Unable to apply Alpha Glow in Premiere Pro 1.5
 

I believe I need help. I have been trying to apply "Alpha Glow Effect" in PPRO 1.5 However I can't see the effect take place. I have searched the forums. Tried key framing, Adjusting the brightness and Glow, Copying the same clip to the track above and applying 50% opacity but nothing works. I know it's something simple that I'm not doing. Could someone walk me through it. Thank you in advance.

Harry

1- With dual processor systems, you are paying significantly more money for very same performance gains. This depends highly on the program though.
Final Cut / Mac takes advantage of dual processors well. ~70% improvement in render times.
Premiere I don't know.
Vegas it's like 3%. With Vegas you can have two copies running, in which case you can render at full speed with one copy and edit away in another copy. It's generally not worth it to get a dual processor system for Vegas.

2- If you do go with Premiere, look into a hardware acceleration card like the Matrox RTX100. You should also check motherboard compatibility if getting that card.

3- Graphics card: Some compositing applications like After Effects and Combustion can take advantage of openGL acceleration from the graphics card. If you don't do that then you can get away with the cheapest dual monitor card available. Nvidia cards are better than ATI cards for video editing when you're dealing with the gaming/normal cards (as opposed to the workstation cards, like the nvidia quadro and ati fire lines).

4- Sound card: A sound card like the M-audio revolution will give you better quality analog-digital converters at about the same price. The drivers should also be less bloated.

5- If you want a cheaper system, look into custom computer builders like local computer shops or online vendors like monarchcomputers.com. Monarch for example charges street prices for parts (I think their prices are pretty good), they charge a small fee for building your computer ($50/75), and you may not need to pay tax depending on where you live in the US.

Dell's upgrades are quite overpriced. Their base systems can be good deals and they make their profit off the upgrades. If getting a mid-highend system, you might want to look at specialized vendors for video editing like DVLine and Promax (I have absolutely no experience with those two companies and don't necessarily recommend them).

6- You might also want to look into other NLEs like Vegas and Final Cut. Basically ask yourself what you need to do and then figure out which system is right for you. Things you might want to look at:
stability
ease of use
formats handled (would you need HDV, uncompressed, or HD support?)
advanced editing things needed- compositing, audio post, DVD authoring + encoding package, etc.
speed (related to above)
workflow for the kinds of projects you do
multicam
total cost (Premiere, Final Cut, and Vegas systems are roughly the same cost. Vegas is probably cheaper, but that would be neglible if you are using the system for a living.)

7- Budget for lots of hard drive space and dual monitors. Mac and Dell charge you more for more hard drive space than installing your own hard drives or a custom build would.

Hi Ryan,

I'm using PPro 1.5 and AE 6.5 so my memories of Premiere 6 are pretty dim. You can capture and edit your 24pN and 24pA footage with Premiere 6, but you'll have to use 60i settings throughout. You must export at 60i; 24p isn't available and 30p would mix fields from different frames, making it look really bad.

So you could edit and export a 60i file at home, then at school bring it into FCP or another 24p aware program such as After Effects or PPro 1.5, make sure the pull-down cadence is correct, and re-export. That'll cost you an extra render generation, but if time is short, that'll save some of it.

I don't know if this will help you, but when Premiere starts, you have the option to customize the settings. I tried using Quicktime setting, and could set it for 24 fps. I didn't play around too much, but you can try it.

On a side note, why are you doing this in 24p?

I don't have Premiere, but could this be an effect that applies a
glow to the ALPHA channel of an image? If so you need to have
this channel (which video does not have!).

Rob
I'm thinking that yes it does apply the effect to the alpha channel. I could be wrong. All the other effects that I have tried I can see the effect take place. Not this one.

I hadn't used this particular effect before, but you piqued my interest. Clips do have an alpha channel within PPro; if they didn't have their own upon import, PPro makes sure that they do anyway...clip opacity, keying, garbage mattes and all that kind of stuff depends on the ability to use the alpha channel to adjust opacity.

Turns out that if you haven't placed a key or matte on the clip first to give the alpha channel some edges, the Alpha Glow has nothing to make glow. According to the help:

The Alpha Glow effect adds color around the edges of a masked alpha channel. You can have a single color either fade out or change to a second color as it moves away from the edge.

