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Premiopolis
Premiopolis
Inspiring
July 8, 2018
Answered

Proxy Workflow - Building the best ingest preset for 4-channel sources

  • July 8, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 17376 views

Our situation: We've got a mix of UDH 4k file formats

  - mp4 files with 2 channels of audio

  - mxf files with 4 channels of audio

The existing PPro/AME ingest presets generate files that seem needlessly large.

Using the smallest existing ProRes (Proxy) @ 1270x720 created files that were 14x larger than an equivalent h.264 file.

Custom-created Ingest Presets doing ProRes at 640x360 and even 160x90 were still many times larger.

ProRes being what it is, there's no changing the bit rate / resolution

For our 2-channel originals, we can generate h.264 proxies and assign those as our proxies.  The results are fantastic: very small files, very good picture quality.

But for our 4-channel originals we haven't yet figured out an optimal solution.

What I would like to do is generate h.264 picture, with matching audio track assigns, wrapped in either MXF or QuickTime.

So far I can't figure out how to do that with PPro/AME

    Correct answer Premiopolis

    johansebamuel 

    So far the answer seems to be to use Handbrake, Edit Ready, or Resolve as none of these have this limitation on MP4s that Premiere has.

    https://forums.adobe.com/people/R+Neil+Haugen  wrote

    So for proxies your main goal is the smallest file size rather than smoothest playback.... is that correct?

    Neil

    I ended going with ffmpeg and ExtendScript workflow.

    1 - ffmpeg:

    The key using ffmpeg was finding the here was the right option, in this case "-map 0" which tells the conversion to track source tracks to matching destinations.  Example CLI:

    ffmpeg -i /path/to/source -map 0 -g 48 -c:v libx264 -profile:v baseline -crf 16 -c:a aac -b:a 256k -vf scale=1280:720 -pix_fmt yuv420p /path/to/dest.mp4

    2 - ExtendScript:

    Connects the project item master clips to the generated proxies.  In this way you can

    - Batch generate all the proxies using a codec, naming convention, and folder hierarchy of your choice (currently PPro/AME limit the codec, naming convention, and target destinations to a couple of choices)

    - Batch connect the generated proxies to their respective master clip (projectItems) (currently PPro's batch connect for Proxies is limited)

    - Re-do or make multiple versions all the proxies at a different resolutions using codecs, and auto switch.

         (thanks to bruce bullis​ and team as always for transforming the possibilities in post)

    R Neil Haugen

    Not necessarily looking for the smallest the file size, but the savings with h.264/mp4 have been on the order of 75x that of the default PPro proxy options -- huge savings -- and the quality and performance do not seem to have suffered, in spite of the the (I would expect) valid argument that h264 burdens the CPU with decompression overhead.  So far that hasn't the case.

    Question: Is there a preferred codec / compression you would suggest?

    2 replies

    E
    excited_Genie16B8
    Legend
    November 8, 2018

    The existing PPro/AME ingest presets generate files that seem needlessly large.

    Actually, that size is needed to make the files easy to play.  It's the very high compression (small size) of the originals that requires the proxies to begin with.

    Premiopolis
    PremiopolisAuthor
    Inspiring
    November 8, 2018

    Jim_Simon  wrote

    The existing PPro/AME ingest presets generate files that seem needlessly large.

    Actually, that size is needed to make the files easy to play.  It's the very high compression (small size) of the originals that requires the proxies to begin with.

    Apparently not.  The smaller h264 look great, play fine.  If it were a modest file size savings, sure, but we're getting 75x savings over Cineform.  The show we were on was highly mobile, meaning we're in multiple locations editing on a laptops and thousands of UHD sources.  If we'd worked in Cineform, we would have needed extra drives, making the process that much more cumbersome.  By going h264 we were able to keep two shows at full res plus proxies on one 4TB, which, in this context, made a difference.   The surprise was that neither the quality nor the performance took a significant hit by going with h264/mp4.

    T
    Trevor_Asq
    Legend
    November 8, 2018

    The reason I use ultra small H264 files (which are v poor quality) is to use google drive to get proxies back from location quickly with variable internet connections. Can then get ahead with edit ahead of full res arrival.

    Very interested in trying out ffmpeg recipe and also your extendscript recipes if you are willing to share.

      J
      johansebamuel
      Inspiring
      November 7, 2018

      So far the answer seems to be to use Handbrake, Edit Ready, or Resolve as none of these have this limitation on MP4s that Premiere has.

      R Neil Haugen
      R Neil Haugen
      Legend
      November 7, 2018

      So for proxies your main goal is the smallest file size rather than smoothest playback.... is that correct?

      Neil

      Everyone's mileage always varies ...
      Premiopolis
      PremiopolisAuthorCorrect answer
      Inspiring
      November 7, 2018

      johansebamuel 

      So far the answer seems to be to use Handbrake, Edit Ready, or Resolve as none of these have this limitation on MP4s that Premiere has.

      https://forums.adobe.com/people/R+Neil+Haugen  wrote

      So for proxies your main goal is the smallest file size rather than smoothest playback.... is that correct?

      Neil

      I ended going with ffmpeg and ExtendScript workflow.

      1 - ffmpeg:

      The key using ffmpeg was finding the here was the right option, in this case "-map 0" which tells the conversion to track source tracks to matching destinations.  Example CLI:

      ffmpeg -i /path/to/source -map 0 -g 48 -c:v libx264 -profile:v baseline -crf 16 -c:a aac -b:a 256k -vf scale=1280:720 -pix_fmt yuv420p /path/to/dest.mp4

      2 - ExtendScript:

      Connects the project item master clips to the generated proxies.  In this way you can

      - Batch generate all the proxies using a codec, naming convention, and folder hierarchy of your choice (currently PPro/AME limit the codec, naming convention, and target destinations to a couple of choices)

      - Batch connect the generated proxies to their respective master clip (projectItems) (currently PPro's batch connect for Proxies is limited)

      - Re-do or make multiple versions all the proxies at a different resolutions using codecs, and auto switch.

           (thanks to bruce bullis​ and team as always for transforming the possibilities in post)

      R Neil Haugen

      Not necessarily looking for the smallest the file size, but the savings with h.264/mp4 have been on the order of 75x that of the default PPro proxy options -- huge savings -- and the quality and performance do not seem to have suffered, in spite of the the (I would expect) valid argument that h264 burdens the CPU with decompression overhead.  So far that hasn't the case.

      Question: Is there a preferred codec / compression you would suggest?

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