Importing too many stills into Premiere? at DVinfo.net

Rob Johnson · November 23rd, 2009, 08:24 AM

Hi all,

I'm trying to import 2600 still images into Premiere CS4 as an image sequence. The stills are sequentially numbered TIFFs, 1920 x 1080 and around 7Mb each. However, Premiere will only let me import about 1200 of them. When I try selecting them all it says the image sequence is too large. Is there any way around this? As I don't want to have to re-export in a two-step process and lose image quality. Thanks.

Rob

Tripp Woelfel · November 23rd, 2009, 08:47 AM

While I don't know what the limit for stills in PP is, 2600 is a big number. You may want to break the sequence into two or more segments and create two different projects. Yes it's more work and counterintuitive, but PP is that way sometimes.

Rob Johnson · November 23rd, 2009, 08:41 PM

I discovered that the problem was image # 01219 was missing, so it was causing an error. Using huge image sequences (as opposed to video files) is quite common in film work. They probably import possibly tens of thousands at a time. Anyway problem solved :)

Adam Gold · November 24th, 2009, 11:34 AM

Well, A) It's not all that common, and B) they're not using Premiere, most likely.

Premiere hates stills, especially big ones, especially if there are a lot of them. Caveat Emptor.

Jon Shohet · November 24th, 2009, 04:31 PM

I beg to differ. Maybe film professionals are not likely to be using Premiere, but many animators do, and I for one, have been using Premiere with tiff and targa sequences much larger than 2600 frames for years. Obviously it's going to put a much bigger strain on the program, especially if we're talking about high-rez images, and my personal experience with Premiere is that Jpeg's cause much more problems and crashes than tiff, tga and psd's.

I admit that in many cases I prefer treating image sequences in After Effects, and exporting to QT Animation or AVI Lagarith/Uncompressed for final editing in Premiere...
But I would NOT rule out working with long image sequences in Premiere if it's what suits your workflow best.

cheers.

Michael Nistler · November 25th, 2009, 02:48 AM

Hi Rob,

I didn't realize folks were bringing in pix bigger than about 2MB JPEGs for most HD work.

I'm curious - what type of output would require such huge files per frame? And what camera will you be using for the rest of your footage? Thank goodness you're only going to transcode about 2 minutes of video, otherwise transcoding your raw TIFFs would take a loooong time.

Regards, Michael

Rob Johnson · November 28th, 2009, 09:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam Gold

Well, A) It's not all that common, and B) they're not using Premiere, most likely.[/I]

A lot of idependent filmmakers process and edit using image sequences. A lot of them use Premiere. Pixar or LucasFilm probably don't use Premiere on any regular basis I'm sure.

If you've ever rendered out a scene that takes a month+ to render, you'd understand why you render to stills instead of a video file.

Rob Johnson · November 28th, 2009, 10:05 PM

Michael, Since this was a short sequence and I wanted the highest quality possible I went with a TIFF format. In many circumstances it would be fine to use very high quality JPEG files, if you're not running a ton of operators on the film and the delivery format isn't critical. But remember that you tend to lose color information with JPEG. And also, if you're doing a lot of processing and re-rendering, JPEG artifacts tend to propagate and become more pronounced down the line. TIFF and Targa also have the advantage that they will allow you to work with alpha channels if you need to. For me the rule is I use TIFF or Targa as space will allow.

November 23rd, 2009, 08:24 AM	#1
Rob Johnson Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Ft Myers, Florida Posts: 65	Importing too many stills into Premiere? Hi all, I'm trying to import 2600 still images into Premiere CS4 as an image sequence. The stills are sequentially numbered TIFFs, 1920 x 1080 and around 7Mb each. However, Premiere will only let me import about 1200 of them. When I try selecting them all it says the image sequence is too large. Is there any way around this? As I don't want to have to re-export in a two-step process and lose image quality. Thanks. Rob

November 28th, 2009, 10:05 PM	#8
Rob Johnson Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Ft Myers, Florida Posts: 65	Michael, Since this was a short sequence and I wanted the highest quality possible I went with a TIFF format. In many circumstances it would be fine to use very high quality JPEG files, if you're not running a ton of operators on the film and the delivery format isn't critical. But remember that you tend to lose color information with JPEG. And also, if you're doing a lot of processing and re-rendering, JPEG artifacts tend to propagate and become more pronounced down the line. TIFF and Targa also have the advantage that they will allow you to work with alpha channels if you need to. For me the rule is I use TIFF or Targa as space will allow. Last edited by Rob Johnson; November 29th, 2009 at 09:53 AM.

November 23rd, 2009, 08:47 AM	#2
Tripp Woelfel Trustee Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: North Conway, NH Posts: 1,745	While I don't know what the limit for stills in PP is, 2600 is a big number. You may want to break the sequence into two or more segments and create two different projects. Yes it's more work and counterintuitive, but PP is that way sometimes.

November 23rd, 2009, 08:41 PM	#3
Rob Johnson Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Ft Myers, Florida Posts: 65	I discovered that the problem was image # 01219 was missing, so it was causing an error. Using huge image sequences (as opposed to video files) is quite common in film work. They probably import possibly tens of thousands at a time. Anyway problem solved :)

November 24th, 2009, 11:34 AM	#4
Adam Gold Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Woodinville, WA USA Posts: 3,467	Well, A) It's not all that common, and B) they're not using Premiere, most likely. Premiere hates stills, especially big ones, especially if there are a lot of them. Caveat Emptor.

November 24th, 2009, 04:31 PM	#5
Jon Shohet Major Player Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: London, UK Posts: 277	I beg to differ. Maybe film professionals are not likely to be using Premiere, but many animators do, and I for one, have been using Premiere with tiff and targa sequences much larger than 2600 frames for years. Obviously it's going to put a much bigger strain on the program, especially if we're talking about high-rez images, and my personal experience with Premiere is that Jpeg's cause much more problems and crashes than tiff, tga and psd's. I admit that in many cases I prefer treating image sequences in After Effects, and exporting to QT Animation or AVI Lagarith/Uncompressed for final editing in Premiere... But I would NOT rule out working with long image sequences in Premiere if it's what suits your workflow best. cheers.

November 25th, 2009, 02:48 AM	#6
Michael Nistler Major Player Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Petaluma, CA Posts: 456	Hi Rob, I didn't realize folks were bringing in pix bigger than about 2MB JPEGs for most HD work. I'm curious - what type of output would require such huge files per frame? And what camera will you be using for the rest of your footage? Thank goodness you're only going to transcode about 2 minutes of video, otherwise transcoding your raw TIFFs would take a loooong time. Regards, Michael