My quick little test went like this: I took a green screen test clip of my daughter and applied a color key to it so the green area turned black (representing transparency). Then I applied the Alpha Glow effect and voila! Just like that, a colored glow appeared around her that I could adjust at whim in the Alpha Glow settings.

One GOTCHA in it though...if you want to adjust the color with the little eyedropper-shaped Color Picker tool, you have to DRAG it to the area within the Monitor Window where you want to select the color from, not just click to select the tool and then click in the window.

Although I haven't used this effect so far, I suddenly think I could find uses for it. Thanks for pointing it out!

Thank you to all
 

Thank you for responding.
Yes, I was asking about After Effects that I use with Prem Pro.

After posting the question I stumbled across the answer to my problem. I didn't know that you have to change
"wireframe+force" to "rendered" to correctly see what the effect is doing.

Now I'm having a great time playing with it!

Steven, your examples are great! Thanks for sharing them.

Dan

Typewriter effect for titles
 

Hey guys,

I am looking for an effect for creating a title that looks and sounds like you are typing onto the page over video image.

I am on a pc working with Premier 6.5 - Has anyone seen this effect on associated plug ins?

Prem Pro 1.5.1 released.
 

head to adobe.com for the free update which covers HDV templates, and capturing... havent had much of a chance to check it out though.. but its there.. released today in fact..

25p PAL video acquisition
 

Sorry for the stupid question,
but never worked before with progressive video.
Also XL2 manual is not very clear and detailed.

Working in After Effects and Premiere Pro what I have to check in the interpret footage window? Lower/upper field or no fields?
The same for rendering.

TIA

Peter,

Thanks for the quick heads up. I just did a VERY quick read of the READ ME and installed to get a quick glance at it before going off to work. At first blush, it does look to be strictly an HDV update without other bug fixes...there's still not even an XL2 preset in the Capture Options dialog and the 24p help doesn't seem to be updated.

I hope that it turns out there are some fixes under the hood, but for now it appears that most of the chatter on this update will end up being over in the HDV Editing Solutions message board, where they're already getting fired up:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...ighlight=1.5.1

I'll check the Adobe forums over the next couple of days and see what tidbits other than purely HDV issues show up.

Interesting. I'll give it a try.

I'm working in 24p because I was curious about the differences in the way the image is percieved at 24p vs. 30i, since I've never done any work in progressive before. It's a short project that doesn't contribute much to the class grade, so I figured I'd experiment.

Thanks for the feedback. :)

If the source video is non-interlaced (progressive) than you have to select "no fields." Not a stupid question at all, it took me a while to get all this stuff down. :]

KiN

There are plug-ins available for this, try a google search and a few should appear.

You can create it your self by creating static titles with 1 letter at a time, placing them into the timeline at about 5 frames each in duration, then adding the audio effect - I've done it that way before.

Hope this helps,

Thanks Ed,

I found some sounds for this at findsounds.com and until I get a plug in for this, I will do what you have suggested. Do you know of a font that would look like an authentic old manual typewriter.

I love this forum. What a great resource.

Richard

Ed's right ... to do this inexpensively, the manual method can be used.
The definitive answer to your question falls into the after effects zone. Many cool text in and out effects are part of the latest version.
As for the old typewriter font, select a serif font the has the lower case g below the baseline. "typist" is one ttf font that comes to mind. If you can find the latest "ART PROJECTS" magazine, the last issue comes with a cd containing over 2000 free fonts.

Hi Richard,

Probably Courier (I think I spelt that right??) But I guess its down to personal preferences....

One thing I forgot to mention is that it can be quite long winded going the manual way, if you have a lot of text! Anyway give it a try.

The problem actually for me is to understand correctly what instruction manual says because it's specified "records in 25fps progressive mode and outputs signals converted into 50 fps interlace".
According to manual it seems in AE and Premiere I have to acquire on interlaced mode also when recording in progressive. Am I correct?

Thanks

Why does Adobe Premiere pro footage looks worse than Media 100 footage?
 

The thing is, I've worked on a media 100 mac based workstation back in Film school, and there where options like 20 kb offline for draft, 100 and even 300 kb for online- The picture of my capture dv footage looked incredibly better on 300 kb - Adobe premiere doesn't have that option, and the truth is thesame footage is noticeably inferior in Premiere compared to media 100's capture. Anyone know how to achieve similar results on Premiere?

