Premiere CC 2017 proxy workflow is amaaaazing

[Mat Mayer]

Mine crashes more now and still have to unplug old monitor before using. Is more RAM likely to stop PP overpowering laptop or lack of SSD? Speed is no issue. Currently have i7 5700HQ, 1TB normal hard drive, 16GB RAM, GTX960M 2GB. I believe I can replace disc tray with more RAM or SSD. Thanks.

[mojo43]

I just tried to transcode the proxy footage. I selected all of the footage in my project (700 Gigs) and selected "create proxies" and it took about an hour to queue it in adobe encoder. Is this normal?

[dbp]

48 minutes ago, mojo43 said:

I just tried to transcode the proxy footage. I selected all of the footage in my project (700 Gigs) and selected "create proxies" and it took about an hour to queue it in adobe encoder. Is this normal?

I would think, if you selected it all at once. On my current edit, I did each folder at a time, and it took a while for the ones with hundreds of clips.

[mojo43]

Ya it took around an hour to queue it up in Encoder and then I went to select all of the tracks to interpret the footage to 23.976 before transcoding and it just hung for 30 minutes. This proxy workflow is really not working out.

[Axel]

All right, this may not be suitable for a short timeline or for an urgent project, but just try encoding proxies in the background. You can start editing with the not-so-smooth performance you are used to anyway with native 4k (or 6k, 8k, what have you ). When the proxies are finally rendered, toggle proxy. Better for your CPU's lifespan also.

[Cary Knoop]

7 minutes ago, Axel said:

Better for your CPU's lifespan also.

I would not worry about that.

 

[MountneerMan]

I just started a new project last week and thought I would give the new Proxy editing a go and I absolutely love it. It has sped up my editing so much.

Here are a few thoughts that I have learned so far if anyone is interested.

1. I created a new ingest setting that conforms down to 960x540 but keeps the original frame rate this is essential for me as I shoot half the time in UHD 30p and half the time in 1080 120p. Honestly I dont know why this is not one of the default ingest settings :S.
2. I do not use the ingest feature. I still import all my footage then as I am reviewing and renaming my clips I only send select the ones I think i might use to media encoder.
3. I am still able review, sort, mark and otherwise plan how I am going to piece together the project without too much system lag while it is transcoding.
4. Yes transcoding takes along time(~18 hours for 240gb of footage) but my workflow usually involves working on a project for alot longer than a week so it is definitely worth the extra time on the front end to save it in the back end.

What codec is everyone using for your proxies? I decided to use H.264 to save on space but I was thinking prores might trans code faster and be even less resource hungry in playback I just dont know how much larger the files would be then again they are only temporary anyways. It would be nice to have the time to do some tests comparing trans coding time, filesize and playback/scrub speed and see how they compare.

Also where are you guys storing your proxies? I have mine on my project file HD but I was thinking about putting them on my OS SSD instead since they are so small and are only temporary. So I use the standard three disk set-up with an SSD for the OS and programs, a HD for all my project files/archives and another SSD as a scratch disk. I think this might speed up the workflow a bit and would speed up transcoding time as well, thoughts?

 

[Cary Knoop]

21 minutes ago, MountneerMan said:

Also where are you guys storing your proxies? I decided to use H.264 to save on space

If you use H.264 I would only encode I-frames (use a Keyframe Distance of 1) otherwise I would think there is not much of a point of having proxies.  I do not get the saving space argument as they are obviously temporary files.

 

[dafreaking]

Maybe keeping the proxies on the scratch disk could be a decent idea?

[Axel]

17 hours ago, MountneerMan said:

Yes transcoding takes along time(~18 hours for 240gb of footage) but my workflow usually involves working on a project for alot longer than a week so it is definitely worth the extra time on the front end to save it in the back end.

And during this transcoding process the computer isn't bothered with any other task? That seems to me to be an exceptional long time. If rendering to proxy isn't at most half realtime, then there is obviously something not working optimally. Give background rendering a try, in earnest. Do some preparatory work in the meantime, so that rendering is paused every few seconds. If your computer isn't a dedicated workhorse and aggressively cooled, rendering slows down significantly at high temperature (can you touch the housing after ten hours?). That's what common benchmark comparisons don't show. Or you chose the wrong codec for fast transcoding.

17 hours ago, MountneerMan said:

What codec is everyone using for your proxies?

If on a Mac, try ProResProxy. I just stopped encoding a 48" long UHD XAVC clip to ProResProxy at 13" in FCP X. If I let transcoding run uninterrupted (for many clips of course), I hear the fans start up after minutes. I won't do a test of that now, but by chance I do have a project with 233 GB original media, and it was transcoded in an afternoon, while I still edited with original media.

The clip in question is very small compared to the original:

ProResProxy is always quarter resolution, and if you watch it at quarter resolution (i.e. 1080 instead of 2160), you hardly notice a difference.

 

[dafreaking]

53 minutes ago, jacoblewis said:

No way. Proxy mode in Premiere is slow and stupid. It doesn't work when you "interpret footage" in Premiere Pro. Not easily, that is. So good luck working with 60p footage you want interpreted as 24p footage.

Isn't it possible to just drop the speed of the clip to 40%?

[dbp]

1 hour ago, dafreaking said:

Isn't it possible to just drop the speed of the clip to 40%?

I tried that, but it doesn't work properly with the proxies. My workaround video above is the best bet, I think. 

[MountneerMan]

18 hours ago, Cary Knoop said:

If you use H.264 I would only encode I-frames (use a Keyframe Distance of 1) otherwise I would think there is not much of a point of having proxies.  I do not get the saving space argument as they are obviously temporary files.

