Avisynth (frameserving from Premiere to TMPGEnc)

The method in this posting has been largely superceded for newer versions of Premiere, but the old versions/method mentioned below may be useful for Premiere 5.1c etc - see the 14th Jan 2002 posting below for the current recommended method

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For those wishing to frameserve direct from the Premiere timeline to the TMPGEnc MPEG encoder, the software that makes this possible is Avisynth.

First, download Avisynth v0.3 ( http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/avisynth/avisynth-0.3.zip ) and plug-in v0.25 ( http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/avisynth/avisynth-premiere-0.25.zip ) - Avisynth v1.0 does NOT work with plug-in v0.25. Follow the installation instructions on the site carefully ( http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/avisynth.html and http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/avisynth-premiere.html ).

To start the frameserving in Premiere, select 'Export timeline -> Movie', hit the 'settings' button, and select 'Link to Avisynth' in the 'General, File type' section. Then choose a filename and hit 'Save'. You should now have a 'Avisynth Premiere Plugin' dialog box on screen.

Once you have started the frameserving, leave it running until after the encoding has finished - you can minimise the plug-in dialog box (and Premiere) to clear the desktop (it'll sit there serving in the background forever until you stop it).

You need to create the .avs script file which you will open in TMPGEnc (e.g. "prem_exp.avs" ) in a plain text editor (e.g Notepad)

It only needs to have one line in it, which you can copy and paste from the plug-in dialog.

The Premiere export filename can be almost anything (except don't end it with .avs!) - it's just a signpost used in the 'IPCSource("export_filename")' line in the .avs file - I use 'Prem_exp.txt' for example, so my .avs file has

IPCSource("Prem_exp.txt")

as its first line.

You need to start serving from Premiere before opening the .avs file in TMPGEnc (use the 'all files' option to see .avs files).

If you're having problems, search the DVD, VCD and MPEG section of the forum first.

There are newer versions of Avisynth at http://www.videotools.net but make sure that the plug-in and Avisynth versions are compatible.

Tony

[This message has been edited by owlsroost (edited 20 October 2001).]

[This message has been edited by owlsroost (edited 14 January 2002).]

[This message has been edited by owlsroost (edited 10 December 2003).]