David,
Thank you for your reply. I have been able to record audio two as a seperate wave file using Scenalizer. It took me several attempts and as my experience with the software improved I was able to find all the options and to set up the software properly. At this point I understand that I will have to capture the seminars twice. Once in Premiere for the mixed channel and once in Scenalizer for the isolated wav file of the wireless mic.

My hope is that there is another way to accomplish this with one pass to capture all audio channels as happened in the old Matrox system I used. I must admit I am surprised that Premiere 6.5 will not do this...at least I haven't found a way yet.

Cheers,
Jim Haynes

Capturing 60i Footage
 

In my attempt to capture DV footage shot at 60i (Panasonic DVX100A). I'm seeing that the footage is chrystal clear in my capture window (Adobe Premier Pro 1.0) but after completing the capture the final clip in the timeline is softer than the original footage. Is this because of the 60/30 conversion? Is there a way to keep the origianl clarity?

Thanks,
Joe

Hi Joe,

Sounds like you made your decision about which camera to buy?

The footage isn't converted to 30p in the timeline -- unless you went out of your way to set it up that way. It is 60i NTSC just as on the tape; the program simply shows 29.97 full frames/sec rather than the individual 59.94 fields/sec from which they are made. Unless you meant to switch to true 30p for your workflow, you should have capture set to "lower field first" and in the Project>>Project Settings>>General... window set "30fps Drop-Frame Timecode" unless you specifically want something else. I still find the whole frame rate vs timebase topic confusing, so all I can recommend is a regular refresher in the manual...I'm forced to do that myself since it just isn't intuitive for me.

The Source and Program views in the Monitor Window default to "automatic" quality, which will probably be less than full resolution in order to improve performance (smoother playback). If you want to see a clip or sequence at higher resolution, enlarge the Monitor Window, click the little rightward pointing "triangle in a circle," located at the upper right corner in order to show the Window's drop-down menu, and select Highest Quality. You'll probably notice a performance hit.

No worries, you're not losing resolution!

multiple angles/color correction
 

Question: Is there a recommended workflow / resource in premiere pro to do color correction?

Background: I'm shooting a fitness instructor with a partner. We have two of the same minidv cameras (lowend panasonic pv-gs120s), and one pv-gs400. The gs120's picture looks exactly alike. The gs400, as best as we could make it in terms of white balance, exposure, etc, but of course the footage is still different. If anybody has recommendations, like websites, videos, or techniques, please let me know. I know color correction is a very complicated topic. But a primer would be a great start.

I've played with the color match and color corrector filters, but am not sure of the best workflow to start with.

Thanks,
Allan

One thing to do is to edit the final video, but keep the gs400 on another track if possible. You could create cross-dissolves manually using opacity envelopes, or just throw cross-dissolves onto the upper track. This will make it easier to apply the same color correction to every shot of the gs400.

Figure out a base correction that applies generally to every clip. Then just repeat it for every clip. Some things may need tweaking.

Things to match (general instructions for all editing programs):

(Perceived) sharpness. Bring up a shot where the two cameras shoot roughly the same thing with the same framing, so you can easily compare detail between the two. Apply the unsharp mask filter. Bump up amount to 100%-500% and radius to (something around 1 pixel). Set the threshold so that video noise isn't being sharpened. Ok. Now bump the amount down and play around with the radius and set that to where the image looks the sharpest without color shifts. Then play around with the amount setting.

You can preview off the sharpness filter as you won't really need it for the next steps.

Exposure: Turn both angles into black and white images with channel blend or a black and white filter.

Apply a curves filter. There is a curves control in the color correction filter in Premiere. You want to mess around with it until both cameras look similar. It may help to split-screen the cameras, and to bring up the histogram and vectorscopes. If the GS400 has greater exposure latitude, then compress the highlights and shadows a little. On the curve, it would be flattish on the top and bottom.

Color curves also affects color saturation in weird ways. I haven't quite wrapped my head around it though.

Saturation:
Undo the black and white, and match saturation by eye (it should be in the color correction filter).

It may help to boost the saturation of both images by the same amount. Also look at the vectorscope (the circular thing). As the blob there gets more towards the outside of the circle, colors are more saturated. Shifting hue rotates the blob, and changing white balance will move the center/midpoint of the blob.

Match important colors:
It's a good idea to make sure important colors like flesh tones, key props, greens from plants are similar between both shots. I'm not sure how to do this in Premiere. Premiere doesn't seem to have secondary controls for its color correction, which lets you color correct a slice of colors based on hue, saturation, luminance.

