This is a tale that spans months in the life of a miserable, frustrated agency editor.

My company owns 2 Canon C100s which we use to shoot interviews. These cameras generate MTS files buried inside an AVCHD folder structure.

I, the unsuspecting! I, the naive! I, the victim of my own folly! I imported these MTS files via drag and drop.

I've done it for years: used Windows file explorer to navigate to the clips, then dragged-and-dropped them into a bin. And normally, nothing bad happens. All's well. The project is quickly edited and out the door. BUT.

BUT.

If you have a project containing MTS files which were imported this way, and you do a LOT of editing to it...... If you start adding 30+ audio tracks, 15+ video tracks, warp stabilizer, nested sequences, noise reduction, multiple audio filters, etc....if you have a project that starts to get a bit stacked....then slowly, inch by inch, like a python lovingly caressing its dinner, those MTS files will choke, strangle, murder and eat you.

Three(!) of the largest projects my agency has ever delivered have suffered this fate. After the first one slowed to a crawl, and caused me so much grief I had to re-cut it from scratch based on ProRes transcodes (and no, un-linking the MTS and re-linking to ProRes doesn't help. The flaw exists deep within the project file, and there is NOTHING you can do to cure it. Trust me, I tried everything), I learned my lesson and began importing via Media Browser. But it was too late! Two other projects had already been created in the wrong way, and there is LITERALLY NOTHING you can do to cure them once they've been infected. It's a slow cancer, appearing at first benign, but slowly metastasizing into a memory devouring monster.

NO OTHER BUG in Premiere works this way.

NO OTHER ISSUE waits before it creates havoc.

This is the most devious and horrible problem I have EVER encountered in this software, and IT NEEDS TO BE FIXED! If you can ONLY import MTS files via Media Browser, I'm OK with that! But why would you LET me import them via drag-and-drop? All Adobe needs to do is prevent the drag-and-drop import from being possible in the first place, and all will be well. WHY, ADOBE?! WHY?!?!

Please, Adobe! Hear my cry and answer! Let not this injustice stand! Heaven alone can number the souls who suffer while you wait!

Yesterday I found out the hard way while working on a time critical live event that ProRes 422 files recorded by AJA recorders (the standard for live show records) are totally incompatible with Premiere 13.0.3. The video file would not playback at all, and it would brick my external hard disk the file was on. We experienced this on multiple systems. Finally another editor let me know 12.1.2 would work. While 12.1.2 would edit and play the file. It would drop audio or drop frames every 20 seconds during playback in premiere. Making for the most frustrating editing experience I have had yet. When I tried to transcode the file in Media Encoder it would crash as well. Ultimately I had to make a transcode in Apple Compressor. I tested the problem file in FCP X and it had no problems playing it at all as well. This is very bad for pro adobe users, please fix.

Video footage provided as 444 (RGB) does not transcode to 422 (YUV) properly. I believe it misinterprets the levels, making the image appear low contrast and milky on playback yet transcodes to 422 have clipped blacks and expanded contrast. I tested this using CineformRGB (444) and ProRes4444 and it provided the same results: Adobe Media Encoder or Premiere results in clipped blacks and stretched contrast compared to an identical transcode using DaVinci Resolve on the same machine.

In further testing, 422 sources (CineformYUV, DNxHR HQ and ProRes422) do not have the same issue and can be transcoded without issue.

Please fix this issue as editors frequently transcode and don't always check to confirm there has been no visual change on the scopes. Premiere should assume video data levels for 422 sources and data levels for 444 RGB sources, but provide overrides within "interpret footage" section.

This is a MAJOR game stopping issue, especially as the latest versions are supposed to have color management features. Its difficult to trust an application to manage color spaces when it can't even handle video transcodes, especially when this issue is further complicated by the obnoxious "gamma" confusion that many still have.

Long Story Short: Premiere (and AME) should transcode video without requiring any advanced codec knowledge, such as selecting levels, to provide a proper transcode from a 444 RGB source to 422 YUV source. Other applications, like Resolve, handle it seamlessly.

First, it is very amazing that Premiere has supported R3D file from Red Cinema Camera for a long time, you can import those files directly and adjust the raw settings in the Master Effect Panel and source settings when right click on the footage. But there are two things that really slows down the workflow on r3d files.

1. In Premiere, everytime you open a project with r3d files, it will regenerate all the audio peak files for the r3d file. Since it was already generated when importing, why everytime needs to re-generate again. Sometimes I really needed to wait until it finishes to avoid any crashes editing or adjust the parameters. And with a project of over thousands of r3d files, it takes a long time to re-generate everytime.




2. In Prelude, a great tool for logging. I used to logging sony xavc mp4 on Prelude and everything worked fine. With R3D file, you cannot create Subclip and Comments on the r3d file when logging, I mean, yes you can create, but once the project is closed, all the subclips and comments are gone. So my workflow is create some subclips, send to Premiere, create some, send to Premiere, in case the Prelude crashes and all the work I done is gone. But this is really slowing down the workflow. And the comment is not showing even sent to the Premire.

I understand that r3d is a third party file format that Adobe cannot just write metadate into the file, but at least can create a sidecar file, just like what Camera Raw is doing to RAW photos.

!

These are my suggestions, maybe you have the same problems I encountered.

Regular media players show the glitch, but continue playing through it, and the glitch resolves itself after about a second, and the file plays normally. Premiere however cannot play this files at all, and it completely freezes if you attempt to pull the up in the source window. In addition, Adobe Media Encoder is unable to transcode these files and renders out nothing but a red or green screen for the duration of the clip. I have been having to use Handbrake in order to transcode these files. Why is Handbrake and every other media player able to work through this glitch but not Premiere?