One thing I really don't understand is: If firewire capture is lossless, how can this happen?

I'm not a 100% sure about this, but I'm sure someone with more knowledge than me can clear this up.

As far as I know, progressive frames are captured as a full frame split into 2 fields at the same time, unlike interlaced where there's a time difference between the fields. I think that's what your manual is trying to explain.

If you load up After Effects and select "Off" in the "Separate Fields" box for your progressive footage, then it automatically displays both fields that forms a progressive frame. If you're still seeing interlaced lines, then we're both going to have to wait for someone who knows more about this to clarify. :/

Hope I'm making sense.

KiN

Sergio, you need to view the footage on a television or NTSC monitor. Editing programs may be displaying the video at a lower quality on your computer monitor.

Pete, thanks for the reply! I looked at the source files and I dont think that I double linked them. Here is a list of what I have done, and the bad things that are happening from it :D

1. Imported old video
2. Split audio/video
3. Imported new pictures that havent been used before and put them over the old ones that are not wanted

Bad Things:
1. When I export the movie it skips on some frames, like when it is zooming in on a picture that I havent edited, it is not smooth, it kind of "catches" or skips a few frames

Well, that is the big thing, I just dont know how to fix it! Thanks so much for your patience and help!

If you want to avoid problems.. Get the Matrox RTX.100 card and a system by a certified builder.. That's what I did for my second RT.X100 system and it's a world of difference..

http://www.matrox.com/video/buy/rtx100xtremepro/pc_manufact_us.cfm

Hmmmmm. Not sure. Is it possible for you to take screen shots that show your project window, the settings viewer, and the sequence in question, plus a couple of seconds of exported video showing the "catch?" That might help us understand what's happening.

If you don't have a web site, you're welcome to email the screenshot and clip to me and I'll post 'em on my site for folks to analyze. I think my server will handle up to 3 or 4MB total file size attachments.

Who did you buy your system from?
I'm looking at DVLINE. Heard anything about them?

Hello..

I got it from DV Gear, I dealt with Mike there.. They were awesome and price included next day shipping. I had a system before we pieced together at work and well I had problems, hangs, reboots and updating timeline was a constant.. So these are my two systems I have now. I use the one I built for Audition and Photoshop stuff since I had to piece it together with what I had on hand..

DV Gear System:
P4 3.4GHZ 1MB @ 800FSB
2GB RAM
Matrox P650 AGP Video Card
Matrox RT.X100 Editing Package)
80GB System Drive
(2) 120GB SATA DRIVES
16x DL Pioneer DVD Burner
1.44MB Floppy Drive
WinXP PRO SP2
Bella Keyboard
ASUS Motherboard (Certified by Matrox of course)
JVC BR-DV3000 Deck
Mackie DFX-12 Mixer
DV Tape Rewinder
Matrox and 6122 + HotFix2 Loaded
$6000

I use that system with two 19" NEC 1970NX DVI Flat Panels and the contour shuttle Pro2 controller..


First System:
Dell Optiplex 270
P4 2.8GHZ 1MB @ 800FSB
80GB System Drive Drive
(2) 250MB SATA Drives
(1) 320GB Lacie FireWire Drive
Matrox RT.X100 Package
8X NEC DVD Burner
16x DVD-ROM
Premiere Pro Keyboard + Contour Shuttle Pro2
WinXP SP2
Matrox G450 AGP Card
Dual 19" CRT Screens

Glenn, I'm Using a professional video monitor for comparison- this is not the problem. And I'm in a PAL region. I believe it has somehing to do with the kb rates- can anyone post some information about this?

On a side note, Capturing in "DV" gives the footage a "smoothing" compared to uncompressed- anyone experienced this?

It doesn't happen. Premiere doesn't do anything at all to material you transfer to your HD via Firewire -- it just looks at the bits you've transferred. Any difference you are seeing is introduced either by some temporary and system specific detail like your computer monitor ... or whatever hardware you are using to connect with the 'professional monitor' you are using, as Premiere itself has no such interface.

There is no variable to DV data rate, in either NTSC or PAL -- DV is always 25Mb/s, no deviation.

