SteadyCam included in Prem Pro ;-)
 

Hi guys,

Took a closer look at my Pro CD today, and found a third party plugin - "The Steady Move". It is a camera-shake-remover, and in my humble opinion it works very well. Much easier to use than using AE:s track motion/stabalize.

One thing though, when I installed it, it ended up in a strange folder, so I had to manually move it into Adobe/Premiere Pro/Plug Ins

Have fun!

// Lazze

thanks
 

i want to start off with a fast motion and then slow it down and then transition back into normal speed. i have been playing with the twixtor demo. it's a pretty hard to get the hang of.

Do keep in mind that a software stabalizer works by "zooming in"
a bit on your footage and thus you will loose resolution.

Project setting in Premiere Pro for DVX100
 

hi all,

I have shot my footages with the DVX100, PAL version in the 25p mode (Equivalent to the NTSC 24p mode)

Now I am editing it with Premiere Pro. And I could not figure out which settings to use under the custom settings for "New Project" so that I can maximise the quality during my editing. Here is my guess and please advise

Editing Mode: DV Playback

Timebase: 25frames/second (Because it is a PAL footage)

Frame Size: I cant change this because I chose the PAL-non widescreen setting

Pixel Aspect Ration: D1/DV PAL (1.067)

Fields: Lower Fields First. this was the default setting. (This is tricky to me as i read from a book that PAL video usually draws the upper field first. Should i change this? Also, there is another option "No Fields, Progressive scan". Should I use this since i shot in 25p mode, which is progressive scan? Or is it just for the NTSC 24p advance mode? PLEASE ADVISE)

Display Format: 25fps Timecode

Audio Sample Rate: 48000HZ. what does this number means??

Most of your settings are correct. You should indeed use
"No Fields, Progressive scan" since you shot in p (25p) mode.

48000 hz is the samplerate of the audio, meaning that each audio
channel has 48000 different steps per second. The higher the
better the audio will sound. DV audio is one of the following two:

1) 48000 hz, 16 bit, 2 channels (stereo)
2) 32000 hz, 12 bit, 2 or 4 channels (stereo)

Check your camera manual and settings to see which mode you
used to record the audio.

exporting out of premier pro
 

Ok i exported some clips out of premier pro to email my friend, and they came out very small, and the audio was kind of off. Does anyone know how to change the size and audio. Thanks

Were going to need more than that to supply you with a decent answer!

What settings have you got it set to?

How did you go about doing what you did?

Whats your PC spec?

How large do you want the file?

etc etc etc.

Cheers,

Ed

I just use settings that comes up when i go to export. I would like to have it twice as large as the defult they give you for quicktime.

Well change the bitrate to twice as much then.

Premiere Pro questions
 

hi all,

Blessed with the help of the experts in this forum, I managed to capture 1.5 hours of footage with NO DROP FRAMES!

However, its still too early to celebrate...problems aredy started coming as I did a trial edit.

1) How do i open a reference monitor in premiere pro? the "help" page says click on the "monitor windows pop up menu" and then select "new reference monitor" BUT I CANT FIND THAT POP UP MENU! some kind of help they offer

2) I was photography train and thus better in Photoshop. WHen i do stills, I can "tone" the pictures to give it a "feel". Something like the "tone" you see in "Band of brothers". Basically playing with layers. BUT how do i do that in premiere pro? I heard photoshop and premiere pro can work hand in hand to do that...but how? Do i import actions from photoshop and add as an effect?

Thanks again in advance!

cheers
Wan SHu

Hi Ong,

Point 1 - i'm not to sure. But as with all adobe products there are hidden menus represented by a triangle pointing to the right (normally found in the top left had corner of a dialog box). The option might be there. Otherwise right click on the monitor window (in a bit of 'space') does another menu appear?

Point 2: This is normally done by applying colour filters in Premiere, normally found under the video effect/ filters tab. Although you could create a colour 'filter' in photoshop, it is much easier to use the plug-in you get with premiere. You basically drag the filter to your clip on the timeline and adjust settings where needed.

