Do-it-yourself shadow files / proxy editing

Peter Ozpeter

Contributor Joined: Aug 10, 2008 20:51 Messages: 336 Offline

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Sep 01, 2009 06:35

In my ongoing investigations into a few PD8 oddities, I used MediaShow Espresso to create a set of mpeg files from the AVCHD files in my current project, then used a text editor to do a search-and-replace in the project file to tell PD8 to use the mpeg files and not the AVCHD files. Obviously one could then reverse that and use the avchd files for the actual render. Is this a known technique? It's pretty simple. My DIY shadow files were created without the crashes I get when using the PD8 "official" shadow files and it seemed much quicker, and program stability was fine when working with the project subsequently.

However, I notice one curious thing, that certain joins (without transitions) between two clips cause timeline playback problems. The problem can be seen as a brief freeze of the last frame of the outgoing clip, and then playback of subsequent clips becomes jerky due to frames being skipped (probably alternate frames only being shown). Attempting to replay across the problem join gives the same result, but changing the length of the outgoing clip a little resolves it and playback is then fine. This is a bit like the problem discussed in another thread regarding 1280x720 AVCHD clips but it doesn't cause the complete video freeze, 'just' frame skipping.

Anyone else seen that?

Peter Ozpeter

Contributor Joined: Aug 10, 2008 20:51 Messages: 336 Offline

Sep 01, 2009 07:16

I've now globally replaced "mpg" with "m2ts" in the project file to access a replacement set of 1920x1080 files also created in MediaShow Espresso, and this seems to give the best playback experience (compared to the original 1280x720 files and the 1920x1080 mpeg2 files originally created in MSE). It's almost as if the program is optimised for that fomat. No problems at all between clips (and it would smart render where there are no fx).

All very interesting.

vn800rider

Senior Contributor Location: Darwen, UK Joined: May 15, 2008 04:32 Messages: 1949 Offline

Sep 01, 2009 09:32

Hi Peter,

Just to clarify - are your 'home made' shadows the 1920x1080 ones you talked about.

My understanding of the PD shadows is that they are 720x480 mpg2 so as to reduce the processing needed?

If yours are full HD does this still mean PD will stress with lower spec systems although this stress might be less with straight mpgs than with .mp4 or .m2ts files ?

Cheers
Adrian

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Peter Ozpeter

Contributor Joined: Aug 10, 2008 20:51 Messages: 336 Offline

Sep 01, 2009 18:55

You can pick whatever format plays well on your PC and which provides sufficient quality. The official shadow file format is probably a good choice, but here at least it takes longer than expected to create the shadow files, and then there's some program instability when working with the project. YMMV!