How-To: Quicktime/MOV HDV in Premiere, OR how to stick it to Apple Options

[Athiril]

Apple are bastards.

HDV is MPEG-2.

QuickTime Pro 7 on Windows comes without the MPEG-2 plugin, it sells for $20 last time I checked.

Once you buy the MPEG-2 plugin, it still does not allow decoding of HDV in Quicktime container.


If you are unfortunate enough to have footage in Quicktime/HDV, or were silly enough to capture with FCP into HDV (you can capture in ProRes HDV with FCP - which QuickTime for Windows will decode, thus work in Premiere), do not worry, there is help for you.

You have 2 options of getting MOV/HDV footage working in Windows.

1. You transcode it.
2. You demux it back to an MPEG stream.

The best method is obvously 2, as it doesn't recompress/re-encode, you will not lose quality.

1. Transcoding
You can use a variety of tools, the easiest is probably VLC.

Note that RAD video tools will not work with HDV in Quicktime, it will transcode it, but it cant decode it and you will end up with blank video.

You launch VLC then click file->convert/save, browse to your file (you can do a batch convert via command line - it's on VLC's wiki), click open.

Then you choose the encapsulation container. Do not use MPEG-TS, this might not work with Premiere.

MPEG-PS should work with premiere, as should MPEG-1, ASF/WMV, MP4, and MOV.

Go to the video codec tab, check video, choose a codec, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264 should all work inside of MOV and MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 should both work inside of MPEG-PS and MPEG-1 for Premiere, MPEG-4 and H.264 should work inside of MP4, WMV-1 and WMV-2 and I think MPEG-2 should work inside of ASF/WMV for Premiere.

Set the bitrate as large as possible (8192).

Go to the audio tab, check audio and use an appropriate codec, with a high bit rate, or just use WAV (if its supported in the container format).

Check the check box next to file, and click browse and after finding a location for it, enter a file and its extension (.mov for mov container, etc).


2. Demuxing
This method has been tested with both Premiere Pro CS3 and Premiere Pro CS4.

Download AviDemux, Avanti and FFmpeg (choose latest) for Windows.

Install AviDemux.

You will need WinRAR or 7-Zip to Extract the Avanti and FFmpeg packages for Windows.

Extract Avanti, put it in C:\Avanti or a preferred place, before running Avanti, extract ffmpeg (all files in archive) to the ffmpeg sub directory in the Avanti directory.

Run Avanti

In source one, click browse and locate your craptime MOV file, click browse on destination and type file name and press enter.

Change the codec for audio to demux audio, same with video, change it to demux video and change the drop box next to it called container to ES.

check enable for video, click start, uncheck video then check audio and click start, this will generate a .mpg and a .wav

Your .mpg and .wav files are now ready to be used in Premiere.

However, for best performance in Premiere I recommend an extra following step.

Run AviDemux, click file and open and locate the newly created .mpg file, and open it, when it asks to index click yes.

Set the video track to copy, and the audio track to WAV LPCM, change the format to MPEG-PS (do -not- use MPEG-TS).

Now click the Audio menu and click main track, change source to External Wav.

Then hit browse and locate the newly created .wav file and hit open.

Now go to File->Save->Save Video, find a location to save in, type a file name and use the extension .mpg or .mpeg


Now you can import this file in Premiere, it'll take a few seconds to import and then to conform it after importing, but once it's done, it'll act and behave nicely, and performance will be fast (or at least normal) rather than doggedly slow as it would be if you captured to ProRes.

You can do batch conversion with FFmpeg via command line.

This post has been edited by Athiril: Nov 18 2008, 06:51 PM

[^Faldo^]

If I could sticky this, I would.

In fact, i'll bug people tomorrow at the office and get it stickied.

Awesome. Athiril, you rock.

[Athiril]

If I could sticky this, I would.

In fact, i'll bug people tomorrow at the office and get it stickied.

Awesome. Athiril, you rock.

Thanks ^_^


Did i mention the output mpg from avidemux playsback in QuickTime Pro + MPEG-2 plugin? Even though its only been demuxed and re-multiplexed, no transcoding?

No HDV on QuickTime on Windows = Artificial limitation, doesnt need an extra codec.

[Athiril]

I have had a few desync probs using that demux method on various versions of ffmpeg.

Was writing my own program to call ffmpeg on a whole dir of files and automate the whole process...

but then i found SUPER, ffmpeg front end, batch encoding, can also copy video or audio track instead of re-encoding.

I just copy video track, select mpeg container, and generally use ac3 320 kbps for the audio, havent found any desync problems that require further time correcting :)

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html



edit: I'm going to see if I can figure out a way to do the same for DVCPRO HD, may have to write a utility myself for it if i can figure out and understand the mov container, i'll take an mxf file and the resulting muxed mov file from fcp, and figure out how to reverse the process.

This post has been edited by Athiril: Dec 11 2008, 09:43 AM

[hazarama]

There's a third option which is to install a DirectShow filter for Quicktime so Premiere can read/import mov's directly.

There are a number of alternatives here:

Quicktime Alternative
Riverpast Quicktime filter
FFDShow
MediaLooks Quicktime Filter

just to name a few.

