Monthly Archives: September 2008

Editing in Premiere? Avoid WMV!

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First, let me say that I absolutely love working in Adobe Premiere Pro. The interface is clean and snappy- I can get things done in an organized way without a ton of fuss. Now with batch export through Adobe Media Encoder in CS4, it’s just a real, genuine pleasure to work with.

Now, I also use Sony Vegas Pro on occasion. It is also a nice piece of software. The one thing Vegas really has over Premiere is the ability to handle just about any file type without the potential to choke and die. Lots of material that I’ve needed to edit has had to pass through Vegas for simple conversion before bringing it into Premiere for cutting. I know that formats such as WMV are not meant to be edited, but sometimes you have no choice- you have to work with what you’ve been given.

Over the weekend, I struggled for a few hours trying to import some NTSC format WMV files into Premiere. The import maxed out my CPU and my RAM for quite some time. Premiere did crash on a number of occasions. I had the idea, finally, to process the files through Vegas (AVI conversion) as I would normally do, but then thought perhaps AME would be able to handle this task for me. Sure enough AME was able to convert the WMV files into AVI with no problems whatsoever. Taking these into Premiere, editing them down, and moving them into an Encore project was quick, simple, and really such a day and night difference from my original work flow.

Having done a little research after the fact, it seems there is actually a knowledge base article about this very issue.  I can vouch that leaving the task to complete will work- but it takes forever, and editing WMV files even when the import is successful is not a pleasent experience.  Most of the time, I work with native video, but when confronted with a distribution format like WMV- I can safely recommend Using Adobe Media Encoder to transcode to a workable format.  I may not need Vegas anymore…

An Unresolved Departure

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A few weeks ago, I posted the following letter to this weblog as a note of departure.  I’ve since decided that it was a poor choice, and have re-instated it here, at this new address.  I post the letter here for personal, historical reasons.  There is quite a bit of content that was lost in the transition.  I will try my best to recover it in the coming days.  Thank you.

September 12th, 2008

Dear Visitor,

I hope that you may have found something useful at this website in the past. I have decided to take this all down permanently for a number of personal reasons and hope for your understanding in this. In about a month’s time, everything will expire and even this letter will be lost.

Major catalysts for this action include the hospitalization of someone I care for very dearly, and the sudden death of my father-in-law. I have a great amount of admiration and respect for him and his passing is truly a tragedy. If you are inclined, please pray for the repose of his good soul.

While the content of this website may have been useful for some, it is an unnecessary and fleeting distraction for myself. We have very little time on this earth with those that are close to us and we have to make the most of it. The entire idea of having a website domain bearing my name makes me ill, as the past few months have been rather humbling to say the least. While there is value in what I do- much of it is still dust and ashes and I cannot waste my time on trivial pursuits.

Again, thank you for your interest. I hope that this is a good step for me and for those close to me.

-Joseph Labrecque

Adobe MAX 2008 Plans Finalized

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I’ll be attending the Adobe MAX 2008 event in San Francisco, California this November for the full three day duration on top of some pre-event sessions that I’ve been invited to.  I just nailed everything down yesterday and am looking forward to the conference!

I’ve also submitted the DUVAGA Projection System (VPS) as an entry to this years MAX Awards.  Here’s hoping!

Should be a great time, overall.