Adobe Premiere & Premiere Pro discussions from 2005

[David Hurdon]

Welcome aboard, Jim. Should I assume from your post that Scenalyzer Live didn't capture the additional wave file?

David Hurdon

[Travis Maynard]

I have a rather large uncompressed MPEG file. It's a complete movie that I have previously edited.

I am wanting to run the MPEG back through Premiere to change some color correction and some other little things I feel could enhance the movie.

When I preview it within the program I hear no sound and when I export there is no sound, but when the MPEG is played normally in Windows Media Player it works fine and the sound is there.

Is there any way that I could get my sound to work within Premiere? Maybe a MPEG sound plugin of some sort?

I am using Premiere Pro 1.5 if that will help any.

The only way I can figure of getting my sound back would be to export the video and then separately rip the audio and then pull both my exported video track and audio track back into Premiere and then render again.

I just don't want to lose quality. And exporting and compressing that much can't be good for the quality.

Also, the MPEG I am using is the full uncompressed MPEG file that I use for burning DVD's. So its full quality.

[David Hurdon]

MPEG is not a file format supported by Premiere. I think there is a commercial plug in available to make it so but I don't know enough about it to say any more than that. Users report a variety of experiences with unsupported file formats, and sometimes you get the impression that they work, but if and when they do it's a fluke, unintended by Adobe.

David Hurdon

[Benjamin Durin]

David is right, you will have lots of trouble editing MPEG2 in Premiere.
Either you buy the MainConcept MPEG Pro plugin that allows you to edit MPEG2 directly in Premiere or you have to find a real MPEG2 editor. I can't remember names but if you search in the forums, you will find some.

If you imported a vob file, Premiere will not be able to read the audio. You could check here, there are plenty of very interesting free software. I use bbTools, a command-line demux that splits a vob file into mpeg2, AC3 streams.

[Mark Errante]

Ok Im panicing.

I have the matox rt .x10 and have been using premiere 1.5. I use the matrox to get the video to my tv for previewing. I have just discovered that martrox doesnt support 24p.

When I open a project with out the matrox settings I can no longer use the card to preview on the tv. Is there way around this? I want to use a 16:9, 24p project AND preview on the TV with the matrox. Can I do this? or did I waste my money on a card I cant really use with the XL2 if i shoot 24p. Thanks!

[Jim Haynes]

David,
Thank you for your reply. I have been able to record audio two as a seperate wave file using Scenalizer. It took me several attempts and as my experience with the software improved I was able to find all the options and to set up the software properly. At this point I understand that I will have to capture the seminars twice. Once in Premiere for the mixed channel and once in Scenalizer for the isolated wav file of the wireless mic.

My hope is that there is another way to accomplish this with one pass to capture all audio channels as happened in the old Matrox system I used. I must admit I am surprised that Premiere 6.5 will not do this...at least I haven't found a way yet.

Cheers,
Jim Haynes

[Joe Hicks]

In my attempt to capture DV footage shot at 60i (Panasonic DVX100A). I'm seeing that the footage is chrystal clear in my capture window (Adobe Premier Pro 1.0) but after completing the capture the final clip in the timeline is softer than the original footage. Is this because of the 60/30 conversion? Is there a way to keep the origianl clarity?

Thanks,
Joe

[Pete Bauer]

Hi Joe,

Sounds like you made your decision about which camera to buy?

The footage isn't converted to 30p in the timeline -- unless you went out of your way to set it up that way. It is 60i NTSC just as on the tape; the program simply shows 29.97 full frames/sec rather than the individual 59.94 fields/sec from which they are made. Unless you meant to switch to true 30p for your workflow, you should have capture set to "lower field first" and in the Project>>Project Settings>>General... window set "30fps Drop-Frame Timecode" unless you specifically want something else. I still find the whole frame rate vs timebase topic confusing, so all I can recommend is a regular refresher in the manual...I'm forced to do that myself since it just isn't intuitive for me.

The Source and Program views in the Monitor Window default to "automatic" quality, which will probably be less than full resolution in order to improve performance (smoother playback). If you want to see a clip or sequence at higher resolution, enlarge the Monitor Window, click the little rightward pointing "triangle in a circle," located at the upper right corner in order to show the Window's drop-down menu, and select Highest Quality. You'll probably notice a performance hit.

No worries, you're not losing resolution!

[Allan Tabilas]

Question: Is there a recommended workflow / resource in premiere pro to do color correction?

Background: I'm shooting a fitness instructor with a partner. We have two of the same minidv cameras (lowend panasonic pv-gs120s), and one pv-gs400. The gs120's picture looks exactly alike. The gs400, as best as we could make it in terms of white balance, exposure, etc, but of course the footage is still different. If anybody has recommendations, like websites, videos, or techniques, please let me know. I know color correction is a very complicated topic. But a primer would be a great start.

I've played with the color match and color corrector filters, but am not sure of the best workflow to start with.