 

Well I am going from UHD H.265 to 540 H.264 so there is definitely a huge benefit to use H.264 proxies. I agree with you regarding space tho. Next time I think I will go with prores its just last time I made a prores file it came out 4x larger than the original so I was thinking I would end up with almost 1TB of proxies witch even for temporary files if too much space. I think I will have to just do some tests.

1 hour ago, Axel said:

And during this transcoding process the computer isn't bothered with any other task? That seems to me to be an exceptional long time. If rendering to proxy isn't at most half realtime, then there is obviously something not working optimally. Give background rendering a try, in earnest. Do some preparatory work in the meantime, so that rendering is paused every few seconds. If your computer isn't a dedicated workhorse and aggressively cooled, rendering slows down significantly at high temperature (can you touch the housing after ten hours?). That's what common benchmark comparisons don't show. Or you chose the wrong codec for fast transcoding.

Ya, the trans coding definitely took alot longer because I was using my computer while it was trying to decode Also my computer is really shitty as well so that definitely didn't help either.

I also kept an eye on temperatures with CPUID hardware monitor and I did see some minor thermal throttling from CPU temps but again for my workflow I spend more than a week on a project so the added time upfront is worth the time saving on the back end. 

1 hour ago, jacoblewis said:

No way. Proxy mode in Premiere is slow and stupid. It doesn't work when you "interpret footage" in Premiere Pro. Not easily, that is. So good luck working with 60p footage you want interpreted as 24p footage.

I have heard quite a few people say this but I am not sure I completely understand what do you mean? I created a custom proxy ingest setting in media encoder that creates a 540p low bitrate proxy with the same frame rate as the original then just change the playback speed like I normally would without proxies.

So if I ingest two files one UHD 30p and one 1080 120p the two proxies would be 960x540 30p and 960x540 120p respectively. You still have to scale up or down the footage to fit either a 4k or 1080 timeline as usual as well. Basically to me everything is the same the only different is when you have the view proxies turned on it plays the proxy instead of the original.

[Axel]

6 minutes ago, MountneerMan said:

So if I ingest two files one UHD 30p and one 1080 120p the two proxies would be 960x540 30p and 960x540 120p respectively. You still have to scale up or down the footage to fit either a 4k or 1080 timeline as usual as well. Basically to me everything is the same the only different is when you have the view proxies turned on it plays the proxy instead of the original.

Interpreting footage for proxies seems to work only in AME, not in Premiere, and it doesn't seem to be limited to slomos created from higher fps footage:

I wouldn't call this a workflow. A flow implies some ease, not this PITA. Instead of render queues via AME and attached reports, there simply should be a button PROXY. And Adobe should come off the stick and make their own proxy codec. 

[MountneerMan]

25 minutes ago, Axel said:

Interpreting footage for proxies seems to work only in AME, not in Premiere, and it doesn't seem to be limited to slomos created from higher fps footage:

I wouldn't call this a workflow. A flow implies some ease, not this PITA. Instead of render queues via AME and attached reports, there simply should be a button PROXY. And Adobe should come off the stick and make their own proxy codec. 

So I only watched the first few mins of the video but I already see a problem with it.

He is using the standard PP ingest settings that changes the frame rate. You need to make a custom ingest setting in media encoder that is set to match frame rate to original again as I mentioned above adobe should have had this as the default setting but whatever it only take a minute to set-up in the first place then you can use that same preset going forward it works great for me.

Am I missing something here?

[Axel]

1 hour ago, MountneerMan said:

Am I missing something here?

Yes. Whatever footage interpretation you make within the AME dialog (even if you just "match" the frame rate, which didn't work in the video above, because Premiere misinterpreted it), it's baked into the proxy file and cannot be changed later on.  If it was 60p, you have to manually override the flag in AME to 24. 

BUT: the parallel original media timeline doesn't know that the proxy had been interpreted. 

The point is, retiming is fundamental for editing. Proxies should mirror original media perfectly. Adobe should fix this asap. 

[MountneerMan]

31 minutes ago, Axel said:

Yes. Whatever footage interpretation you make within the AME dialog (even if you just "match" the frame rate, which didn't work in the video above, because Premiere misinterpreted it), it's baked into the proxy file and cannot be changed later on.  If it was 60p, you have to manually override the flag in AME to 24. 

BUT: the parallel original media timeline doesn't know that the proxy had been interpreted. 

The point is, retiming is fundamental for editing. Proxies should mirror original media perfectly. Adobe should fix this asap. 

I am sorry I am not really good with this stuff and I am still not understanding.

My proxies do match my original files just with smaller resolution.

Original file = 1920x1080 120p (H.265) -> Proxy = 960x540 120p (H.265)
Original file = 3840x2160 30p (H.265) -> proxy = 960x540 30p (H.265)
Both these files were ingested with the same ingest setting without doing anything to them in AME.

I think I am getting confused with this interpretation thing. If i put both the above videos on the same timeline they will both play in real time. Then I change the video speed of the 120p video to 25% for slow motion. Is this not what you mean by "footage interpreting"? Taking a high frame rate video and playing back at at a lower frame rate so its slow motion. In that case Adobe does not need to fix anything you just need to create a custom ingest setting.

[mojo43]

In the project files, before putting them in a sequence you can interpret the footage to whatever frame rate you want by right clicking on them. This way if you have thousands of files you don't have to adjust the speed on each clip on the timeline.

[Axel]

@MountneerMan 

I must apologize. It was me who didn't get it. So you first interpret the original footage (say 120 or 60 to 24p). After you did this you transcode to proxy to match those. You are right.

[Grimor]

Any online tutorial or How to video, about this new proxy workflow in 2017 CC?