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Edit Review — MainConcept MPEG Pro

Sep 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Steve Mullen

Edit HDV with Adobe's latest version of Premiere and this plug-in.

I've been using Adobe Premiere since the summer of 1992 to edit many different video formats. These include Motion JPEG, DV25, DV50, and uncompressed video. So it's only appropriate to look at how this venerable editor handles one of the latest video formats: HDV.

Premiere's ability to handle many different video formats is based upon two capabilities. First, because Premiere enables plug-in support for hardware devices, audio and video media can be input and output via many different I/O boards such as the TARGA, VideoVision, and Media 100 Vincent, plus boards from Matrox, Pinnacle, and Canopus. In recent years, FireWire drivers have been supported, so neither NuBus nor PCI boards are required for I/O.

Second, Premiere supports import and export functions through plug-ins. Even when device drivers are not available for use by Premiere, as is the case today with MPEG-2 via IEEE 1394, Premiere can import media by calling upon a large set of codec plug-ins. Thus, unlike Xpress DV, Xpress Pro, or Final Cut Express, Premiere is not confined to editing only one format.

When one edits DV25, the codec used is typically the one supplied with the OS. However, vendors that invest in codec development, like Canopus, can supply plug-in codecs. They can also be supplied by camcorder manufacturers.

Premiere also has the ability to accept plug-ins that provide unique rendering engines. This capability has allowed Premiere to utilize effects rendered by software and hardware from other vendors. For example, Canopus provides Premiere with a plug-in that supports its multi-stream realtime effects. Likewise, Matrox provides plug-ins that enable hardware on the boards it sells to accelerate effects. In these cases, the rendering engine supplied by the plug-in operates on the media that you have captured or imported.

When, for example, Premiere is equipped with the CineForm Aspect HD plug-in, the media processed by the Aspect HD rendering engine is CineForm's proprietary Wavelet-based Carlsberg format. (The CineForm i.LINK capture utility makes the conversion from HDV to Carlsberg.) The CineForm rendering engine is optimized to support Carlsberg using Intel processors. If the tight connection between a codec and a CPU interests you, head to www.cineform.com/technology/default.htm to read a fascinating white paper on this topic.

Most of the available codecs and render engines support either intraframe compressed or uncompressed formats. Premiere, however, can accept plug-ins that support inter-frame compressed video such as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4. In this review, we'll look at a plug-in that supports MPEG-2 — specifically, the MPEG-2-based HDV format.

MainConcept markets a package that enables Premiere Pro to capture, edit, and export HDV. The package is called MPEG Pro Plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro. The SD and HD versions are $249 and $349, respectively. The package can be bought and downloaded from the MainConcept website at www.mainactor.com. I downloaded the HD demo package (version 1.04), which is a fully functional product except for a watermark written to each frame. (According to the MainConcept website, this version works with Premiere Pro 1.5.)

Without the MainConcept software, Premiere Pro imports MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 files and plays them in the source window. It does not, however, offer native MPEG editing. Therefore, MPEG files must be converted to another format for editing. That means each frame must be decoded and recompressed — even with a cuts-only project. If your export format is MPEG-2, as is likely, you'll need to convert your finished project back to MPEG-2. Once again, every frame must be decompressed and then encoded.

The MPEG Pro plug-in eliminates these limitations and allows you to edit MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. The plug-in supports MPEG encoding from various analog and digital sources. For example, you can capture DV25 into MPEG-2 video via an i.LINK connection. This process eliminates rendering by capturing directly to the format you'll be editing. The plug-in even supports input and output to/from Sony MicroMV camcorders.

Naturally, you can import both MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 files. Likewise, a Premiere timeline can be exported to MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 files. When working with SD-resolution MPEG, the IEEE 1394 port outputs DV25 during editing and scrubbing. The plug-in supports “smart requantizing.” This capability lets Premiere convert SD material from one MPEG format to another — for example, from MicroMV to DVD-compliant MPEG-2 without re-encoding.

The capability we will focus on is the plug-in's ability to capture HDV via an i.LINK connection. Once captured, HDV can be edited and then exported to an HDV device. All these capabilities come at the price of a powerful CPU. The minimum system requirements are an Intel Pentium 4 processor with Hyper Threading technology at 3GHz or faster and at least 1GB of RAM. I used a system with a 3.2GHz Prescott P4 with 1GB of RAM.

After downloading, I ran the MPEG Pro installer program that installed the Premiere plug-ins with no problems at all. I then launched Premiere Pro 1.5 and requested a New Project. When the dialog box appears under the Load Presets tab, you'll find a MainConcept MPEG Pro folder, in which you'll find an HDV folder. There are four presets within this folder — all of them labeled incorrectly. Two are labeled NTSC and two PAL. Once one enters the world of HD, these labels have no meaning. Instead, the NTSC pair should be labeled 30fps, and the PAL pair should be labeled 25fps. Under each frame rate you can choose between 1080i and 720p. You'll note that MainConcept provides no support for 480p60, even though it is an HDV format.