[Athiril]

There's a third option which is to install a DirectShow filter for Quicktime so Premiere can read/import mov's directly.

There are a number of alternatives here:

Quicktime Alternative
Riverpast Quicktime filter
FFDShow
MediaLooks Quicktime Filter

just to name a few.

And QuickTime Pro itself.

They do not decode HDV (Even though HDV is 100% decodable with QuickTime's own MPEG-2 codec, or any MPEG-2 codec).

They also do not decode DVCPRO HD, which is another problem that I'm try to work on recently with frame accuracy.

[hazarama]

And QuickTime Pro itself.

They do not decode HDV (Even though HDV is 100% decodable with QuickTime's own MPEG-2 codec, or any MPEG-2 codec).

They also do not decode DVCPRO HD, which is another problem that I'm try to work on recently with frame accuracy.

Ahh yes, good point about the straight wrappers - which you already mentioned <doh>. However something that provides a mov splitter will allow the mpeg2 decoder such as those that come with Premiere to do their thing. AFAIK FFDShow should provide this but I'll have to do a little digging.

[hazarama]

And QuickTime Pro itself.

They do not decode HDV (Even though HDV is 100% decodable with QuickTime's own MPEG-2 codec, or any MPEG-2 codec).

They also do not decode DVCPRO HD, which is another problem that I'm try to work on recently with frame accuracy.

Ahh yes, good point about the straight wrappers - which you already mentioned <doh>. However something that provides a mov splitter will allow the mpeg2 decoder such as those that come with Premiere to do their thing. AFAIK FFDShow should provide this but I'll have to do a little digging.

Arggh boo .. spent a couple of hours chasing it but couldn't crack it. I can get different demuxers in DirectShow to decode the audio or video but not both >:| So um yeah .. guess I was a little hasty with my initial reply.

[Athiril]

And QuickTime Pro itself.

They do not decode HDV (Even though HDV is 100% decodable with QuickTime's own MPEG-2 codec, or any MPEG-2 codec).

They also do not decode DVCPRO HD, which is another problem that I'm try to work on recently with frame accuracy.

Ahh yes, good point about the straight wrappers - which you already mentioned <doh>. However something that provides a mov splitter will allow the mpeg2 decoder such as those that come with Premiere to do their thing. AFAIK FFDShow should provide this but I'll have to do a little digging.

Arggh boo .. spent a couple of hours chasing it but couldn't crack it. I can get different demuxers in DirectShow to decode the audio or video but not both >:| So um yeah .. guess I was a little hasty with my initial reply.

The video decoding may not be frame accurate, I'll have a go, what did you use?

That's not so much a problem, as QuickTime Pro (or Alternative, or any others) can export the audio, and you can bring it in to the editor then as an audio track in Premiere.. though if the directshow decoder isn't frame accurate the audio wont be in sync.

[hazarama]

The video decoding may not be frame accurate, I'll have a go, what did you use?

That's not so much a problem, as QuickTime Pro (or Alternative, or any others) can export the audio, and you can bring it in to the editor then as an audio track in Premiere.. though if the directshow decoder isn't frame accurate the audio wont be in sync.

Don't laugh too much .. I ended up renaming my sample HDV quicktime (bear.mov) to bear.mpg and threw it into GraphEdit. Funnily enough it rendered and I found that pretty much every MPEG2 decoder I had would work - some better that others. However, none of the mpeg splitters or demuers could find the audio stream and so only the video stream was rendered. The splitters and decoders that come with Sorenson Squeeze and Premiere seemed to work best. So I then brought the mov and mpg versions into Premiere. The mov only rendered the audio stream and the mpg rendered only the video stream. However, they did not align cause the audio from the mov was getting munged. I didn't dumux the mov as you outlined cause I was looking for an easy fix.

[Athiril]

Hmm changing the audio format (from big endian to little endian pcm, or decompressing to little endian pcm) inside the mov file but keeping the video and usign that method may work..

[aquageek]

I have a question. I used ffmpeg command line to demux a .mov into a .mpg and .wav. Now when I'm trying to use Avidemux to remux it I don't have an option available for WAV LPMC. When I select a different option for audio (after selecting the .wav as the main track) I get an error message: Incompatible audio. For DVD, audio must be 48kHz MP2 (stereo), AC3, DTS or LPCM (stereo).

Any suggestions? (or do you need more info?)

[Athiril]

Can you give more info on what video settings youve used in AviDemux?

If for some odd reason AviDemux isnt giving you LPCM, then grab Audacity, open your WAV file, and save it to LPCM format or the required format, go to Audio menu in AviDemux select main track and change it to external WAV, select the AV (LPCM) and change the Audio method to Copy.


For a simpler method, just open the HDV MOV in AviDemux set the video codec to copy, the audio to none, and the output format to MPEG, and save it as a .mpeg, this will work fine in Premiere too, stereo audio will be in 2 tracks in AviDemux, you can save them from going to Audio menu then save and saving as left.wav and then Audio menu main track, selecting second track and Audio -> save again and save as right.wav.

In Audacity you can then import the two waves, click on the audio tab on each track and set them to left and right correspondigly then go file->export->ok->stereo.wav and import it as a separate file in premiere too :)