Not sure how you are capturing in DV -- again, this is not a feature that is part of Premiere -- but if your source was 'better' than DV25 one would expect that reducing the quality to chroma downsampled DV25 might introduce some softening ... or whatever hardware device you are using to perform this analog to digital DV conversion might be doing the softening ...

GB

<<<-- Originally posted by R Geoff Baker : It doesn't happen. Premiere doesn't do anything at all to material you transfer to your HD via Firewire -- it just looks at the bits you've transferred. Any difference you are seeing is introduced either by some temporary and system specific detail like your computer monitor ... or whatever hardware you are using to connect with the 'professional monitor' you are using, as Premiere itself has no such interface.

There is no variable to DV data rate, in either NTSC or PAL -- DV is always 25Mb/s, no deviation.

Not sure how you are capturing in DV -- again, this is not a feature that is part of Premiere -- but if your source was 'better' than DV25 one would expect that reducing the quality to chroma downsampled DV25 might introduce some softening ... or whatever hardware device you are using to perform this analog to digital DV conversion might be doing the softening ...
GB -->>>


GB, I'm using DVCAM footage, captured trough firewire. Can it be that the deck that connects from the Media 100 (a sony dvcam deck, not camera) has Component out, and the Media 100 is capturing the component signal has "UNcompressed 300kb", and the picture quality improves, because it is not applying the DV codec in software but only on the output deck? Am I making any sense?

If you are not using the Firewire transfer of data, but instead using the analog output and redigitizing using the hardware board installed on your system ... it may well look different but it can't be 'better' -- or at least it can't be 'better' except in a way you could achieve using a blur filter or something applied to the true 'transferred' material.

Firewire is a bit-for-bit identical copy of what is on tape. It doesn't matter whether you use $30 hardware or $3,000 hardware -- you get the same thing. The beauty of digital files & Firewire transfer is your tape is transferred exactly and precisely ...

Analog output is filtered, processed, subject to hardware variables -- you may prefer it, but it isn't 'better' though it is perhaps different ... even likely that it is softer, particularly if you are redigitizing and therefore re-encoding to a new code.

HTH

GB

2 Premiere Questions: I need some Help!!!
 

Question 1:

Can I edit 30i footage in a 24p project?

I have a music video to edit and it was shot on 30i and 24p.

Question 2:

Do you have to edit 24p in the 24p project or can I edit using the a Matrox project? What are the benefits and drawbacks? What does editing in the 24p project really do?

So I guess there's more two questions, but if someone can help me that would be great!

I am using PP 1.5 and the Matrox RTX100 Extreme

Thanks

What I think you saw was the video being processed into a full component 4:2:2 signal. Native DV is 4:1:1. The Media 100 was basically capturing it in an almost uncomressed form. Different decks will do a better or worse job processing the video.
Another thing that you may see or notice, is that there is a setting in Premiere Pro that will automatically adjust the video playback to give your computer the most RT playback power. So depending on your CPU, it will down sample the video so that you can get RT preview. The more you ask it to do, the more it will bring the video quailty down in the preview. A Media 100 system has dedicated hardware to control the playback of the video taking that burden off the CPU.
A friend of mine had a colleague do a little test. They took the exact same DVCpro footage and made a tape where the footage was transferred via SDI, Component, Firewire, S-Video and Composite. Once showing the video to regular non-video folk, they preferred the SDI and Component video over Firewire and the others. Maybe it's the extra processing and softer look that they liked, I don't know. Anyway, good luck with your system and learn to color correct to get the look you want.

It doesn't matter that the video is output from the deck as 4:2:2 -- the source is 4:1:1 and nothing in the decompression adds to the amount of data. Premiere used to decompress to 4:4:4 before they realized that 4:2:2 at least represented the actual colour space used in video -- the 'expanded' space didn't add to the image in any way.

Let's say we have the value 1.5 -- we can redescribe that as 1.5000000 ... but we haven't changed the value in any way. Your results are limited by the source ... The Media 100 can do whatever it wants to the video but in truth _it can only degrade it_ compared to the Firewire transferred source. You may prefer the degraded version, but that's what it is.

GB

Dual Processors w/rtx.100???
 

Hey all just putting together another computer and wondering (because matrox doesnt show an intel dual processor in compatibility list) if anyone is using a Dual Processor machine with a matrox rtx.100 My buddy Gary thinks that with the rtx.100 the second processor wouldnt get used very much with premier, he agrees that in photoshop and after effects it would but in premier it might not. It is costly and with matrox not showing an intel board with dual processors in their list I dont know if it is worth the risk. Any thoughts?