Hope this helps,

Ed

IQ Degradation of Still Images in Premiere
 

I have been trying to create a slide show, with about 400 high res images from our Nikon D100 camera, with Premiere Pro so I can create a DVD to send to friends and family. Hah, I thought, now they don't even have to come to my house to see my "What I did on summer vacation photos". I admit I am very new to NLE and Pro. I have a Dell 8250, P4 2.6, 512MB RAM, separate 180GB video only HD and use the Matrox RTX10 Xtra card.

When I first imported the images they looked fine in the source monitor but were, of course, very large in the program monitor so I only saw a portion of the picture. I used a photo editing program to save them all at 640x480 res, which allowed me to see the entire photo, but caused an understandable image degradation.

I then tried importing the original hi-res files and using the Motion control to just scale down the image, still the image is degraded. I have tried playing with the interpret footage settings as well as the field options for the clips. It seems that no matter what I do, or even if I don't do anything, the minute I drop the still into the timeline there is noticable degradation of the image quality. Understand, the photos still look OK, even on a 32" TV, but they aren't extraordinary.

Does anyone have any suggestions or is this just normal. Will any slide show creation program give me the same degradation in IQ?

Hi Jacki,

Check out this guy's explanation... it may help

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=192278&highlight=slideshow

Cheers,
Jack

Jacki,

What DVD autoring program are you using?

Most DVD authoring programs will allow you to create a slide show from a still image (.JPG, .BMP etc).

The resolution in a stills camera is different to that of a TV. A stills camera size is rated in pixels where as a TV picture is rated in lines - which is much lower picture quality than your D100.

You will need to re-size your images so that they are video standard width and height. i.e. for NTSC 720x480.

So basically if your Authoring program will allow it; skip the Premiere bit, resize images to correct aspect ratio, and import them directly into the autoring program.

Cheers,

ED

Uncompressed AVI and Premiere Pro
 

I'm in the middle of a project right now, and I've sent the video out to tape a few times to see how its doing.

I've noticed that where I've imported footage from After Effects, the video tends to get almost unnoticably choppy when viewed on the computer, rendered. On tape to a monitor, the choppiness is more prevalent, though not too bad.

What I did was export my footage to edit in AE as uncompressed AVI, then export from AE as uncompressed AVI, then import into Premiere. (I'm assuming choosing "none" as my codec means that its uncompressed.) Am I doing this the wrong way? Any way to fix this, or is this just a quirk of Premiere Pro?


Also, when i reverse a segment of the video for a second or two, i'm experienceing some choppiness as well. I thought it had somethign to do with an interlace field setting that I had to change but in an uncompressed avi export, there doesn't seem to be any problems. Any ideas here?

Thanks.

Uncompressed video has an enormous bandwidth - over 30 MB/s. Even the best hard drives have trouble sustaining that sometimes. I doubt anything is wrong. Just render it back to DV and you'll have no choppiness, I suspect.

Peter: From AE, or Premiere? Should I render as DV separately, and then insert into the timeline I'm using for my project?

I would keep the uncompressed part from Premiere into AE, that
garantuees that whatever you are doing in Premiere won't
degrade the image too much due to a second compression level.
If it is only straight cuts you can just use DV output as well since
it should not re-encode the footage then.

If your output from AE is going straight to DV tape then you can
just as well export in DV straight away. Whether you do it in AE
or lateron in Premiere should make no difference.

If you are going to another output (DVD mainly) then it might be
wise to stick to uncompressed.

Adding Subtitles in Premiere
 

hi all,

Anyone has a efficient way of adding subtitles in Premiere Pro?

I read some manuals but those ways seems very troublesome and not efficient to me.


Thanks!!

Wan Shu

go to file> new> title

type what u need save it and it should be with the video files
then just treat it as a video and but it where you need on the timeline

Is there a way to adjust pitch of the audio in Premiere 6.5?
 

For some background information. . . .I film and edit rollerblading videos. I like to slow down footage, but I've always cut the audio out because it was way too low of a pitch, and seemed way out of place. I am trying to figure out a way to increase the pitch of the audio, so that it SOUNDS like there has been no adjustments in speed of the audio.

