Using VS6.5 and Premiere on Same System

[Ted222]

I noticed that Doc uses both on the same system. Since I will soon have both, I was wondering what you use each editor for "primarily"?

Also wondering about Frame Serving - what is the primary use for that? Can't you accomplish everything you want from the editors?

(RT2500 System coming next week)


thanks,

Ted

[Dr Mordrid]

I use Premiere only because I have no other option with the RT-2000 hardware. Simple as that.

If you want a list of reasons why I prefer MSPro 6.5 for non-RT projects, here they are;

1. it renders 2-3 times faster than Premiere to your choice of codecs. Basically; if you're doing something that the RT-2000 hardware doesn't support Premiere is slower than a dead tortise.

2. it's faster and easier to use for many functions including complex moving paths.

3. MSPro is just more stable than Premiere, with or without the RT hardware.

4. MSPro can create very long projects while Premiere is limited to 3 hours of timeline. Don't laugh....this can be handy.

That said the RT-2x00/Premiere setup has its own advantages;

1. for complex overlay effects the RT-2x00 uses a 4:4:4:4 RGBA rendering engine while MSPro uses 4:2:2 YUV. This gives the RT a quality advantage when doing multiple layers of overlays, even if they won't be in realtime.

2. it has a huge selection of keyframeable effects and filters, as in over 1500, with quite a variety.

3. it exports to videotape in realtime unless the effects stack gets too deep for the realtime engine.

4. it's VERY fast to do video slideshows with it.

There's more, but you get the idea. Not all tools are good for everything...

Now for frameserving:

As it stands now Premiere can do it and MSPro cannot, but that may change because Ulead *finally* released their public SDK (software development kit) and I know of at least 2 people working on an MSPro frameserver as of now.

Why frameserve? To do something outside of the program you cannot do INSIDE of it, either because the feature is unavailable or is too expensive. Mostly this comes down to encoding MPEG's, but isn't exclusive to it.

In Premiere's case there isn't a built-in MPEG encoder. Media Cleaner LE comes on the Premiere6 content CD, but it's not very good.

BBMPEG is free and can be used as a Premiere MPEG plugin, but it's slow and Premiere makes it even slower.

That leaves Ligos's LSX Plugin, which is based on their GoMotion engine. This has the same quality issues MSPro has, which also uses GoMotion. These come down to limited settings and lower quality than could be had otherwise.

Frameserving lets you accomplish this by redirecting the timeline to an external MPEG encoder like TMPGEnc, which can deliver both more settings and higher quality but isn't available as a plugin.

This has to be done by using a plugin that sets up the communication & transaction. In the past this meant using AVISynth since it was really the only option in Premiere.

AVISynth uses a script file with an *.avs extension as an *.avi proxy for loading into the target program. This, of course, means that the target program must be able to use the *.avs file, and not many do. TMPGEnc, CinemaCraft (EXPENSIVE) and the standalone Ligos are about it.

This has now changed a bit due to the release of the shareware Video Server package. This program addresses some of the limitations of AVISynth by using a pseudo-.avi file, opening up frameserving to about any program that can load an *.avi. Because of this Video Server can be used with a much longer list of external programs including;

TMPGEnc, CinemaCraft, Ligos standalone, the NERO MPEG-2 plugin, DVD MovieFactory, etc. etc. You can even frameserve the timeline to VirtualDUB for postprocessing of the project.

The other differences:

1. AVISynth can frameserve segmented files (file.00.avi, file.01.avi etc.) off the HDD and serve supporting programs. Video Server cannot, but is easier to use.

2. AVISynth is freeware while Video Server runs $10 for a personal license and $30 for a commercial license. It's worth it.

3. AVISynth can do some post-processing on the timeline before serving it to the encoder, but this is in the *.avs script and has no user interface.

Updated versions of both AVISynth and Video Server can be had here;

http://www.videotools.net

Dr. Mordrid

[Ted222]

Doc,

Thanks very much. Very informative answer.

Ted