White balance:
If you shoot a chip chart, WB issues will be a lot easier to color correct. If you white balance all the cameras though (onto the same white card), white balance shouldn't be an issue. Shooting a chip chart wouldn't hurt.

Obviously correct white balance problems.

Other:
Does it look right to you?
Sometimes shots will look drastically different for some reason. Look at the footage from shot to shot and ask yourself if other people will see color continuity problems.

Monitor Calibration and Room Setup
It's a good idea to do this. Unfortunately I'm getting lazy and don't want to type this up.

2- On the shoot, it can help to shoot pictures of test patterns. Good ones are:
Chip chart - bunch of blocks with increasing/decreasing brightness.
Resolution test chart
Color Swatches
Pro charts for matching cameras are not cheap. You could try making your own, but that could be a little hard. The resolution test chart is easy to make.
http://www.dvfreelancer.com/articles..._shootout.html

Also keep in mind that a preview is just that, a PREVIEW. It is no
garantuee for (and might not even look like) the final output.

Jim,

I have an XL1 and always record 2 stereo tracks (4 channels) I do all my editing in Ppro and all my capturing in Scenalyzer. There's no reason to capture in Premiere at all.

Capture video in Scenalyzer getting the two other channels in a separate audio file. Import both into Premiere, load them into a sequence and edit.

Scenalyzer has several more options for capturing than Premiere. Some are very useful, experiment a bit and you'll see.

Brad

Thanks Brad,
I have purchased the full version of Scenalyzer and spent yesterday playing with it. I did some experiments with capturing the same 2 minutes of original footage in Scenalyzer and Premiere 6.5. Since I am able to capture the second audio now, I wasn't interested in the audio for this test. I was only comparing video.

Have you noticed a difference in resolution in the video captured in Premiere compared to Scenalyzer? Although it is slight, resolution seems to be better in the Priemier capture. I had my sons look at it independantly ast night and tell me if they see a difference in the video between the two captures and both of them chose Premiere as slightly better than Scenalyzer. My client's audience likely would not be aware of the difference without the other to compare with. But it worries me a little that I'm not giving my client the best image possible with the equipment at hand.

With your experience with Scenalyzer Brad, have you found any way to adjust the quality of the capture. There are a lot of Options to choose from and as yet I haven't played with them all.

Thanks for your help,
Jim

Jim,

Actually, I never thought to compare, - probably should. Since the Scenalyzer captures looked fine I never bothered to capture in Premiere once I updated to Pro. I believe you're right that no one will notice without a side by side.

I've got to look into the technology a bit more, - I just tend to use what works.

With Windows and programs and sytems that work in Windows, I'm never sure which elements are borrowing from which other elements. (How much of XP does Ppro use, - codec, etc. Same with the cards and Scenalyzer).

Doesn't really matter I suppose as long as you go with what works best. The knowledge might keep you from investing in redundant hardware and software though.

Brad

Thanks Glenn. I appreciate the large amount of information. I still need to do research regarding the color correction tools within Premiere Pro

Color Correction Integration with PPro 1.5 and AE 6.5 Pro
 

Does anybody know if PPro Color Correction settings integrate into AE 6.5 Pro and vica versa? Meaning, if I adjust the curves in Premiere Pro 1.5, will this setting stay intact and be modifiable in AE 6.5 Pro? I know in PPro 1.0 and AE 6 Pro this was not the case. Being that AE 6.5 now has monitor preview via firewire this question may be irrelevant. Thanks.

Kevin

Premiere preview
 

Was wondering since premiere 6,5 only does dv previews in realtime ,is the same also for premiere pro and pro 1,5?
_________________

Hi Charles,

With Premiere 6 you had to choose the real-time preview option. That technology I think is the same with Premiere Pro, except now everything uses the real-time preview.

Hope this helps,

Hi Mark,

when you are using the non-matrox settings, you won't be able to use the Matrox hardware. When you are not using the Matrox hardware you can use your camera as a digital to analogure convertor so you can preview what you are editing on your TV.

Hope this helps,

Widescreen?
 

