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Author Topic: Adobe Encoder Problems Phil Ranucci Expert Film Handler Posts: 236 From: Carpinteria,CA, United States Registered: May 2006 posted 01-23-2015 09:30 PM                     The Santa Barbara International Film Festival is coming up. We're getting lots of CRU drives from Deluxe/Technicolor, etc.. These load fine, just like a studio release. Also lots of USB3 drives from Staples and Amazon. 90% of the problems are with these drives. Problem 1-Cinedigm LMS doesn't support USB3 so ingest is glacial. Real difficult to load ~100 movies that way. GDC server ingest is just as bad. Problem 2- We're getting USB drives that filmmakers used Adobe Media Encoder to output the DCP and it isn't working. The image consists of about 1/4 of the movie image, and the actual picture on the screen fills about 10% of the screen. We have USB drives that contain the same content encoded by Open DCP and the picture contains the full image and fills the screen. Barco and GDC feel the problem is with the encoding, and that seems sensible. Adobe doesn't seem to understand the problem and we haven't gotten ant response yet. Any ideas?  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 01-24-2015 04:06 AM                     I side with Barco and GDC on this...if encoded properly, it doesn't manner the method of transfer or server you put it on...it will work properly. Yes, USB2 is slow...twice as long as going via CRU or FTP. Only the more recently conceived servers are going to have USB 3 ingest at this time. I would think that a Cinedigm TMS system could be upgraded to USB3 though...it is just a Windows based TMS system. I wonder if some entrepreneuring fellow could "invent" a CRU caddy with a USB3 port. That is, it has a USB3 to SATA converter in it such that when you plug the dummy CRU in, it has a USB3 port on it. Would be a nice update to all elder servers with CRU ports for when those pesky USB drives show up. I know that going from SATA to USB 3 converters exist (cheaply too) to allow connecting external drives to a computer...I wonder how it would work going the other direction.  |  IP: Logged Frank B. McLaughlin Film Handler Posts: 76 From: Denver, CO Registered: Dec 2011 posted 01-24-2015 07:13 AM                        I think the media encoder is dependent upon a plug-in. In Premiere Pro I use Total Concept and JPEG2000 encoding an add-on.  |  IP: Logged Antonio Casado Film Handler Posts: 36 From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain Registered: Apr 2013 posted 01-24-2015 07:24 AM                        The last version of Adobe CC 2014 can export to DCP via the Wraptor plugin (limited). It´s a crap. Don´t use it. I do a lot of DCPs that I copy to USB drives and none of them have problems in any server worldwide. Is not the drive, but the DCP itself and the format used (EXT3 is the best).  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 01-24-2015 08:35 AM                     Yup - Wraptor, also the old standalone versions, have always been problematic. Poor Choice from Adobe to include this into Premiere CC now. What a mess for festivals... But maybe that'll generate enough negative feedback to fix it. Maybe rewrapping is a possible solution, if it's only formal issues. Better then to reencode all the material. About USB3 vs. USB2 - a practical solution would be to transfer all incoming USB-drives to a NAS or bare hds or CRU caddies, then ingest into Cinedigm through CRU or SATA/ESATA or Network. I guess a good NAS should be able to do that quickly enough. Steve - USB to SATA works because USB is multiprotocol and has an explizit block-device transport layer. SATA on the other hand is ONLY block-transfer, and lacks options to initialize and serve the overlying USB protocol layer. You simply can not send USB commands over SATA links. That's why there will never be a SATA->USB3.0 converter. If it would be possible, it would already exist. The only option is to use a USB3.0 capable NAS-Adapter, going from ext2/NTFS filesystems to FTP protocol. I wrote about it here: http://www.film-tech.com/ubb/f16/t002151.html The Addonics NAS 4.0 may be worth a try. I don't know anything about the Cinedigm TMS server hardware. But I guess chances are high that at least that server could be retrofitted with a USB3.0 card. - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 01-24-2015 10:46 AM                     The Cinedigm TMS is a windows based program and runs on Windows. As such, it will have the ingest capabilities that a PC would have plus the CRU ports. That is, USB ingest is already there...you don't need to use the CRU for everything. Depending on the vintage of the server/computer running the TCC, you would have USB 3 already. If not, one should be able to put in a USB card. The size/capabilities of the Cinedigm system normally depends on screen count. The higher the screen count the greater the storage capacity and typically the greater the number of ingest points (4 CRU versus 2 or possibly even 1 for a mini). They all have USB and DVD drives too. Unlike many other TMS systems, Cinedigm systems are complete clones so as to not introduce variables...That way, when Cinedigm makes an update, they can effectively test it on every system since they are all the same. That said, we have some based on an IBM server and most are based on DELL servers. For the most part, they are quite reliable for us.