. Keeping the process of encoding short and direct is essential.

But your feedback about the most recent version signals that we may need to upgrade our version to work with Premiere Pro.

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

[hendrix]

instead of using the plug-in version of CCE...have you tried using PluginPac (http://www.debugmode.com/pluginpac/) frameserver...i prefer frameserving to CCE vice using the Premiere Plug-in...it may help...i never had any problems with it, I also frameserve from Vegas 4 without any problems...

[BassPig]

I'm not familiar with that frameserver.
We've had problems using the standalone version of CCE (not accepting our AVI files, so we started using the plugin. Ironically, the plugin seems to generate better quality video. So we have discovered the increased productivity of converting right out of Premiere, saving disc space and much time.

At the moment, the only reason we're looking at Premiere Pro is for the YUV colorspace. It is believed that this solves the gamut distortion that occurs to YUV footage rendered in RGB space (as Premiere 6.5 and earlier does). Other than that, a whole new interface with attendant employee training costs and down time.

As I mentioned, this is only an early phase of testing, a feasibility study. Even if things go wildly well with evaluating the new platform, it would likely be over a year before changes hit the production machines.

[hendrix]

Originally posted by BassPig
We've had problems using the standalone version of CCE (not accepting our AVI files, so we started using the plugin.
ive had similar problems with CCE accepting .avi files as well...what i do is, using PluginPac export to a pseudo .avi file (your NLE program needs to remain on to frameserve), create a simple .avs script

#here is the script
AVISource("D:\Video Capture\test.avi")
DoubleWeave().SelectOdd()
ConvertToYUY2(interlaced=true)
#end script

*note DoubleWeave().SelectOdd()script converts bottom field first to top field first

and load that script into CCE, i've never had any problems with this method...i know all about working with a limited time budget thats why i frameserve