The speed adjustment is noticeable in the video. . . .but, I want the audio to sound more like all the other 100% speed audios.

For some of you that don't know what kind of "pitch" I'm talking about. . . . pitch would be the difference between the low, deep voice of a man. . .compared to the high, sometimes screechy voice of a woman.

I'm not to sure on a dedicated pitch filter, but I suggest playing around with all the others to see whether you can get the same effect.

Ed

Adding Same Transition on all Cuts in Premiere 6.5?
 

Hi everyone,

I searched the forum about this topic and found one post with no reply in PPRO forum. I just wonder if there's a way to do this. I want to add the same transition on all of my cuts on the timeline. Is there a way to do that instead of adding transition one by one? Thanks.

Adobe Plug-in for Gamma Adjustments?
 

I've gotten spoiled by the "levels" control in Photoshop that let me easily adjust gamma. Is there any kind of plug-in for Premiere that will let me do this for clips (and, hopefully, won't take 5 days to render 10 seconds?).

Thanks.

What version of premiere are you using?

If you are exporting out as a movie avi/ mov/ mpg etc then in settings under special processing you can adjust the gamma. If you then want to export to your tape you will need to import the avi file and export to dv as normal.

Cheers,

Paul,

If you have After Effects, or know some one that does you will find just what you are looking for.

Premiere Pro has curves, which will let you adjust gamma.

You can also export an image sequence for Photoshop to batch process with actions or batch actions.

I'm using Premiere 6.5.
I'm holding off upgrading to Pro until I get a new computer (mine is only 1.4Ghz) and can also afford to replace my real-time card (a Pinnacle ProOne, now orphaned and abandoned by Pinnacle).
Adjusting gamma on export won't do it, since I need to set levels for each clip.

I do have a copy of AfterEffects 5.5. Is there anyway to use it within Premiere? It would be kind of a pain to have work on each clip individually, export it, then bring it back into Premiere.

Paul, you can import your Premiere project file into AE and work on it that way but you can't work with AE from inside Premiere.

It's not really a good idea to limit yourself to one app as this basically limits you to what you can do, nothing can do it all. Man, I often use Premiere, AE, Photoshop and even Vegas to get the job done. It is a pain in the butt but that's just the way things go unless you have big-dollar gear.

Paul, Premiere 6.5 has a built-in gamma adjustment filter. It is unnder Video->Adjust. That being said, the tools in Premiere are somewhat limited. The gamma adjustment is kind of a brut-force type thing. If you want fine control over the image, you will need something like AfterEffects. There are other tools out there that will accomplish what you want, but I'm only familiar with AE and Premiere. One you edit your project with Premiere, save it and then import it into AE. You can adjust color or add effects to your heart's content, then save the project and bring it back into Premiere. This is the work-flow I use. Once in Premiere, you can output the file to whatever codec, or make other fine adjustments. From what I've heard, Vegas Video and Avid DV allow you to color correct the video from within the app. Also, there are plug-ins for Premiere you can buy that will do what you want. Hope this helps

generic capture cards and premiere??
 

ok, i have a generic dv capture card that came with my hp. will i have a noticeable difference in picture quality if i purchased a name brand capture card from a place like best buy, sears, circuit city? does each program ( premiere, vegas, fcp, msp ) add any processing to the footage when capturing?

Primeire Pro and 16:9 aspect ratio
 

Hi,

I shoot all my footage in 16:9 aspect ratio using a Sony PDX10. Afterwards I import this footage in a widescreen premiere project. The frame aspect ratio is always set to 720x480. Therefore when I export my footage to avi everything seems stretched horizontally.

Now, at the end of the day I want to put my footage on DVD and have it played on a TV in 16:9 aspect ratio. I have never done this before.

My question is when I burn my footage on DVD will it still appear horizontally stretched? or will the DVD burning software some how encode it on the DVD that it is 16:9 and thus when the DVD player plays it, it will stretch the video appropriately.

I'm still new to this domain, so I hope I made some sense.

Thanks

What DVD burning program are you using?

There is no loss in quality with differnt non-branded generic capture cards. You can get hardware accerelated capture cards that have an on board codec which will give better quality - i.e. the Matrox LE capture board.

