Adobe Premiere & Premiere Pro discussions from 2005

[Steven Gotz]

Check my audio page for a long list of reliable vendors.

http://www.stevengotz.com/premiere

[Andrew Oh]

Brent,

I think I may have the solution for you. I didn't check the adobe forums because I don't have a log in but it took me a day to figure it out on my own. Ok, here it is.


****
-Open up Premiere and click on Panasonic 24P editing mode.
-Press F5 to open up the capture dialogue box.
-Click on the settings Tab.
-Go down to device control area and press options.
-Click on Device Brand. Use the up and down arrows and highlight Panasonic.
-Click on device type and again use the arrows to select AG-DVX100P.
(for some reason, the drop down menus don't work so you have to use your keyboard)
-Time code should remain drop code and standard is NTSC or PAL.
-Capture the footage, edit, and export it. Should be perfect!
****

I captured the 24P footage via a sony deck and the XL2 as well and both had these terrible interlacing lines across the screen every 3rd frame when I export. Changing the device setting to DVX100P solved the whole thing. It's because PP doesn't have the profile settings for the XL2 in the program. Already checked. DVX is the next closest thing and it works perfectly. Good luck and let me know if that helped!

[Jiggy Gaton]

Namaste all you wonderful people! I need some advice, I am in the process of taking 1 year of printed cartoon strips and preparing an animated short. I've done a screen test in PPRO and it looks pretty good (albiet only 10 seconds worth)

see this clip-->
http://www.extreme-nepal.com/images/WM91024test.wmv

and I am wondering if there is a better way before I go furhter. All my 2d black&white source is in PSD layers. My plan is to just use that, lay down a set in ppro, place actors on that, and use motion/effects to give it that old-fashioned cartoon effect. Some scenes require live motion set with animated characters on top of that (in 2d). My question really is: is PPRO the tool to use? I know how to use ppro somewhat and i use in conjuction with AE6.5, no problems there with the help of many kind souls here. thanks again!

Well, what do you all think? I've looked into Poser5 to animate the characters, but I don't think I want a 3d look, although that may be an easier way to animate a character...dunno. looks pretty complex. For samples of my source see my website:

http://www.extreme-nepal.com/bonus.htm

ps. little nagging questions so far:
1. optimize stills or not?
2. does resolution matter in the source? it's all set up for print now. understood it needs to be scaled to 720x576 with safe borders but does dpi mean anything here?
3. i plan to just go to tape for broadcast here but if i want to use adobe media encoder is there anything about this type of source that i need to be aware of? i've noticed strange things in testing with QT. WM9 looks good but file size is insane.

THANKS!!!
jigs

[Thomas Fraser]

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/DivXToDVD.htm

DivXToDVD is a 1 click solution to convert your movie files to a compatible DVD playable on your home DVD player. DivxToDVD supports most popular format such DivX, Xvid, Mov, Vob, Mpeg, Mpeg4, avi, wmv, dv and stream format.

Hope this helps.

[Jiggy Gaton]

In general, I'm getting all confused with plug-ins. I have both PPRO1.5 and AE6.5. I have plugins that say they support both, but most installers don't have any instructions on where to put them. Let's take Trapcode Shine as an example. Wonderful plugin. The installer did the trick, but placed the plug in so it shows up under effects/video effects/trapcode. makes sense. but how do i install that for AE? or can i?

Now take the cycore set of CC plugins. Those are scattered all over the place in the effects menu. I can't remember what I did to install there.

Now, my biggest mystery is the Twixtor 4.1 plugins, which when i install, just asks for a directory, starting at the root c. no matter where i put them in the plugin directory structure of AE or PPRO, they dont show up in any effects menus.

I feel rather stupid. Did I miss something somewhere about plug-installations in the help or FAQs? I've looked. In fact, the forum/support site for revisionFX never mentions the word installation. I wonder why?

Thanks all!!
jigs

[Jiggy Gaton]

i am doing this a lot now with XLS1 footage, and i started just saving the AVI with original project settings (recode not checked) and bringing into Nero 6.6.0.6 NeroVision Express 3. If you have less than 1 hour of AVI and use the highest quality settings, things look pretty much the same (very little loss in quality). If you have more than 1 hour (and are using 4gig media), things get tricky but even then, if you have less than say 2 hours, using a bit rate of 5073kbit/s 2pass vbr (nero calls that standard play) things look pretty good - but sports scenes and other fast motions get whacky. After that things get bad. I keep reading about dvd-9, which is double layer, but not yet available here in nepal:). That would help out recording longer movies at the highest quality.

I have never gotton ppro export to DVD to work well - so many options! I wonder if anyone else has? I guess I don't understand it. Does it intergrate somehow with encore? I don't see why you would want to write a DVD without a menu, and creating a menu in Premiere would be nuts yes? Unless it's somehow assembled later? but the codec used: MainConcept MPEG Video seems to be pretty good....and I think that's what really matters.

jigs


good luck!

[K. Forman]

You would probably do better using Macromedia Director to do animation. I say this, because Director has "tweening", which fills in multiple frames between keyframes for you. I haven't used PPro, so I can't say whether it has a tween feature.

I would also drop the framerate to 15 fps, which is very smooth animation. It will save you tons of time.

Once you have the animation done, you can export it as aN AVI OR MOV, which you can finish up the audio synching using PPro.

I'm having problems w/ the Track Matte Keying in Premiere Pro using a matte created in Photoshop 7. In Photoshop I create a white-filled shape w/ a black background and then import it to Premiere (as a .tif file). But the keying doesn't seem to work. When I create a matte using Premiere's titling tool it works ok.