Some decks will upsample the chroma/color information when playing DV out through analog/component or digital/SDI. It can make the color less blocky.

There might also be other things going on... edge sharpening, saturation/contrast/brightness changes, etc.

If this stuff is going on then the media 100 footage may look subjectively better, even though its technically inferior. From a practical standpoint then the media100 system *might* have a small advantage if it's better workflow-wise, as it makes images look better without rendering any special filters. This is like how vinyl may be subjectively better than CD, or how analog formats sound better than digital (because analog clipping/distortion have a warmth to it that's nicer than digital compression/dynamics).

I would try to figure out what's going on though. You can check if saturation stays the same by the following:

Have a NTSC monitor with blue gun. Calibrate it properly. http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

Put NTSC bars and tone onto DV tape with Premiere or Final Cut. Capture bars and tone into both systems.

Display the color bars on the NTSC monitor. Use blue gun to check for accuracy- the grey and formerly-blue bar on the right should be equal brightness. If not, then there's some shift in saturation.

Options:

A- Convert the 60i footage (I assume you mean 60 fields for per second interlaced, and not 30i) to 24p and edit away. Magic Bullet Suite, Mac/FCP/Nattress, DVFilm Maker are some programs that will do this conversion. Edit 24p.

B- Convert the 60i footage to 30p (various methods to de-interlace, or shoot frame mode) and edit in a 60i timeline. Convert to 30p so the footage will match the 24p footage a lot better.

You could also skip the de-interlacing part, but there will be a difference on high motion scenes.

If you edit in 60i, you will lose a few things:

Your final product will be 60i and the files will be larger than 24p files. This may be important for web and DVD distribution.

You can't get precise control of the cadence of the 24p footage.

Some things will move while the 24p footage does not (i.e. masks).

2- Before you shoot, check that you are shooting without electronic shutter (1/50 for PAL, 1/60 for NTSC are the right shutter sppeds) and that you are shooting the right 24p mode in your camera (that will work with Premiere).

<<<-- Originally posted by Glenn Chan : Some decks will upsample the chroma/color information when playing DV out through analog/component or digital/SDI. It can make the color less blocky.

There might also be other things going on... edge sharpening, saturation/contrast/brightness changes, etc.

If this stuff is going on then the media 100 footage may look subjectively better, even though its technically inferior. From a practical standpoint then the media100 system *might* have a small advantage if it's better workflow-wise, as it makes images look better without rendering any special filters. This is like how vinyl may be subjectively better than CD, or how analog formats sound better than digital (because analog clipping/distortion have a warmth to it that's nicer than digital compression/dynamics).

Display the color bars on the NTSC monitor. Use blue gun to check for accuracy- the grey and formerly-blue bar on the right should be equal brightness. If not, then there's some shift in saturation. -->>>

Glenn, very helpfull info- problem is, I'm in Pal land- the calibration method doesn't work over here...

David, I think that 4:2:2 vs $:1:1 is what was happening there- that was why I asked if capturing uncompressed would give me better results (in the mac forum).

Hi Terry,

I would stick with the recommened from Matrox. You could run into all sorts of problems, and I personally would not like the headache.

The recommened specs are there for a reason, the reason being that Matrox know that they work correctly with their hardware. Also if anything goes wrong, then Matrox are more likely to support you if you go for a product on their list.

But its your choice...

Cheers,

Ed

I'm not sure if that would help or not, it depends on how the video is being transferred to the computer. If it is going firewire, then it's a direct bit to bit transfer, so it would still have the DV compression and be 4:1:1. If it is going thru a compenent card that is in the computer, then the deck is transferring it and would be converting it to a 4:2:2 signal, most likely.
I went to a demo of an Avid DV express with their Mojo system. The Mojo can capture thru firewire, S-video, composite and with a special adapter component. All the audio is thru RCA, unbalanced.
The guy doing the demo was bragging how the Avid can do uncompressed with the DV, BUT when I asked him what is the difference between regular DV and uncompressed DV thru the firewire cable, he couldn't give me an ansewer. I can understand thru component or even S-Video, but not the firewire transfer.
Anyway, good luck with your system.