Thanks,
Allan

[Glenn Chan]

One thing to do is to edit the final video, but keep the gs400 on another track if possible. You could create cross-dissolves manually using opacity envelopes, or just throw cross-dissolves onto the upper track. This will make it easier to apply the same color correction to every shot of the gs400.

Figure out a base correction that applies generally to every clip. Then just repeat it for every clip. Some things may need tweaking.

Things to match (general instructions for all editing programs):

(Perceived) sharpness. Bring up a shot where the two cameras shoot roughly the same thing with the same framing, so you can easily compare detail between the two. Apply the unsharp mask filter. Bump up amount to 100%-500% and radius to (something around 1 pixel). Set the threshold so that video noise isn't being sharpened. Ok. Now bump the amount down and play around with the radius and set that to where the image looks the sharpest without color shifts. Then play around with the amount setting.

You can preview off the sharpness filter as you won't really need it for the next steps.

Exposure: Turn both angles into black and white images with channel blend or a black and white filter.

Apply a curves filter. There is a curves control in the color correction filter in Premiere. You want to mess around with it until both cameras look similar. It may help to split-screen the cameras, and to bring up the histogram and vectorscopes. If the GS400 has greater exposure latitude, then compress the highlights and shadows a little. On the curve, it would be flattish on the top and bottom.

Color curves also affects color saturation in weird ways. I haven't quite wrapped my head around it though.

Saturation:
Undo the black and white, and match saturation by eye (it should be in the color correction filter).

It may help to boost the saturation of both images by the same amount. Also look at the vectorscope (the circular thing). As the blob there gets more towards the outside of the circle, colors are more saturated. Shifting hue rotates the blob, and changing white balance will move the center/midpoint of the blob.

Match important colors:
It's a good idea to make sure important colors like flesh tones, key props, greens from plants are similar between both shots. I'm not sure how to do this in Premiere. Premiere doesn't seem to have secondary controls for its color correction, which lets you color correct a slice of colors based on hue, saturation, luminance.

White balance:
If you shoot a chip chart, WB issues will be a lot easier to color correct. If you white balance all the cameras though (onto the same white card), white balance shouldn't be an issue. Shooting a chip chart wouldn't hurt.

Obviously correct white balance problems.

Other:
Does it look right to you?
Sometimes shots will look drastically different for some reason. Look at the footage from shot to shot and ask yourself if other people will see color continuity problems.

Monitor Calibration and Room Setup
It's a good idea to do this. Unfortunately I'm getting lazy and don't want to type this up.

2- On the shoot, it can help to shoot pictures of test patterns. Good ones are:
Chip chart - bunch of blocks with increasing/decreasing brightness.
Resolution test chart
Color Swatches
Pro charts for matching cameras are not cheap. You could try making your own, but that could be a little hard. The resolution test chart is easy to make.
http://www.dvfreelancer.com/articles..._shootout.html

[Rob Lohman]

Also keep in mind that a preview is just that, a PREVIEW. It is no
garantuee for (and might not even look like) the final output.

[Brad Tyrrell]

Jim,

I have an XL1 and always record 2 stereo tracks (4 channels) I do all my editing in Ppro and all my capturing in Scenalyzer. There's no reason to capture in Premiere at all.

Capture video in Scenalyzer getting the two other channels in a separate audio file. Import both into Premiere, load them into a sequence and edit.

Scenalyzer has several more options for capturing than Premiere. Some are very useful, experiment a bit and you'll see.

Brad

[Jim Haynes]

Thanks Brad,
I have purchased the full version of Scenalyzer and spent yesterday playing with it. I did some experiments with capturing the same 2 minutes of original footage in Scenalyzer and Premiere 6.5. Since I am able to capture the second audio now, I wasn't interested in the audio for this test. I was only comparing video.

Have you noticed a difference in resolution in the video captured in Premiere compared to Scenalyzer? Although it is slight, resolution seems to be better in the Priemier capture. I had my sons look at it independantly ast night and tell me if they see a difference in the video between the two captures and both of them chose Premiere as slightly better than Scenalyzer. My client's audience likely would not be aware of the difference without the other to compare with. But it worries me a little that I'm not giving my client the best image possible with the equipment at hand.

With your experience with Scenalyzer Brad, have you found any way to adjust the quality of the capture. There are a lot of Options to choose from and as yet I haven't played with them all.

Thanks for your help,
Jim

[Brad Tyrrell]

Jim,

Actually, I never thought to compare, - probably should. Since the Scenalyzer captures looked fine I never bothered to capture in Premiere once I updated to Pro. I believe you're right that no one will notice without a side by side.

I've got to look into the technology a bit more, - I just tend to use what works.

With Windows and programs and sytems that work in Windows, I'm never sure which elements are borrowing from which other elements. (How much of XP does Ppro use, - codec, etc. Same with the cards and Scenalyzer).

Doesn't really matter I suppose as long as you go with what works best. The knowledge might keep you from investing in redundant hardware and software though.

Brad

[Allan Tabilas]

Thanks Glenn. I appreciate the large amount of information. I still need to do research regarding the color correction tools within Premiere Pro