As the title says I'm having some difficulty with exporting my videos from Premiere Pro 5.5. The camera I'm using a Sony HDR-CX160 and I'm currently shooting in the highest shooting mode "PS" which is 1920x1080 60p 28M in an .mts format. My problem lies in premiere and the export settings. Whenever I try to export the movie the frame rate and aspect ratio seem to get all screwed up. Here's a shot of my export dialog to hopefully explain things a little better...



Now, as you can see the export and original settings all match (I think), however, when the exported file is played back it plays choppy and only at like 45 FPS. What gives? I'm going to Jamaica for my sisters wedding this week and I'd really like to try and figure this out before I leave.

Any other tips with working with this camera, file type, resolution, programs is also greatly appreciated!

Just as an update I've found that VLC and Quicktime have trouble playing back the 60p exported files. However, and a big one at that, Windows Media Player seems to play them back just fine at the full 60 fps. I'm currently stumped at this point. I'd very much like to be able to export at 1080 60p for playback on computers, the new appletv, new ipad, and eventually on my smugmug page (I realize that we have to encode differently for that). Thanks!

There is a new version of VLC that supports multi-core processors, but I think you would be better served by rendering at a more common 1080i30(29.97) or 720p30(29.97).

Thanks for the reply! So just so I'm clear in my understanding I can shoot in the full 1080p60 (59.94) and edit in that, then when it comes to export I can export in your suggestions and the video will still play properly? For some reason I'm thinking that if I'm shooting at 60fps and then exporting in 30fps that its going to look choppy because its 'skipping' every other frame. I understand this is probably an incorrect logic, but I'd just love for someone who knows their stuff to tell me. Thanks again!

Nash

First question that comes to mind is, What is your data rate? When you export this file and it goes to a place on your hard drive. you can then highlight it and can see a data rate in bps, or bits per second. if that rate is too high for your graphics card, you'll need to squeeze it down some. I like Handbrake for that ( just google handbrake). Also, premiere just doesn't "DO" some files as well as handbrake for squeezing them down. Handbrake will squeeze the bps down without changing the size (1920 x 1080) so that's nice to have too.

Also under the tab just under where you pick the format, in your case H.264. The tab that says "custom" click that tab and choose your poison. You can have PP automatically fix it for YouTube or Apple Tv or what have you!

Originally Posted by JeffreyScott Thanks for the reply! So just so I'm clear in my understanding I can shoot in the full 1080p60 (59.94) and edit in that, then when it comes to export I can export in your suggestions and the video will still play properly? For some reason I'm thinking that if I'm shooting at 60fps and then exporting in 30fps that its going to look choppy because its 'skipping' every other frame. I understand this is probably an incorrect logic, but I'd just love for someone who knows their stuff to tell me. Thanks again! Nash

If you shoot at 60fps and then display it a 30fps... you won't get choppy, you'll get slow mo !

Originally Posted by angevin1 If you shoot at 60fps and then display it a 30fps... you won't get choppy, you'll get slow mo !

It depends on how you go about it. If you re-compress the frames from one standard to the other it will change the frame rate, not play more slowly.

Originally Posted by DavidTO It depends on how you go about it. If you re-compress the frames from one standard to the other it will change the frame rate, not play more slowly.

Agreed! going from a higher rate to a slower will not render slow-mo. It is just what folks do as part of the recipe to get slow mo. At any rate I don't think his answer of fixing choppy video remains at changing a frame rate!

My question would be if this is simply for playback without doing any sort of special effects, why not shoot/edit/output at 29.97? It may be a matter of preference, but personally, I'm not crazy about 60fps video. -It seems more "choppy" to me like what you're trying to avoid. Also, obviously, it's twice the file size and processing time.

Regarding your original question, it seems like you have everything right. I agree with what others have said. Double-check that your computer can process the data rate without skipping frames. 1080p @ 60fps is quite CPU intensive without substantial compression. You could always render it at half or quarter res as a test with the same settings to make sure frames aren't somehow lost during export and check frame rate.

-Rob

One other thought... I'm assuming the internal flash memory is fast enough to keep up with the camera, but if you're recording to removable media, you may want to double-check it's fast enough. I'm totally unfamiliar with your camera or how it handles skipped frames during capture, but it's just a thought.