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 01-25-2015 05:45 PM                     quote: Carsten Kurz Yup - Wraptor, also the old standalone versions, have always been problematic. Poor Choice from Adobe to include this into Premiere CC now. What a mess for festivals... But maybe that'll generate enough negative feedback to fix it. I'm pretty surprised and disappointed Adobe is not more on the ball with fixing problems and/or incorporating new features and improvements in its Creative Cloud applications. The whole idea behind this subscription thing is getting bugs fixed much faster and seeing improvements and new features frequently rather than having to wait a year or more for the next boxed version of the software. Maybe Adobe has such a monopoly in the graphics software industry that it feels like it can get away with dragging its feet rather than making a paid CC subscription a better value.  |  IP: Logged Phil Ranucci Expert Film Handler Posts: 236 From: Carpinteria,CA, United States Registered: May 2006 posted 01-26-2015 12:44 PM                     Thanks for the replies. It looks like Adobe knows about it. This is how it looks. https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1687980  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 01-26-2015 02:56 PM                     Hopefully Adobe will respond to this promptly, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the update. Adobe has been dragging their feet on fixing some bugs in other programs. The latest update of Photoshop CC has some laggy mouse pointer issues with PCs running Win 8.1 and multiple monitors. I've been hounding them to fix an issue with SVG graphics in Muse CC. The app adds a 2 pixel tall white underline to any SVG image placed into a Muse site. I'm just wondering what's going on with Adobe and some other "American" software companies. Are they jobbing all the programming work to India and covered with language barrier problems or something? We were sold on CC for it offering more frequent updates and much faster bug fixes. I'm not seeing it at this point. The tree generator in Photoshop CC is pretty cool though.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 01-26-2015 03:45 PM                        They got your money; all paid up in advance for unspecified future services. Which could equally be nothing at all or something significant. Since providing nothing at all costs them nothing and the other option does, which do you think is more cost-effective for them to give you? I really don't see where they have any incentive to actually do anything for you. After all, they no no longer have to create a new version to sell to the customers; the customers pay anyway and all they have to do is sit back and collect. Why pay a salary to those pesky programmers?  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 01-26-2015 04:54 PM                     They bought this Wraptor module, so they do not even have their hands on the code. They can only wait for Q it. Quvis essentially never fixed the wraptor issues in 4 years. Let's see.. - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Terrence Meiczinger Film Handler Posts: 45 From: Orono, Me, USA Registered: Dec 2008 posted 01-26-2015 06:47 PM                        My understanding was that this was more Quvis working a deal for Adobe to include the plugin rather than Adobe approaching Quvis. This would probably be why it is somewhat crippled.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 01-26-2015 06:57 PM                     quote: Frank Cox They got your money; all paid up in advance for unspecified future services. Which could equally be nothing at all or something significant. Since providing nothing at all costs them nothing and the other option does, which do you think is more cost-effective for them to give you? Unfortunately in my line of work there is no credible alternative to Adobe. Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator rule the print graphics world with an iron fist. Corel and Quark are way behind in the graphics software market and have their own problems. We could try toughing it out with older legacy versions of Adobe software, but those older versions run into compatibility issues in newer versions of Windows. Plus, we have to be able to trade CC-based files with other customers. Basically we're stuck.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 01-26-2015 07:35 PM                        Yup. That's what I said. They've got you exactly where they want you. They have exactly no incentive to provide you with anything at all at this point. They can "farm the mailbox", cash your cheque when it arrives, and sit on the beach in between. Since you have no apparent option, they have no reason to do anything more. Bugs? Crashes? Missing features? Yawn.. pass the margarita.  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 01-27-2015 06:55 AM                     Having 'the cash in' doesn't mean they do not have to follow their legal obligations. If product doesn't perform (and in this case with 1/4 cropped content, there is certainly no big discussion about what 'perform' or 'not perform' means), they have to fix it. - Carsten  |  IP: Logged

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