adobe premiere capturing

[Luie Dalmasy Jr.]

Can anyone tell me a good setting for capturing the fx1000 on Premiere. I notice the camera is not on the preset list so I was wondering what was the best way to capture 60i 24p and 30p

Also I am so confused.
the FX1000 shoots 1080i but then 24p or 30p!?
I thought you either shoot one or the other... Interlaced or progressive.
how could I be shooting at 1080i and 24p at the same time. that confuses me as to how to capture or export my video.

I just wanna get the highest quality that I can get for dvd then eventually soon. BR

[Noa Put]

I thought you either shoot one or the other... Interlaced or progressive.

That's right, I have an xh-a1 and am in pal land but the principle is the same; you just set the camera recording mode to either interlaced or progressive and that's it. Once you capture in premiere you need to set the project properties to the same format (hdv1080i for interlaced or hdv108p for progressive.)
Important note if you your end product goes on dvd, don"t use the mediaencoder from premiere as it does a bad downconvertion to dvd, I always export to a 1440x1080i or p file first at 25mbs (i or p depending on the format i shot it in) and then I use the file in tmpgenc to downconvert to dvd quality, tmpgenc does a much better job then premiere when going to dvd.

[Adam Gold]

This thread should be in the Premiere forum.

The FX1000 can shoot progressive but writes to tape as interlaced. The Z5 (its big brother) shoots and writes to tape as true progressive.

Premiere does a fine job of downconverting if you know how to use it, at least in CS3.

Your safest bet for ease of editing and maximum versatility is to shoot and edit 60i, using the HDV 60i preset in Premiere. Then you can deinterlace and downconvert later, when you're done, using whatever tool you wish.

[Noa Put]

Premiere does a fine job of downconverting if you know how to use it, at least in CS3.

I have cs3 and would be very interested if you can tell me how? I have been trying every setting I can think of and the end result is always bad.

Also regarding the difference between the fx1000 and the z5 when recording progressive. That is something new to me, I thought both cams are almost identical with xlr connectivity as biggest difference?

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Adam Gold

This thread should be in the Premiere forum.

Moved -- thanks for the report.

[Adam Gold]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

I have cs3 and would be very interested if you can tell me how? I have been trying every setting I can think of and the end result is always bad.

With versions CS2 and prior, AME was justifiably accused of being horrible. But beginning with CS3 the encoder has been much improved, to the point that my DVD downconverts are virtually indistinguishable from HD on a 65" screen. I can usually see the difference but no one else can.

I wish I had some magic for you, but my workflow is laughably, embarrassingly simple: "Export to Encore" directly from the timeline. I created a custom preset with higher bitrates but frankly I'm not sure it changed much. So it's a two-mouse click operation and I go have a cup of coffee and when I get back I have never had less than a virtually perfect DVD.

Sometimes I use Cineform, and when I do I first export to the highest-quality uncompressed CFHD-AVI, then place that onto a new timeline and do the downconvert as a separate process. But for simple projects with not much more than simple cuts and a few dissolves, I just do it as a Premiere project (mpeg -- no Cineform) and go straight to Encore and it comes out stunningly sharp.

WRT the differences between the FX1000 and Z5, these have been much discussed in that forum and you can find more on this if you go back through the threads. The XLR is only the most obvious physical difference -- there are loads of differences in the firmware and menus.

[Harm Millaard]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

I have cs3 and would be very interested if you can tell me how? I have been trying every setting I can think of and the end result is always bad.

Also regarding the difference between the fx1000 and the z5 when recording progressive. That is something new to me, I thought both cams are almost identical with xlr connectivity as biggest difference?

Noa,

An often overlooked issue is that all tape based consumer/prosumer and maybe even professional cameras have one common property: The tape runs at a constant speed. It needs to because of the fragile mechanism and because of cost considerations. So it does not matter if you record 24P or interlaced, it still gets wrapped up in a 60i stream. This means your best bet is to capture in a 60i preset.

Check it out, capture in a 24P preset and you will have a red line on your timeline, now capture in a 60i preset and there is no red line. This means that despite your recording format, it is still packaged in a 60i wrapper. So you have to apply pull-down within that 60i wrapper.

[Noa Put]

Check it out, capture in a 24P preset and you will have a red line on your timeline, now capture in a 60i preset and there is no red line.

Hi Harm, I"m in pal land and then progressive footage from a xh-a1 does not give a red line on the timeline in a progressive project, so in my case having a 1080p25 progressive project and 25f footage from the xh-a1.
Same applies for an interlaced project and progressive footage, and here you are right, also not a red line with xh-a1 footage which must be because the footage is in a 50i stream.

Adam, thanks for your explanation. Now I have done quite some extensive testing with premiere ame, encore, winff, tmpgenc and even nero and I took each time framegrabs and compared them in photoshop and premiere's ame came out worst each time when downconverting to dvd quality.
I wrote an article in my blog about it, it does not include tmpgenc because I tested that one later but eventhough it's in Dutch you can see a magnified part from a frame further down the article showing the differences. All testing was done on progressive footage. (the article can be found here: http://www.videograffiti.be/hdv-workflow/)
The only thing i could rely on here was the end result and that was the framegrabs which were clear, that's why I find it strange that your premiere-encore transfer results in such high quality because premiere's ame is used for that.

About the progressive difference between the z5 an the fx1000, that was interesting to know, had no idea there was a difference. My father owns a fx1000 and I was glad to see that his fx1000 was able to capture 25f footage from a xh-a1 which must be because the fx1000 handles progressive footage in teh same way as the xh-a1 I guess, meaning in a 50i wrapper and not "true progressive" though I allways have read here that canon's 25f footage is progressive, eventhough it is handled differently.

Anyway, thanks for your answer.

[Harm Millaard]

Noa,

Sorry for falsely assuming you were in NTSC country. It seems like the majority of the people here are in NTSC and only a few of us in PAL country, like you and I. My bad.

[Adam Gold]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

...despite your recording format, it is still packaged in a 60i wrapper.

The first of my Z5s will be arriving soon and I will test this first thing, to see if there is a difference between the "native" 24p recording of the Z5 compared to the "24p-over-60i" recording of the FX1000 with regard to editing in Premiere.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

Sorry for falsely assuming you were in NTSC country.

Hi, your statement was correct but you couldn't know I was in pal country
a bit off topic but read your "to raid or not to raid article" and you managed to make me finally understand what raid is all about, that was some great writing!

[Luie Dalmasy Jr.]

Sorry for posting in the wrong place!
Ok so if I'm shooting in 24p or 30p it's no longer 1080i ?
is it then 1080p? It just seems like when it's captured in Premiere there is no solid setting.
Is this true?

I guess I have a but load of testing to do lol

[Adam Gold]

Again, depends on the cam. If it's the FX1000 it's still on tape as 1080i so that's how you should set up your project. For those cams that claim to do "true" progressive, it might be different. Harm says no and I believe him... but I'll test anyway.

[Luie Dalmasy Jr.]

so if it doesn't shoot "true" progressive because of the tape. Can you get a "true" 24p if you shoot to memory with compact flash recorder

[Adam Gold]

It has nothing to do with the tape. The Z5 is the same machine but records true progressive because of the firmware. The FX1000 does not, no matter what you try to record to.