Digital Fusion 5 and mp4

[nirok]

Hi all, we recently got an ex3 which works well with adobe premiere pro however the format is ex mp4 which I can't open these in Fusion 5... is there anyway to open mp4 files in fusion? Currently my workflow is to edit the HD clips in adobe premiere pro then output the clips to avi and open them in fusion...

[bfloch]

dont quote me on this but mp4 is normally decoded with quicktime and since there is no quicktime for 64 bit it should work only in 32 bit, if at all. I would even try renaming it but I think fusion reads the header of a file anyway. So chances are high that you wont get away without reencoding the file.

Just as a sidenote:
I don't know about your file but codecs without IFrames are still suboptimal for compositing usage anyway since the decoding of a frame depends on frames before it.

If you want to work with videofiles over framesequences Id sugesst something like the UT codec suite or lagarith codec which are lossless and build for access speed.

If you work beyond 8 bit there are other solutions.

[nirok]

Thanks for your reply, what i've done is out putted the mp4 clips from adobe premiere pro using AVI lagarith codec, i'm currently editing these clips on the timeline... when it comes time to replacing these with the color graded fusion clips i'll just simply out put the fusion clips AVI lagarith and replace the current clip on the adobe premiere gallery...
i have done a few tests and some clips seem to work ok outputting AVI with fusion while others seem to get corrupted - can fusion not handle lagarith codec?? or the AVI codec ?? or would this be an issue with possibly the adobe avi output...? the adobe avi seems to play however some of the fusion ones won't work....

i'm runnign fusion 5.2

Thanks

[beaker]

Stick with image sequences. They load and process far faster then any container format(mov, avi, mxf, etc...).

[bfloch]

Stick with image sequences. They load and process far faster then any container format(mov, avi, mxf, etc...).

Thats not always true. Please make your own benchmarks. UT Codec is highly optimized and reads in 25 frames per second compared to compressed tga which read in 20 frames per second (on my system).

There are many factors which affect the results: fast IO over fast processing, network bandwidth, format and compression etc. It's always better to benchmark for your facility/ workflow. It may make sense to work with AVI if there are workflow reasons for it.

Though in general I agree with you. I personally do prefer image sequences (if Im not limited to 8bit).



As to the fusion avi question: I worked with UT avis on fusion 5 and 6 without any problems. I dont know about lagarith but I decide agaist this codec since is not maintained activly.

[nirok]

I was working with tiff image sequences however they were very large files, about 10 times larger... especially an issue when dealing with interview footage, clips around 4mins long ... would you advise to work with tga image sequences over tiffs? the reason i'm working with avi is that it has a good size to work with, due to machine size limitations... and from premiere it seems to be the only video format fusion will read, apart from .mov but since i'm in a windows environment i didn't want to go near the mov's.... not to mention the uncompressed versions were again very large....

[bfloch]

If you work with 8 bit I would recommend you try UT codecs.
http://umezawa.dyndns.info/archive/utvideo

I used an earlier version for my graduation with Premiere and Fusion. The compression is lossless and you have an alpha channel. It still is fast.

When rendering files better use an image sequence or you will end up rerendering the whole shot on changes. I semi automized the conversion with virtual dub though with a setting file.
You can perfectly go out and in premiere with UT and on my machine I was even able to edit it flawless.

I use Tga over tiffs because I had the impression it performed better. Also there are various different headers / types of Tiffs while TGA is pretty much always 8 bit, RGB(A), compressed/uncompressed.

[beaker]

Image sequences can be randomly accessed line by line and you don't even need to load the entire image. Where any kind of container format has to load large parts of it into memory. Though I forget if DF does this in the first place like Shake/Nuke did.

[bfloch]

Image sequences can be randomly accessed line by line and you don't even need to load the entire image. Where any kind of container format has to load large parts of it into memory. Though I forget if DF does this in the first place like Shake/Nuke did.

Line by line access is only true for EXRs and you can't have 8 bit exrs anyway. But like I said, the question is what your resources work best with.

On codecs with IFRAMES you should be pretty much be able to access random frames directly. You also have to read in the header only once and depend on the index afterwards. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[russiaman]

Hi all, we recently got an ex3 which works well with adobe premiere pro however the format is ex mp4 which I can't open these in Fusion 5... is there anyway to open mp4 files in fusion? Currently my workflow is to edit the HD clips in adobe premiere pro then output the clips to avi and open them in fusion...

Kawabanga! nirok.
check this out approach with feed to Fusion "avs" file:


time to time it help me very much with "strange" formats (like *.mkv, some *.avi et-cetera)

[pingking]

Line by line access is only true for EXRs and you can't have 8 bit exrs anyway. But like I said, the question is what your resources work best with.