I been making lots of film in 16:9 and they all work when i play then in my DVD player on my TV has 16:9. what i do is I import my xl2 shots into premiere i export then from premiere has avi, then bring it into encore and make it a widescreen dvd ( the menu and everyting widescreen) but my question is when i show the dvd its not widescreen on my freinds dvd player. And the great xl2 isnt so great when its 16:9 streched to full screen. But it you buy a retail dvd at like best buy in widesceen its always right 16:9 so it cant be the tv. Am i missing a step when i make the DVD? I need it to be showen in 16:9 ON ALL dvd players. HOW?

Thanks. I needed that.

Sounds like your friend is using a 4:3 tv with the DVD player set to a 16:9 monitor. Go to the DVD player setup menu and make sure it's set to 4:3 LB (letterbox) if you're using a 4:3 screen.

Hope this helps.

Thats it thank you very much your the man.

But one thing how come if you buy a DVD at the store in widescreen its forsure widescreen on your dvd player and you don't need to change anything. What are they doing to there DVDs that I am not?

Anyways thanks for the help this will make my next big movie forsure widesceen!!!

calibrating monitors/tv
 

how have you guys calibrated your monitors for editing?

i know to reduce colour to zero, then adjust brightness, then contrast, then restore the colour, and i have a PAL testcard, but a lot of this seems to be subjective judgement.

is there a way of producing a 'standardised' calibration?

incidentally, is there is a website that will guide me through calibrating my monitor?

ps, i am using a TFT screen. i know, far from ideal, but don't have too many options.

Try http://videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

Regards,

Mark

I've often wonderered about those monitor calibration probes, like the Spyder which have gotten cheaper in recent years. You can choose the desired gamma, etc. with these... would they work for getting an LCD computer screen closer to NTSC?

Hey Boyd I'm wondering that too. Issues to watch out for though:

A- Computer monitors will never exhibit interlace flicker. If you are starting out in DV, I highly highly highly recommend hooking up a TV to your editing setup. A TV will be much more accurate to what people will see for reasons like this. Other things to watch out for are chroma crawl and lower resolution over composite connections, illegal colors, editing programs not showing full resolution or both fields, and overscan.

B- LCDs may not have the same color gamut as TVs. It may be a better idea to use a CRT.

C- Using a calibration device like the Spyder may allow you to correct for the monitor's color innaccuracy and color drift. However, I'm not sure if your video preview will display the corrected image (which would totally defeat the point of using the Spyder). It might be that only Photoshop can do the correction??????

One other thought... you need to clearly define your goal for the video you're editing. Personally, I'm not interested in broadcasting my stuff, and I don't want to give up any bandwidth to make it "broadcast safe." For the most part, I'm editing projects that will be shown on high powered LCD or DLP projectors. From my previous (admittedly limited) experience in this area, an LCD monitor gives a very good idea of what to expect on the projection screen. In fact, it was much more accurate than what I saw on a good Sony production monitor sitting next to the projector up in the booth. In this scenario, you can actually tune the projector to match your LCD screen, so you can sort of have your cake and eat it too :-)

Your mileage may vary of course...

Boyd, you raise a good point which I didn't consider. I generally assume people are outputting to a television format and not projection or web/internet.

I had the same problem previewing some of my shots from my XL2 this past weekend. On my Panasonic DVD player, the shots were outstanding, letterboxed as they should of been. On my Cyberhome (comparing 24p and 30p simultaneously) it was full screen and terrible artifacting. Turns out my Cyberhome was set to 4:3 pan & scan for Widescreen. One flip of the remote and all was great.

The answer is once again, No.

Phone Effect
 

is there any way to use the audio effects to make a voice sound like it is coming through a phone?

You should cut the top frequencies as well as the bass and try pushing around 1Khz to 1.5 Khz (basicly, you're trying to make the sound really thin...)

Robin

This is easily done in Audition. Select the range you need and find your fft filter. Select the telephone bandpass preset and you will have a frequency range of about 140 to 3400hz active with the rest of the audio spectrum steeply ramped out.

I have gone he filter route and had it be OK...

I have to say that the most satisfying result I got was litterally by having my actors phone in their lines. They called, I put them on speakerphone, and I pointed my mic at the phone. I got a lot of positive comments about the sound of it.

The problem is that it is tough to have the actors really work off of each other that way... in my case when I did the shoot with the on-camera actor I just read him the phone lines myself. Then I recorded the actor on the phone separately and cut it together. Works for some conversations, not as well for others.

