Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Howdy...

I appreciate it if you can shed some light on this...

Why is it that if I render directly from my 1080p time line to a 640x360 preset in AME, the result looks like absolute crap, mostly because the still images and scaled video look terrible.

But, if I render to a 1080p format first, and then use that as the source for AME to render to a 640x360 preset, it looks great.

It'd be great to be able to skip the first render, but I cant get good results going direct to the 640x360 format (which I'm using for client proofs)

Any help is appreciated..

Best,

Ben

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

What exactly are you rendering the 1080p to?

Secondly, what is the source footage (codec)?

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

I'm rendering to ProRes for the 1080p (the step I'd like to skip).

The source footage is made up of 1080p XDCAM, 1080p Canon 5D footage, and hi-res stills.

B.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Is your "Maximum render quality" switch turned on?

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Yeppers...

B.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Strange. Try nesting your sequence in the sequence of destination dimensions, adding a little blur on top, and then exporting.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Curious. Why go to ProRes when you want to lose that step? Why not skip it all together?

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Actually, if you read my first post, that's what I'm trying to do. I'd rather skip the ProRes step and just render to the final form, but the quality looks crappy compared to rending to ProRes first...

B.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Premiere does exhibit this strange behavior of exporting crappy SD files when there is a difference between the fields order between input and output or input and sequence. For some reason the footage gets automatically deinterlaced or even worse, edges are completely lost, and it looks almost like VHS. The only workaround that I found was to export first matching the sequence settings or at least to have the field order on the output matching the sequence field order.

For some time I thought it was the issue with Blackmagic cards, but now I'm not so sure.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

The symptoms you describe are similar to what I'm seeing, but since this is dSLR footage and stills, and the output format is progressive, I can't see why field order would have anything to do with it... The stills show the worst of the depredation, and they obviously aren't interlaced...

B.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Can you give us a screen shot of your AME settings? Are you working on a mac or pc? Can you give us a screen shot of the crappy v/s the 'prorezzed' footage?

Have you tried another file size/type to render to? Have you tried exporting stills from the timeline? Do these have the same issues?

Do you own After Effects? If yes, have you tried rendering directly off AE?

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Howdy...

Thanks, but I have since moved on from this project. I'll try exporting some stills, but I was hoping this was a known issue that would have been brought up before. Unfortunately, it seems like there have been multiple issues like this with multiple reasons.

I do own AE, but I don't know how I would 'render directly off AE' as you mention. This is a PPro project. Also, the goal was to save time, and sending things over to AE would just require yet another time consuming step... I'm on a Mac, btw...

I'll just have to write this off to another odd quirk. I appreciate all the replies, however...

B.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Ben.. you're not alone when it comes to the quirks of Media Encoder.

My workflow is pretty much what you found yourself having to do. I output intermediate renders using Cineform and do all my final outputs in TMPGenc and avoid all the issues you have described while outputting excellent files.

Tsunami, the company that makes TMPGenc has recently come out with an upgraded software which includes some basic timeline capabilities. While no substitute for Premiere, if it produces outputs as good or better as its predecessor, that's good news. Unfortunately, I don't know if it is available for the Mac.

Some of the difficulties of rendering various formats and parameters from Premiere can probably be attributed to how it scales, interlaces, etc.... but since Premiere 2.0, I haven't messed with it. Even without the difficulties you mention, and all things being equal... in my view, TMPGenc's outputs are superior

The render via After Effects could be achieved by an import of the Premiere project into AE. It's an effective means of bypassing AME. That has become a priority for many users over the years.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Wow! What a horrible workflow to have to import into AE just to get a decent render. Thankfully I'm not there yet. Sad to hear that the issue is 'cross platform' however...

Thanks for the info.

Best,

Ben

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Actually, one of the true strengths of the Adobe suite is its ability to effortlessly work between softwares. Dynamic Link and the ability to import are actually methods to eliminate the need for intermediate renders, especially when creating sequences in AE that you want in a Premiere project. Granted, the reason for you needing to do so is not the greatest (bypassing one encoding module for another), but the handshaking between programs such as AE and Premiere can be a real time saver.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

That's an amazingly backhanded compliment...like saying "This bit of the software doesn't work and is horribly buggy, but look how well integrated the required workaround is".... :(

Best,

Ben

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

It is what it is... not a compliment, it just helps to know the strengths and weaknesses of your tools.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

It sounds like the still images may be very large? Much larger than the sequence frame setting?

AME does that whole downconvert from the source file...not the sequence (unless you check the "use previews" box).

I don't typically have much of a problem with AME for the last two or three drops...