After selecting 720p and naming the project, open the Capture tool. Under the Settings tab, set your media targets and click the Edit button, which will bring up Premiere's Project Settings window. Confirm the Capture Format is MainConcept MPEG Pro and click the Settings button. Next, select JVC MPEG (NTSC) VCR under the Video Capture Devices, and click Setup. When the Setup window appears, click the Capture tab. Stay with me, now. We're almost done.

Under the Capture tab, you'll see a long list of Compression formats. Because we want to input HDV and keep it HDV within Premiere, select “Native device format.” Click OK to return to the Capture tool's Settings window. Now select JVC MPEG (NTSC) VCR as the Device Control option.

According to the 13-page manual provided by MainConcept, “You can capture as you normally would in Premiere Pro.” I did not find this to be true. If you want to perform an immediate capture, the tape must be playing. Moreover, during capture, you'll see no picture nor hear any sound. If you Mark In and Out points and click Capture, the capture will not start. And if you log clips and then perform a Batch Capture, it will also fail.

It is startling to see a product fail to accomplish the very first step in its use. Though the company has admitted that it knows of the bug, at press time MainConcept still has not posted an updated version more than a month after the plug-in's release. The capture problem was the only significant bug I encountered with the software.

Thankfully, at least one capture option worked, so I was able to capture enough clips for this review. To capture, start the camcorder playing and click Capture. As long as one does not use any timecode-based control, this method works.

After capturing a number of clips, I began editing. I'm happy to report that everything worked as usual.

The only way I knew I was editing HDV was by playback performance. A single stream played perfectly. Even with a 3-second cross dissolve, playback was smooth. After replacing the dissolve with a clock wipe, playback performance decreased dramatically. The transition played as nine 10-frame “jumps.” Adding color correction to one clip resulted in eight jumps. Adding correction to both clips caused the effect to play as seven jumps. This performance suggests that single-stream sequences — with color correction, fades, and titles — will preview quite acceptably. But for multiple-stream work, CineForm's Aspect HD might be a better option.

To export HDV, I issued File > Export > MainConcept MPEG Pro, which brought up the Export Settings window. All you need to do now is click the HDV 720p radio button. This automatically sets the MPEG-2 elementary stream to 25Mbps, VBR, with a closed 15-frame GOP. Now you can choose from three export options: to a file, to an MPEG tape device from an existing HDV file, or to a file and then an MPEG tape device. The latter two options require you to click the Device button. After clicking “Prompt before export start,” click OK. (I recommend the third choice.)

When you click Export, the timeline will be rendered, after which you'll see a message that reads “Ready to start export to tape device.” With your HDV camcorder in VTR mode, locate the point at which you want the recording to begin, and press Pause. Press the camcorder's trigger button and wait for its status indicator to turn a steady green. Now in quick succession, click the export “Yes” button and press the camcorder trigger. The status indicator now turns red as the recording proceeds. Press the trigger button to stop recording, and then click Stop. I was unable to get the “Activate device” option to send a Record command to the camcorder.

The encode time for a 1-minute cuts-only test timeline was 144 seconds — or 2.5 seconds per second of material. The KDDI software included with the JVC camcorder exports a similar 1-minute timeline in only 15 seconds. MainConcept claims to provide a “native” HDV solution — as does KDDI — so why the dramatic difference in export time?

A true native HDV, or DV, editor exports a cuts-only timeline without decoding/decompressing the input video and without encoding/compressing the video for output. The MainConcept solution, for some reason, upon export converts six-frame CBR MPEG-2 to 15-frame VBR MPEG-2. Naturally this slows down export — although the longer GOP might facilitate slightly higher quality from incorporated graphics.

I also tried exporting an HDV timeline to HD Windows Media 9. This task failed. Because of the importance of WM9, this is a serious problem. A workaround would be to export a timeline as uncompressed video and then compress it using WM9. Of course, you'll need lots of free disk space for the uncompressed movie.

Although Adobe works closely with MainConcept on the SD MPEG encoder it ships with Premiere, it has no relationship with MainConcept regarding the Pro plug-in sold directly by MainConcept. Therefore, Adobe has not qualified or approved the MPEG Pro software. If you own Premiere Pro and need to edit HDV while incurring the least cost, go ahead and use the current version 1.04 of the plug-in. I would suggest waiting for the next version of the plug-in, however.

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BOTTOM LINE

Company: MainConcept Beachwood, Ohio; (216) 378-7655 www.mainactor.com

Product: MPEG Pro

Assets: Plug-in enables Premiere Pro to capture, edit, and export HDV for a low price.

Caveats: Many capture options do not work; multiple-stream sequences do not play back smoothly.

Demographic: HDV editors on a budget

Price: $249 for SD; $349 for HD

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© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.