-Rob

Originally Posted by JeffreyScott Thanks for the reply! So just so I'm clear in my understanding I can shoot in the full 1080p60 (59.94) and edit in that, then when it comes to export I can export in your suggestions and the video will still play properly? For some reason I'm thinking that if I'm shooting at 60fps and then exporting in 30fps that its going to look choppy because its 'skipping' every other frame. I understand this is probably an incorrect logic, but I'd just love for someone who knows their stuff to tell me. Thanks again! Nash

Originally Posted by angevin1 If you shoot at 60fps and then display it a 30fps... you won't get choppy, you'll get slow mo !

Shooting in 1080p60 and then rendering to 1080p30(29.97) at the correct time base will play back properly. Any competent editing software will blend frames to change frame rates, not just drop frames.

The "reason" to change to a frame rate of 30 is to reduce the overall "data rate", as user "angevin" mentioned. Reducing the data rate will reduce the playback processor load, and allow smoother playback, potentially with slower processors too. It's often suitable to run the video through a noise reduction filter to further reduce the bandwidth, prior to rendering at the slower frame rate.

30fps is still the commercial video standard in the US, and SmugMug doesn't even allow greater than 30fps. Many movies are shot at 24fps. There is nothing wrong with 30fps.

Thanks for all the replies. 26268 is what I'm showing for the bit rate. The camera when I select the image quality says '28M' I can only assume those are pretty even. My bit-byte-Bit-Byte conversions have always been screwed up.

As far as system processing power goes, I should be well above any requirements. I'm running a watercooled i7-950 @ 3.65GHz with 12GB of 1600MHz RAM triple channel, and 2 GTX 460's in SLI. **Edit** I have also changed the Premiere settings to use the Mercury GPU Engine on these 'unsupported' cards **/Edit** My programs are running off of a Vertex 3 SSD and my media drive is a standard 7200 RPM. Tech details are my specialty lol, which is why I was so bothered by VLC etc. not playing back full speed. Also, after doing some upload tests and such I think I've worked out most of the kinks. I seem to be spoiled by 60fps video games, I just seem to notice the lower frame rates. I asked my roommate and he couldn't tell the difference between any of them lol.

Another question was about the camera flash memory, I'm using a class 10 32GB SD card. My battery will run out before the storage fills up. It also has 16GB onboard. Although it seems that during longer clips the camera breaks down the footage into smaller segments, but that's another post.

The reason I'm shooting the 60 fps is because the camera doesn't truly give me an option of framerate, it has 60i at different levels of quality (standard, high, extra high etc.) which give the different data rates and when I choose 60p it gives me the full HD Sony 'PS' setting at 28M data rate. My logic was that its better to shoot at really high quality so that later if it needs to scale down it will look better. I want to have the most data at hand before I go hacking it apart in premiere. Kind of like shooting RAW files then kicking them down to JPG.

Anyway, thanks again for all the help and replies! I leave for Jamaica in about 8 hours, I'll try to post back here an update or two after I get back and get to work!


Nash

Originally Posted by JeffreyScott Thanks for the reply! So just so I'm clear in my understanding I can shoot in the full 1080p60 (59.94) and edit in that, then when it comes to export I can export in your suggestions and the video will still play properly? For some reason I'm thinking that if I'm shooting at 60fps and then exporting in 30fps that its going to look choppy because its 'skipping' every other frame. I understand this is probably an incorrect logic, but I'd just love for someone who knows their stuff to tell me. Thanks again! Nash

Yes, Premiere will downsample your framerate from 59.94 to 29.97 just fine. It'd be good to play with your output setting now while you're here and experimenting, but I wouldn't worry about your trip to Jamaica - unless you're planning on editing and finishing the project while you're on the ground there. If you're not, bring all the cards you'll need, shoot everything you can, and then bring it back for he final edit. You don't need to worry about your final rez until you're rendering the finished project.

Also, the resolutions that you're talking about are pretty CPU crippling. Its great that you can view your captures at 1080p60@26Mbps, but likely most of your family cannot, and when they go to watch your video, they'll complain about the grim framerate. HD television broadcasts are at 720p30, and I'm sure that your family will be very pleased with the quality, even at something like 10Mbps. And they'll be able to watch it smoothly on a wide variety of hardware. I'd start playing with that as your target resolution.