Exporting through AE is silly and the issue is probably solvable within PPro once we know more about the source still images and all the downconvert settings and framerates in/out.

If you haven't used AME since Premiere Pro CS2, using that experience to comment on a piece of software this many years and this many versions later isn't terribly helpful.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Just to clarify... I have certainly spent time with each and every export function of Premiere that has come down the pike since Premiere 2, including AME.

All things being equal, I obtain superior results from 3rd party software, particularly in the areas of rescaling and when applicable, deinterlacing.

Like anything else in these forums, take it for what it's worth, terribly helpful or not.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

I mean this in the most respectful way, but you are doing something wrong. What you have done is like calling a mechanic and describing sounds of a problem but not actually bringing the car to the mechanic - ie, you have not listed all of the settings from the source footage & stills to the export settings; thus, we cannot honestly diagnose or even conclude what, if any, problem there is with AME.

I have used 28MP JPEGs from an engineering firm and I had zero problems rendering to SD for broadcast and the web. This is in addition to my personal 24MP images used in other projects all mixed in with XDCAM and/or nanoFlash files. And I always have MRQ enabled which makes a huge difference. TMPGEnc cannot match CS5's quality and speed with MRQ enabled (I also used TMPGEnc for SD encoding until CS5).

One quick question, are you using a CUDA card and is hardware acceleration enabled? There is a big difference between the scaling algorithms used with software MRQ and CUDA MRQ.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

You're right. I was hoping, as is often the case on the forums, that I could say to my mechanic "Here's the problem", and the mechanic (or in the case, the forum participants) would say "Ah... we've seen this exact issue 100 times before. All you have to do is "X"..." Obviously, that's not the case in this scenario...

Yes, I have a Quadro 4000, and had it enabled during this render. Should I not?

Best,

Ben

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Steve.....I'll be sure to give CS5 another shot. Coming from another TMPGenc user, you surely understand the frustration with the results we've had with AME in the past.

I did a variety of renders when I first obtained CS5, and at that time, I felt that the TMPGenc outputs were visibly better.... but that was an update or two ago, so after reading your testimony, there's a strong argument in favor of taking a closer look and I appreciate you making mention of it.

So far as the original issue of this thread, more info would certainly help track down the problem.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

I apologize if this is a little direct, but you're wrong.

All things said and done, I've found through experience that the overall time taken (from ingest to render) on Adobe CS is much faster than FCS, assuming the same computer specs. An entire feature film timeline from Premiere can be moved to AE (no rendering required) in about fifteen minutes on a modern consumer PC (full HD at 25p).

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Howdy...

I didn't say it was a long render.... I said it was a horrible workflow. It shouldn't be necessary, on any platform...

B.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

My problems with exporting always comes from material that just do not match the sequence settings.
Seems as if it might be the same problem you have. Although Adobe claims that you can handle HD material in a SD project it would be better to export the HD material from a HD timeline to SD before importing to a SD timeline. When I mix SD material into HD projects I have to export and uprez. the material from SD timeline, before I import to a HD proj.

When you first export to HD and then take that material into a HD timeline - you probably make some material that mach the sequence settings and this will look good.
No matter what this HD file, would be the best to achive.

If you are using Mercury Playback engine - is there any yellow stripe over the material that looks bad ?
The stills - are you zooming in them? - if not try to make them 1920x1080 before exporting.

Get a Canon 600D today and I am eager to try this camera. Maybe I get the same problems....

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

It isn't, Ben. The reason why I asked to go into the details is because I've never had a problem with the media encoder from Adobe. I've done HD to SD many times without going to AE or any other encoder.

My point is: this is not an Adobe vs FCP situation at all. I'm sure there's a rational explanation for the results you are getting, but without more info, nobody can help.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

This assumes that moving the timeline to AE strictly for the quality of the export is necessary...it's not. there is some other issue at work here.

Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance...
 

Hi Marty,

The key with CS5 is enabling MRQ (Max Render Quality) for all down-rez material. It adds significant time to the export but the quality is well worth the time. If you would like, I can render out some examples to show how much sharper it is with MRQ enabled (with hardware acceleration - software MRQ is not as good). If you have used Photoshop and down sized images using Bicubic interpolation, then you already have seen what hardware MRQ is like in AME as it uses the same algorithm. Furthermore, all of the Premiere Pro benchmarks do not use MRQ so they are not a great source for 'real world' results.

On a side note, the quality is so good that I now export to SD MPEG2 for broadcast and then use that file to encode to SD H264 for the web.

With CS4, I always had to export to HD and then use TMPGEnc for DVDs and other SD material (but not any more).