Is there something I'm doing wrong in Photoshop, like a format probem? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Jiggy Gaton]

<<<-- Originally posted by Keith Forman : You would probably do better using Macromedia Director to do animation. I say this, because Director has "tweening", which fills in multiple frames between keyframes for you. I haven't used PPro, so I can't say whether it has a tween feature.

I would also drop the framerate to 15 fps, which is very smooth animation. It will save you tons of time.

Once you have the animation done, you can export it as aN AVI OR MOV, which you can finish up the audio synching using PPro. -->>>

Thanks Captain for that! I used Director in another lifetime for CD rom production, that was before the internet (oh no not that scripting language). I am sure it's improved over the last decade or so and surprised it's still around.

Hmmm. the project plan is to mix live action video street scenes with animated 2d characters on top. I guess I will have to play around with getting one track to be a different frame rate then the 25fps footage in the background. The speed duration setting?

Not sure about photoshop integration with Director, but perhaps its there and supports import of layers like ppro does. that's a must to save time. I've used tweening in imageready but only ever made .gif output...gotta check to see if it will save as avi...i don't think it does...

thanks again.
jigs

[Graham Hickling]

PPro will let you move, scale, rotate and fade your 2d images, and layer them above and below each other. AE6 does the same thing with more options and control - for example you can add motion blur and set the virtual shutter angle for that blur. I think more people would use AE6 than PPro for what I think you are suggesting.

Neither program tweens in the traditional animation sense - you'd want to be looking at a vector-based package like flash, moho or toonboom studio for that (I think all 3 let you specify a video clip as the background, though I may be wrong about that).

15 (or 12.5) frames per second would be sensible if you are doing frame-by-frame animation, in which case you may want to use PPro or AE to slow your live video down to the same speed. But if you are just moving and scaling bitmaps, stick to normal framerate.

1. optimize stills or not?

Do you mean in terms of color (e.g. web pallate) or in terms of resolution?

2. does resolution matter in the source?

If you are aiming for SD broadcast or DVD then as you know you want to end up at 720x576 (for PAL). So your source needs to be at least that size. And maybe somewhat bigger if you are going to move it across the viewing field. But not HUGE .... importing very large images from raw scans will work but will slow rendering down and possibly may give you memory problems. Ignore dpi and just figure out what the actual pixel dimensions of each image are.

3. i plan to just go to tape for broadcast here but if i want to use adobe media encoder is there anything about this type of source that i need to be aware of?

Still images are often so high-res that horizontal lines are essentially only 1 pixel wide at 720x576 - this leads to flickering when they are broadcast onto an interlaced monitor. The usual solution is to deliberately blur the image slightly. Premier has an anti-flicker option which I assume does much the same thing. DV magazine has a excellent couple of articles about using stills in NLEs that was online about a year ago. May still be there.

>WM9 looks good but file size is insane.

File size for WM9, QT and mpeg is determined by both image size (720x576?) and degree of compression. 720x576 is usually destined for playback on a standalone player from a CD or DVD in which case large filesize may be acceptable. For web distribution, it is rare to see video even for broadband to be presented at much above 320X240, with considerable compression.... in which case the filesize will be much smaller.

[Rob Lohman]

Hello Donald and welcome aboard DVInfo.net!

When you saying keying doesn't work can you please elaborate
on what you are exactly trying to do? The matte in titling doesn't
need keying since it has an alpha (transparancy) channel that
your TIF does not have (unless you where to upgrade the black
to transparancy in Photoshop).

Make sure you tell the Premiere keyer that it should key out the
black color (default is probably blue or green).

Hey Rob,

Your hint about the titling having an alpha transparency was it. I created the matte in Photoshop w/ an alpha channel. When I imported it into Premiere it worked! Thanks a lot for the help! And the welcome to dvinfo. A great site.

[Dan Davis]

I am totally lost trying to use this effect.
Does anyone have an explaination or link to
info on how to manipulate this effect?

[Chase Brammer]

Hello! I am trying to fix a slideshow a co-worker made a few months ago. I just need to edit out a few pictures and put a simple zoom in effect on a few of them. The problem is that he didn't leave the source files. And so I just had to rip the DVD and use those files. So I have been able to pull it into Adobe Premier (I am not all that experienced) and have been able to razor out the pics that were not wanted and put in new ones. But here is where the problem comes in. I do that, but when I render or output, it puts the old images in, or flashes them really quick. I cant find it in the timeline where these images are, but they keeping showing up. Also, it makes it when images are being zoomed in on (ones I haven't edited) they skip, it goes in, and then skips back a few frames it looks like, and continues in. I have been banging my head agains the wall on this and I have still not been able to find a solutions! Any help would be SO appreciated I might just run over there and give you a hug:D Jk But yeah, it would be a life saver if someone could help me understand what is going on!

Using Premier Pro

[Pete Bauer]

Apologies for a quick half-answer that may be wrong, but I'm about ready to hit the rack...will check back tomorrow.

You can rename clips and duplicate instances of clips in the Project Window without the actual file name of the source clip changing. Do a (Right Click) >> Properties... on one of the misbehaving "new" files in the Project Window and see if its path actually points the OLD file that renders. If so, you've managed -- as I've obviously also done before -- to simply tell PPro to call the old, original clip by the name of the new clip you meant to have in its place.

If that's it, the simplest thing to do is simply unlink media and re-link to the new, correct clip. BTW, for the purposes of this problem, starting with still pictures doesn't matter because PPro is repeating the still frame to produce video anyway -- so it is still functionally a clip as far as the timeline is concerned.

If that's not it, will try again tomorrow. For tonight, G'nite!