Quality is determined by 2 things:

1) Your camera, i.e. your orginal footage you captured while recording.

2) The codec used when capturing into your computer.

There is not much difference between the generic codecs used in the programs you have mentioned.

Hope this helps a little.

Ed

If you have a firewire card that "captures" DV then it will make
no difference AT ALL which card you are using (quality wise that
is!). Even if the cards ships with the ultra-deluxe-very-best-codec
then it will not improve your quality WHILE capturing. Why?
Because a DV capture is just a simple "file" transfer over your
firewire link. The camera has already compressed the footage
into DV with its own internal codec. So the card in your PC does
nothing other then to transfer the footage.

Now if you are capturing from an analog source the story gets
different. You can use an external device (sometimes your
camera) like the Canopus ADVC which has a builtin codec to
convert the footage realtime to DV which you can then just
capture in the same manner (and thus the same points as above
apply. Quality is determined in the ADVC in this example).

If you are using an analog capture board (with composite / SVHS
in for example) then it's a different animal. Most boards will use
an MJPEG codec which you will get on CD with the board. The
quality is highly dependend on this codec since the boards
basically operate in raw YUV. So you could capture to another
codec as well if you want (and have the processing speed). Most
analog capture utilities don't support realtime encoding to DV
with these boards I think (at least not a year ago or so).

So only in this last example will the codec you choose have any
influence on the quality of the capture (along with the quality of
the components on the capture board etc. ofcourse).

thanks
 

i would like to thank the both of you. i have purchased a used xl1 with 98 dated on it. i'm now wondering if there is any updates to the built in compressor.

Not to my knowledge. But it might be a good thing to send the
camera in to Canon to have it checked, cleaned and worked on
where needed (cost depends on whether stuff needs replacing
etc.).

First of all the resolution will ALWAYS stay 720x480 underwater.
From the camera, through Premiere, through MPEG encoding
and what finally ends up on the DVD. The trick is in marking the
footage AS widescreen so your TV and/or DVD player know it
needs to be unsquashed.

So how do you do this? First you need to tell your MPEG2 encoder
that it is encoding widescreen 16:9 anamorphic material. If you
are using an authoring package that has builtin encoder then it
will probably do this for you if you follow my next paragraph.

You also need to tell your Authoring package that a particular
file is in widescreen 16:9 anamorphic so it can create the proper
flags for the DVD player lateron.

However, not a whole lot of DVD authoring applications actually
support this option!! Especially not the cheaper / simpler ones
you get a lot with the burners or bought yourself. Usually the
mid to highend market has option like that.

So the question from Jonathan is a very good one. Which
package are you using? If it doesn't support it you'll need to
look at other packages like Sony's DVD Architect.

I couldn't find whether Adobe Encore supports this, so it looks
like it doesn't.

Encore does support true 16:9, as does the no-frills "Export to DVD" function of Premiere Pro. Adobe Video Collection has been well worth the big chunk of change and the learning curve for me. Seems others have been equally happy with Vegas+DVD. Either way, you'll drop some bucks but have amazing capabilities...for me, the limits are my dull scientist's imagination, not my software!

Rob is quite right about the "Lite"/cheap/bundled versions of authoring software. Especially in retrospect, the "Lite" versions of myDVD and DVDit! that were bundled with my Sony burner and previous versions of Premiere were buggy toys/junk by comparison.

I haven't brought too much material to completion yet since getting Encore, but so far it has worked great for me without any of the bug problems that some folks have reported (for once, I'm just lucky on that score!) Encore does NTSC or PAL, 4:3 or 16:9, motion menus, subtitles, chapter points, data/photo files for computer use, etc. And for DLT output (for producing real pressed DVDs), it'll do copy protection and regional encoding.

hi,

Thanks for all the information. It greatly helps. I haven't baught any burning software yet. I have been browsing around the internet trying to find one that supports 16:9. So far from what you guys have said, Encore seems to do a good job. Are there any other burning software that you guys recommend. How about Nero?

thanks for all your help. Much appreciated.