Uncompressed video?

[Chris Metts]

Hey everyone, I've been searching around on this subject for a little while now and i can't seem to get the answer i'm looking for, I'm hopeing somone here can explain to me how to get Uncompressed video. I usally go shoot my footage and then load it onto my computer through my JVC SR-V30U, (capturing with pp 1.5) and then edit it. From the little bit i've read i understand that the file sizes are huge and that means long rendering times etc. and that even after uncompressing the video theres not a huge difference in quality. And thats about all i know, anyways i was hopeing someone could tell me STEP BY STEP how to get uncompressed video. I use PP 1.5 to capture and edit. and AE, encore, etc. to do other work. Any info at all would be a big help.


Thanks!

Chris

[Pete Bauer]

Hi Chris,

To get a (huge) uncompressed AVI file:

File>>Export>>Movie...>>Settings...
(General)>>File Type: Microsoft AVI (not Microsoft DV AVI)
(Video)>>Compressor: None
"OK"
(Choose a file name)>>Save

That should do it. If you've not added any processor intensive filters etc, it actually saves pretty fast considering the final final size because the computer doesn't have to do encoding into a particular codec.

[Steve Smith]

Peter,
If yo do the MS AVI export, there will be recompression form the DV AVI format.

Assuming you capture with the native DV format from the camera and use a PPro preset like 4:3 NTSC / PAL ....

you will have no loss of quality if you export as DV AVI. All others lose quality. DV AVI is 214 MB per minute.

[Chris Metts]

Thanks Pete!

I just got back into town last night and tryed it out today. It seems to work great! I appreciate the help. Everyone was right about hardly noticing the diffrence. But it's nice knowing that it is the best i can get out of my footage. :)

Thanks agian,
Chris.

[Rob Lohman]

Chris: the only reason for working with uncompressed formats is if you are
going to put the footage through multiple programs (like Premiere and After
Effects, or perhaps even an MPEG-2 encoder, however, the latter can better
be done through frame serving [do an search on this board on that term]).

If you are just editing and outputting to your final format there is no reason
to go to uncompressed since there are no generations (so no generational loss).

[Pete Bauer]

Rob's right...uncompressed is used as an intermediate step between programs, not for final delivery. That's simply because the files are so huge, and they'll generally choke slower systems.

It reminds me to say, though, that in the Adobe Video Collection, you can use "edit original" as well as importing PPro projects directly into AE -- both of those features save a ton of time as they avoid a lot of intermediate renders.

Steve, did you mean "decompression" rather than "recompression?" Someone correct me if I'm mistaken, but in most codecs, decoding is much faster than encoding? If so, the NLE does have to DEcode an MS DV AVI file to output uncompressed MS AVI. If no rendering is required, that would slightly slow down the process. But for frames that require any rendering, uncompressed should be at least as quick as re-encoding, and presumably quicker since less processing is required (ie, no recompression). At least, that seems to be my anecdotal experience with exporting the same clips in MS DV and uncompressed AVI fomats.

I haven't used the Huffy codec myself, but it is a lossless compression a lot of people seem to swear by that would savea a lot of disk space.

[Matthew Weitz]

Originally Posted by Steve Smith

Peter,
If yo do the MS AVI export, there will be recompression form the DV AVI format.

Assuming you capture with the native DV format from the camera and use a PPro preset like 4:3 NTSC / PAL ....

you will have no loss of quality if you export as DV AVI. All others lose quality. DV AVI is 214 MB per minute.

I use Adobe Premiere 6.02, and I've have a few questions on this topic as well.

I start my project with the DV - NTSC Standard 48kHz setting. I import my video in Premiere and I think the codec it uses is Microsoft DV (NTSC) (the capture format is DV/IEEE 1394 Capture).

From what I understand, to get the best quality in the end result is to try and keep the majority of the native information from the film/camera to the end, right?

In that sense, in order to achieve maximum quality for my final product, should I export my movie using the same codec as I imported (Microsoft DV (NTSC))?

I have a few Premiere effects in my film (like blurs and stuff). Would that impact my output codec decision ?

The end result is going to DVD, and I want it to look as good as possible.

However, according to Rob Lohman:

the only reason for working with uncompressed formats is if you are
going to put the footage through multiple programs (like Premiere and After
Effects, or perhaps even an MPEG-2 encoder, however, the latter can better
be done through frame serving [do an search on this board on that term]).

If you are just editing and outputting to your final format there is no reason
to go to uncompressed since there are no generations (so no generational loss).

From what I understand, Premiere has no codecs that output to the DVD standard, hence I'll need to run it through Encore to transform the video. So do I go DV AVI or uncompressed?

[Steve Smith]

I am not an expert in this field and my knowledge has been thorugh experience and other posts / forums.

MY understaning is that since we run with the XL2 in DV format, importing in DV (with Adobe at least) there is no recalculation of the film. A true 1:1 import.

My comment on MS AVI, was that it is a different codec than the MS DV and hence a change in decoding. Please correct me if I am wrong. I look for the best quality too!!

[Rob Lohman]

Matthew: the Premiere Pro version should come with an MPEG-2 encoder.
However if you choose to use an external encoder (like Encore, TMPGEnc
or Canopus ProCoder for example) it is better to:

1) output uncompressed

2) use a frameserving application. This is a plugin for your edit environment that streams the uncompressed stream directly to the other application without writing it to disk (so you can get by with a lot less harddisk space). There are several plugins for Premiere I believe, however, I don't know which those are.

If you search in google on something like: Premiere frameserve

You should probably find which things exist for your product.

[Pete Bauer]

FWIW, Encore and PPro share the same Adobe Media Encoder applet. So as long as your system can handle uncompressed PPro export (or lossless codec like Huffy), whether to transcode to DVD-compliant MPEG in one or the other application is more a matter of preferred workflow...how you'd prefer to handle chapter markers, etc, etc.

[Matthew Weitz]

Originally Posted by Pete Bauer

FWIW, Encore and PPro share the same Adobe Media Encoder applet.

I only have Adobe Premiere 6.02, but I do have Adobe Encore 1.5 so does that mean I don't have to worry about exporting from Premiere in a MPEG-2 complient form because Encore will handle it for me?

[Steven Gotz]

Encore will happily encode your DV AVI for you. And it will do it in the background if you wish.

[Rob Lohman]

Originally Posted by Matthew Weitz

I only have Adobe Premiere 6.02, but I do have Adobe Encore 1.5 so does that mean I don't have to worry about exporting from Premiere in a MPEG-2 complient form because Encore will handle it for me?

Then either go with DV AVI or uncompressed AVI, depending on what kind of
quality you want and the harddisk space you have available.

[Matthew Weitz]

Originally Posted by Rob Lohman

Then either go with DV AVI or uncompressed AVI, depending on what kind of
quality you want and the harddisk space you have available.

I want the best quality so uncompressed AVI?

[Rob Lohman]

Yes, since DV uses a lossy (ie, throw information away) compression algorithm
uncompressed or a lossless compression codec will be better.