@lorilin I haven't used After Effects that much at all, but I think that sounds odd. Your machine is pretty powerful, and I think I remember seeing a demonstration video by @shian where he was using ColorGHears and even had a stopwatch going to show how fast it was...and it was moving along very nicely. (I think that was in After Effects, but check his website to see that video which could confirm it). maybe @shian could chime in on this one. Also in terms of workflow, he had a real nice post laying out his workflow recommendations. Here it is below.

Thanks, guys! For the record, so far it's only the MTS files that bog down in AE. But if I understand the workflow above correctly, I'll just have to live with it the slowness. I sure wish I knew why it happens, though. The same files are totally zippy in Vegas.

Will go back through Shian's videos to see if I can find enlightenment. There is so darned much to learn, and so many ways to go wrong...it boggles the mind!

I will see how I get on tomorrow...most likely I'll be back with some more specific questions. I hope you don't mind my inept newbitude!

AE has always been a resource hog. It was never meant for speed... only short previews. I have used it because of the power of it's render engine, and the pinpoint control of images I get with it. But now that DaVinci doesn't cost $100,000, I use a hybrid of creating all my LUTs in Davinci using ColorGHear Pro, exporting those LUTs, and applying and rendering them in AE. Only because I have an ATI card. If I had an Nvidia card in my machine I'd do the whole thing in DaVinci cuz it is SCREAMINGLY fast. But my machine won't render out of Resolve without errors. I get blue dots flashing around the image. ATI cards SUCK - always have. I hate Apple for choosing them.

There's 2 "working with sequences" tutorials on the CG site that helps explain the workflow coming from your NLE to AE. (tutorials 6 and 7)

Quicktime Pro will help you out immensely in terms of giving you what they're asking for. These are the typical delivery settings, and meet what they are asking for.

for sound they want - PCM 48hz, Little Endian, leave "unsigned" unchecked.

Hi again, guys!

I do have Quicktime Pro installed, but like @jrd points out I can't render ProRes on my Windows Machine. Thanks @shian for the tip about the audio encoding. At least I know the settings are living somewhere in my computer! I checked, and it's possible to combine those audio settings with the DNxHD codec in Quicktime.

About the frame rate, to avoid getting flickers from our lights here in PAL land it seems that setting my shutter at 1/50th works best. Will I get problems if I shoot at 1/50th but at the HBR NTSC Sanity 5.1 settings? I know at some point I tested NTSC at 1/60th, but that was a no go.

For the record, I have done some testing with DNxHD transcoded footage in AE, and it's much snappier to edit than the Sanity MTS files. Also, for some strange reason, the MTS files that I shot with Intravenus are also much snappier in AE. I hope this doesn't come off as a complaint about Sanity -- it's just an observation.

I sure envy people who have the luxury of having a crew of specialists to take care of the technical stuff. We did, in fact, back in the good old days before the music business changed. But I'm sure grateful to have you guys to turn to since I'm stuck doing it myself.

I was thinking it must be the compression as well, @jrd, so I'm glad some of this is sinking in! This weekend I tried choosing NTSC so I could shoot at 30p in HBR mode, but I kept getting error messages (File number exceeded, incompatible format, etc.). I tried the reformat, turn off camera and restart method but it only worked sometimes. I don't have this problem when I stick to PAL modes. I can't have these problems when I'm working, so unless I can figure out what's wrong I'll have to stick to the trustworthy PAL modes and worry about converting to 30p later. Hopefully something like Twixtor will be able to come to the rescue if needed.

Thanks, @Ralph_B! I was going by what I remembered reading here a few months ago and was too rushed to actually look up again. I have changed my three custom settings to NTSC, and will do more tests tomorrow with a clean card. I don't actually need to switch back an forth in this project, so I'm hoping that once I'm switched to NTSC and have a clean card that the errors will be gone.

Loving Sanity, btw, and none of my comments are meant to reflect on the quality of the patch. User error is generally the problem in my case :-p

I love my GH2 and am having a lot of fun learning what it can do. But there are enough "gotchas" and other easily forgotten tidbits that I've finally started using Simplenote to keep track of all the info. Should have started doing text files ala Merlin Mann years ago -- makes keeping info handy much easier!

I'm curious how well Twixtor does converting PAL to NTSC. It has been the case, at least until a few years ago, that a good standards conversion was costly. Alchemist was the usual industry standard, and there were different grades of how good they were, all expensive.

Hi again, folks! It turns out that I only have to deliver NTSC if it's an actual DVD release. It's also possible that it will be an "enhanced CD," which means I can get away with a much smaller file in PAL format. The final delivery format depends on what we end up offering as bonus content. If there is a lot of audio (alternative mixes, instrumental versions, etc.) the fans tend to prefer an enhanced CD, as they can't really listen to the tracks (or copy them to their devices) when they are on a DVD. I'm really hoping we go the CD route, because it will make things much simpler!

In any case, thanks again for the advice so far. I would be lost without all the helpful people like you guys (and gals) on the internet.

@shian , thanks again for making your filmschool and colorghear tutorials. They've been really helpful! Once we've announced the guest artists I'll be able to post some before/after screenshots. I'm still far from "done" learning and experimenting, but am seeing steady progress in the right direction! I'm really looking forward to finishing this release so I will have some free time to experiment without the pressure of deadlines :-)

P.S., Do any of you ever kiss your GH2? Maybe it's just a "girl thing," but I find myself getting so happy with my little camera that I have to kiss or cuddle it!