CS4 Samsung HD camcorder import problem

[al210]

I just tried importing files off my new Samsung HMX-h104 HD camcorder. The files are in H.264 mp4 format full HD. They import into premier but playback very slow and are stretched wider than they should be. Premiere shows the file as a XDCAM-EX Movie.

I went into my bin and interpreted the footage into HD anamorphic widescreen 1080. That fixed the overstretch problem. But I have to render the workspace every time in order to get smooth playback. Is there something I'm missing? Should I be converting these files before importing?

[Chuck Engels]

Welcome to Muvipix Al

They file/format isn't native to the program so the conversion will be necessary. No way around the rendering for a smooth preview, especially with HDV.

[Paul LS]

Whta are your computer specs? To edit H.264 MP4 or AVCHD you need a very fast computer... for example to be able to playback the timeline smoothly you really need a quad core processor. Anything less and you will need to render the time,ine to get smooth playback.

[al210]

My specs:

i7core 920 @ 3.8ghz Water cooled
Asus p6T Deluxe Motherboard
Geforce GTX295 Video Card Water cooled
6GB Corsair Dominator DDR3
300 GB Velocity Raptor ( OS and programs)
1TB WD Black SATA Raid 0 (video files)
Pioneer BDR-202 Blu Ray Burner
Vista 64 bit

I don't have any problems with video off my Sony HD camera but that is HDV Tape m2t files.

[Chuck Engels]

Well there sure doesn't seem to be any problem with those specs

Maybe Paul has an idea what the problem might be. Although having to render HDV clips for a smooth preview is not necessarily a problem.

[al210]

What I don't understand is that my files don't import properly. Premiere thinks the file is type XDCAM-EX Movie.

[Chuck Engels]

There are so many formats now that it really doesn't surprise me.
It has problems interpreting some HD Widescreen properly at times, and that is from DV Tape.

Maybe someone out there has the same camcorder and has gone through similar issues.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

When you started the project in CS4 what sequence pre-set did you select?

[Paul LS]

Problem is that the Samsung camcorders record to an MP4/AVC video format... not standard AVCHD. And I have read that Premiere Pro/Elements has a problem with this format. It may edit it but it "sucks" up computer resources. Your processor would handle standard AVCHD without issue.

"Unlike most other mainstream manufacturers, Samsung doesn't use the AVCHD format for its camcorders. Instead, it relies on MPEG-4 AVC H.264 with an MP4 file format, which is allegedly more standards-compliant than AVCHD but in reality we found it caused problems with Adobe video editing software."

[al210]

I guess my only option for now is to convert the files to something else. I have TMPGEnc Express 4.0 that reads the files fine. Not sure best way/format to convert to with minimal quality loss.

[Paul LS]

If you want to finally export as standard definition then convert to DV-AVI for editing in CS4/PE7... if you want your final export as high definition than convert them to high definition HDV MPEG2 at 25Mb/s. CS4/PE7 handles HDV MPEG2 just fine and the quality should be good.

[al210]

If you want to finally export as standard definition then convert to DV-AVI for editing in CS4/PE7... if you want your final export as high definition than convert them to high definition HDV MPEG2 at 25Mb/s. CS4/PE7 handles HDV MPEG2 just fine and the quality should be good.

Thanks for all the help, I'll give it a try.