Good luck.

but is suggest that you get another camera. Don't use your XL2 for that purpose. I use the RTX.100 and yes, i am dissappointed that matrx won't support 24p.

ps
I also own an XL2

Most new DVD releases are true anamorphic widescreen. These will require the DVD player to be setup correctly otherwise you can get a letterboxed and vertically compressed image on a 16:9 tv or a full screen vertically stretched image on a 4:3 tv.

Some older releases (and some minor new releases) are a 4:3 dvd which is letterboxed. This will look pretty much the same on a 4:3 tv (but less resolution than true widescreen), but will be horizontally AND vertically letterboxed on a 16:9 tv. To fill the screen most 16:9 tv's have a zoom mode, but this will give noticably poorer quality than a true widescreen source.

(all the above refers to movies with a 16:9 aspect ratio (or 1.85:1 which is usually just transferred as 16:9), 2.35:1 and similar will be letterboxed anyway for a 16:9 dvd.

But I digress.

Anyway, with the dvd player set wrong, a widescreen movie will not be shown correctly, sometimes it can look kinda ok (to the untrained eye). Depending on the combination of Player and TV, 4:3-letterboxed-to-16:9 movies will be shown correctly (kinda two wrongs make a right).
That said some tv's can 'guess' aspect ratios also, which may help.

Conclusion:
1. For 16:9 tv's, set the player to 16:9
2. For normal 4:3 tv's, set the DVD player to 4:3 LB
3. For large/high res 4:3 tv's (with a 16:9 mode) sometimes better results can had by setting the player to 16:9 and set the tv to it's squeeze/16:9 mode

For options 1 and 3 above, depending on the tv and connection method, sometimes extras or movies that are encoded in 4:3 may be shown vertically compressed/horizontally stretched. You have to watch out for this and change the tv to 4:3 mode if this happens.

Hope that clears it all up...

APEX!!!
 

The biggest culprit in anti-widescreen default settings has got to be APEX. Their cheapo DVD players default to 4:3 Pan and Scan, for goodness sakes! Every time I bring a DVD of my work to a friends house, I inevitably run for the remote as soon as the opening credits come up and I can see the widescreen is getting chopped. It's easy enough to change to 4:3 LB, but I can't believe these people hadn't noticed this before. They are watching rented movies all the time and missing the widescreen.

APEX? never seen one over here in Oz.

Also never seen a dvd player default to 4:3 PS always LB (the way it should be!) the ones I've seen.

I have been to many peoples places and seen them watching movies vertically stretched and being none the wiser (I also do the dive-for-the-remote thing..)

BTW I watch digital tv (widescreen for most things I watch) and looking at the framing I don't know how they are P&S'd to get a decent image for 4:3. They must be always cutting people in half and things. (Almost) gone are the days when they would frame for 4:3 and the sides of the 16:9 frame would be dead space.

One of these days I'll set up an analogue tv next to the widescreen to check it out.

Previewing 16:9 in Premier
 

I use a small JVC television to preview my footage both while capturing and editing to get a better idea of what it will look like when broadcast. No I don't have a monitor, and after what I've spent so far, it may be a while before I get one.

Here is my set-up and my problem. I use a Sony GV-D1000 to capture to the HD via firewire. I also have the television connected to the Sony via S-Video and audio. I just got my XL-2 and am shooting 16:9. My problem is, when I preview the footage on the Premiere monitors, it is letterboxed. But on the television, it is squashed. My question is, is there a way (besides resizing in motion effects) to get my television to show the footage letterboxed?

Dan

anyone?

Online education help
 

Can anyoe recomend the best online site for video tutorials in Adobe premiere pro/ photoshop/afte effects etc

Thank you

Steve

Wrigley Video for Premiere Pro
 

Wrigley Video Productions has a bunch of free video tutorials for Premiere Pro plus a host of user contributed and hosted tutorials on After Effects, Photoshop and Encore.

Adobe Studio also has a bunch of short freebies.

I don't really use that feature, I tend to make sure I have enough disk space when I start...

Maybe you could try a small test and post back the results?

What version of Premiere are you using?

Thanks,

Is your TV widescreen?

Some 4:3 TVs have a 16x9 button. What it will do is squish the picture to the correct aspect ratio, so you see the black bars top and bottom when viewed on your 4:3 TV.

The other way to do it with out a 4:3 tv with a 16x9 button or using a widescreen TV, is as you mention to resize the clips with motion effects.

What version of Premiere are you using?

This sort of topic has appeared many times before. Try our forum search ^

Cheers,