On codecs with IFRAMES you should be pretty much be able to access random frames directly. You also have to read in the header only once and depend on the index afterwards. Correct me if I'm wrong.

you can also have scanline access to uncompressed TIFFs (afaik), but dont know if fusion even provides from scanline access

[nirok]

Hi thanks for your reply and link, I think the way im doing it at the moment is the most effiecient - where i think my workflow slows down is in adobe premiere pro because it doesn't have a function where I can out put mulitple clips on the timeline - I was using dps velocity previously which did have this function... however i'm now working in HD so can't use that editing program anymore, plus its now discontinued ... i think when i can afford an upgrade i'll look at an avid suite.... Its a shame with dps velocity as i had a really good fast workflow... adobe premiere feels quite slow and clunky and not quite finished as an editing program... but will work with it... since ex footage is real time with adobe premiere its brillant for our documentary interviews which might have clips of 10 - 15mins recorded at a time... the issue is you chop this up in the timeline, now you need to output the clips when you color grad... I dont want to color grad the entire 15min clip as this is quite inefficient with disk storage, so what i'm doing is outputting the edited clips as avi's then doing some fine editing - color grading the avis in fusion, then rendering these and replaceing the avi clips....

In dps velocity I could select all the clips on the timeline at once, add them to the gallery right click them all and choose to output them all at once... adobe premiere pro you have to select each clip and add them to the render que individual, theres no bulk processing...

I'm just also wondering if i'm making my job hard by still holding onto fusion?? is there another program whcih i should be looking at that might make my workflow more efficient? that can take mp4 format?

I really like fusion, i'm mainly using it for color grading, 3d projection, rotoscoping.... not doing any major compositing with it....

[nirok]

Also another question, i've installed the ut codec ... it seems to save at a higher compression thant he lagarith codec... when i output from fusion at AVI format, what settings do you set it to once you have selected the codec? do the settings affect the qualty of the avi using the new codecs???

[bfloch]

As far as I know the quality settings are irelavant. only check output Alpha if you use the RGBA variant.

[bfloch]

Hi thanks for your reply and link, I think the way im doing it at the moment is the most effiecient - where i think my workflow slows down is in adobe premiere pro because it doesn't have a function where I can out put mulitple clips on the timeline - I was using dps velocity previously which did have this function... however i'm now working in HD so can't use that editing program anymore, plus its now discontinued ... i think when i can afford an upgrade i'll look at an avid suite.... Its a shame with dps velocity as i had a really good fast workflow... adobe premiere feels quite slow and clunky and not quite finished as an editing program... but will work with it... since ex footage is real time with adobe premiere its brillant for our documentary interviews which might have clips of 10 - 15mins recorded at a time... the issue is you chop this up in the timeline, now you need to output the clips when you color grad... I dont want to color grad the entire 15min clip as this is quite inefficient with disk storage, so what i'm doing is outputting the edited clips as avi's then doing some fine editing - color grading the avis in fusion, then rendering these and replaceing the avi clips....

In dps velocity I could select all the clips on the timeline at once, add them to the gallery right click them all and choose to output them all at once... adobe premiere pro you have to select each clip and add them to the render que individual, theres no bulk processing...

I'm just also wondering if i'm making my job hard by still holding onto fusion?? is there another program whcih i should be looking at that might make my workflow more efficient? that can take mp4 format?

I really like fusion, i'm mainly using it for color grading, 3d projection, rotoscoping.... not doing any major compositing with it....

AVID is an awesome editing suite. I love the way to edit with it. But just be aware avid is not an easy beast to handle. And also it is not very flexible. It has very specific formats which you have to use so be prepared to convert back and forth a lot. Also the way automation works with avid is called "assistent editor" so don't expect any benefits here.

If you need flexible medium sized solution which does what you want don't hesitate to take a look on edius which is from my experience the best of both worlds. It is like a user friendly avid which performs amazingly. Unfortunately you are limited to 8 bit so you need a offline/online workaround if you have other data than video.

If you want something even more exotic take a look at Sony Vegas. It is cheap as bread but supports 32 bit floating point color, It has a strong history with audio editing and best part is it is the only editing app I know which has a scripting API. So you or a TD can build the workflow YOU want. Once you get used to the exotic user interface this can be a powerful tool. Also it supports 3rd party hardware and Cineform Intermediate codecs if you work on data heavy projects.

Other than Edius which is super fast due to GPU rendering Vegas totally depends on your CPU and bandwidth. Keep that in mind.

Hope this helps.