Movie Tips on Mac

Adobe Premiere is timeline-based video editing software application that’s compatible on both Macs and PCs. You can fix imperfections in the audio and video tracks, add effects and transitions, pan and zoom on still images, and more. You can also create high-definition movies with menus and upload them directly to YouTube, or burn them on a disk.

Recently, when visiting forums, I’ve found some users complaining that they repeatedly received the message “Error compiling movie. Unknown error.” when they want render or export files from Adobe Premiere and meanwhile this problem dates back several years and even includes Premiere Elements, below is one of the disscussions about the error: continue reading…

With every new Camera, comes many new questions about workflow. The term ‘workflow’ can be fairly broad, but today I am looking at ingesting C300 footage into various non-linear editing systems. Due to format compatibility issues, Canon C300 owners are always having troubles importing C300 MXF footage to Avid Media Composer or Adobe Premiere for native editing. Yes Canon offers plug-ins e.g. XF utility to help users import camera video clips, but only with very limited success. To make things much easier, below is great tutorial for you, guaranteed to edit C300 MXF files with Avid & Premiere smoothly.

To achieve your goal flawlessly, the best method is to transcode Canon MXF files to Avid/Premiere native editable format along with some help from a third-party tool. After that you can open C300 footage in your video editor for further editing. Keep reading for a brief how-to below. continue reading…

As the great competitor to canon 5D Mark III, the Nikon 800 is one of the hottest Digital SLRs in the market. Besides vivid images, the newly-introduced D800 is capable of creating stunning 1080p high definition footage. So It’s really wonderful to take it and record exciting moments when we travel or spend holidays.

The impressive video image quality of the D800 is its use of the sophisticated H.264/MPEG-4 compression method for recording video files (.mov format) to the camera’s memory card. This is an ideal file type for video capture in an SLR camera, delivering relatively compact file sizes with image quality noticeably superior to alternate video compressions. However, the format is not good to use in non-linear editing systems such as the Adobe Premiere. Below, I will outline how to ingest and import D800 mov files to Premiere for editing.

In order to edit D800 videos in Premiere smoothly, the H.264 compression format requires that mov files be transcoded into a format better suited to editing, effects, and color grading; this would usually be WMV, the best supported format for Premiere. Below is a simple guide for you. continue reading…

“Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 for Mac is professional nonlinear editing software that allows editors to work directly on the timeline with every major tapeless camera format, including P2, XDCAM EX/HD/HD50, JVC ProHD, AVCHD, AVCCAM, DPX, RED R3D, Canon XF, and Nikon and Canon DSLR.” Adobe claims support for these formats is native and no need to transcode, but they will never mention exceptions.

I just got a Sony Nex 5n camera – it shoots 1080p @ 60fps. The format is “.mts“, with AVCHD compression. Anyway, the issue I have is that when I import the AVCHD files into Premiere CS5 to edit, i drag the files into the timeline they immediately need rendering, the timeline becomes extremely sluggish for scan/scrub or when previews. Whenever the camera is moving, the movement is very jerky and also blurry during a pan.

Any Googling I’ve done seems to bring up similar issues with editing AVCHD files, but no solid solution yet. People are saying that I should transcode the AVCHD files before importing into CS5, and there is also a general consensus that AVCHD is a great playback format, but not the best for editing. Higher end programs like Vegas Pro, Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro recommend AVCHD conversion to a digital format such as .avi, .wmv and .mov to allow a more productive timeline workflow and less loss though edit processing. continue reading…