Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance... at DVinfo.net

Ben Freedman · July 6th, 2011, 04:42 PM

Howdy...

I appreciate it if you can shed some light on this...

Why is it that if I render directly from my 1080p time line to a 640x360 preset in AME, the result looks like absolute crap, mostly because the still images and scaled video look terrible.

But, if I render to a 1080p format first, and then use that as the source for AME to render to a 640x360 preset, it looks great.

It'd be great to be able to skip the first render, but I cant get good results going direct to the 640x360 format (which I'm using for client proofs)

Any help is appreciated..

Best,

Ben

Peter Manojlovic · July 6th, 2011, 07:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben Freedman

But, if I render to a 1080p format first, and then use that as the source for AME to render to a 640x360 preset, it looks great.

What exactly are you rendering the 1080p to?

Secondly, what is the source footage (codec)?

Ben Freedman · July 6th, 2011, 07:32 PM

I'm rendering to ProRes for the 1080p (the step I'd like to skip).

The source footage is made up of 1080p XDCAM, 1080p Canon 5D footage, and hi-res stills.

B.

Bart Walczak · July 7th, 2011, 01:05 AM

Is your "Maximum render quality" switch turned on?

Ben Freedman · July 7th, 2011, 09:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bart Walczak

Is your "Maximum render quality" switch turned on?

Yeppers...

B.

Bart Walczak · July 7th, 2011, 09:31 AM

Strange. Try nesting your sequence in the sequence of destination dimensions, adding a little blur on top, and then exporting.

Harm Millaard · July 10th, 2011, 09:43 AM

Curious. Why go to ProRes when you want to lose that step? Why not skip it all together?

Ben Freedman · July 10th, 2011, 10:39 AM

Actually, if you read my first post, that's what I'm trying to do. I'd rather skip the ProRes step and just render to the final form, but the quality looks crappy compared to rending to ProRes first...

B.

Bart Walczak · July 10th, 2011, 05:19 PM

Premiere does exhibit this strange behavior of exporting crappy SD files when there is a difference between the fields order between input and output or input and sequence. For some reason the footage gets automatically deinterlaced or even worse, edges are completely lost, and it looks almost like VHS. The only workaround that I found was to export first matching the sequence settings or at least to have the field order on the output matching the sequence field order.

For some time I thought it was the issue with Blackmagic cards, but now I'm not so sure.

Ben Freedman · July 10th, 2011, 07:48 PM

The symptoms you describe are similar to what I'm seeing, but since this is dSLR footage and stills, and the output format is progressive, I can't see why field order would have anything to do with it... The stills show the worst of the depredation, and they obviously aren't interlaced...

B.

Sareesh Sudhakaran · July 10th, 2011, 09:54 PM

Can you give us a screen shot of your AME settings? Are you working on a mac or pc? Can you give us a screen shot of the crappy v/s the 'prorezzed' footage?

Have you tried another file size/type to render to? Have you tried exporting stills from the timeline? Do these have the same issues?

Do you own After Effects? If yes, have you tried rendering directly off AE?

Ben Freedman · July 10th, 2011, 10:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sareesh Sudhakaran

Can you give us a screen shot of your AME settings? Are you working on a mac or pc? Can you give us a screen shot of the crappy v/s the 'prorezzed' footage?

Have you tried another file size/type to render to? Have you tried exporting stills from the timeline? Do these have the same issues?

Do you own After Effects? If yes, have you tried rendering directly off AE?

Howdy...

Thanks, but I have since moved on from this project. I'll try exporting some stills, but I was hoping this was a known issue that would have been brought up before. Unfortunately, it seems like there have been multiple issues like this with multiple reasons.

I do own AE, but I don't know how I would 'render directly off AE' as you mention. This is a PPro project. Also, the goal was to save time, and sending things over to AE would just require yet another time consuming step... I'm on a Mac, btw...

I'll just have to write this off to another odd quirk. I appreciate all the replies, however...

B.

Marty Baggen · July 11th, 2011, 07:09 AM

Ben.. you're not alone when it comes to the quirks of Media Encoder.

My workflow is pretty much what you found yourself having to do. I output intermediate renders using Cineform and do all my final outputs in TMPGenc and avoid all the issues you have described while outputting excellent files.

Tsunami, the company that makes TMPGenc has recently come out with an upgraded software which includes some basic timeline capabilities. While no substitute for Premiere, if it produces outputs as good or better as its predecessor, that's good news. Unfortunately, I don't know if it is available for the Mac.

Some of the difficulties of rendering various formats and parameters from Premiere can probably be attributed to how it scales, interlaces, etc.... but since Premiere 2.0, I haven't messed with it. Even without the difficulties you mention, and all things being equal... in my view, TMPGenc's outputs are superior

The render via After Effects could be achieved by an import of the Premiere project into AE. It's an effective means of bypassing AME. That has become a priority for many users over the years.

Ben Freedman · July 11th, 2011, 08:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marty Baggen

The render via After Effects could be achieved by an import of the Premiere project into AE. It's an effective means of bypassing AME. That has become a priority for many users over the years.

Wow! What a horrible workflow to have to import into AE just to get a decent render. Thankfully I'm not there yet. Sad to hear that the issue is 'cross platform' however...

Thanks for the info.

Best,

Ben

Marty Baggen · July 11th, 2011, 09:09 AM

Actually, one of the true strengths of the Adobe suite is its ability to effortlessly work between softwares. Dynamic Link and the ability to import are actually methods to eliminate the need for intermediate renders, especially when creating sequences in AE that you want in a Premiere project. Granted, the reason for you needing to do so is not the greatest (bypassing one encoding module for another), but the handshaking between programs such as AE and Premiere can be a real time saver.

July 6th, 2011, 04:42 PM	#1
Ben Freedman Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 188	Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance... Howdy... I appreciate it if you can shed some light on this... Why is it that if I render directly from my 1080p time line to a 640x360 preset in AME, the result looks like absolute crap, mostly because the still images and scaled video look terrible. But, if I render to a 1080p format first, and then use that as the source for AME to render to a 640x360 preset, it looks great. It'd be great to be able to skip the first render, but I cant get good results going direct to the 640x360 format (which I'm using for client proofs) Any help is appreciated.. Best, Ben

July 6th, 2011, 07:32 PM	#3
Ben Freedman Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 188	Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance... I'm rendering to ProRes for the 1080p (the step I'd like to skip). The source footage is made up of 1080p XDCAM, 1080p Canon 5D footage, and hi-res stills. B.

July 7th, 2011, 01:05 AM	#4
Bart Walczak Major Player Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Warsaw/Poland Posts: 716	Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance... Is your "Maximum render quality" switch turned on? __________________ Creative Impatience - The Solace of Simple Solutions. A few useful plugins for Adobe users, and my remarks on the tools and the craft in general.

July 7th, 2011, 09:31 AM	#6
Bart Walczak Major Player Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Warsaw/Poland Posts: 716	Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance... Strange. Try nesting your sequence in the sequence of destination dimensions, adding a little blur on top, and then exporting. __________________ Creative Impatience - The Solace of Simple Solutions. A few useful plugins for Adobe users, and my remarks on the tools and the craft in general.

July 10th, 2011, 09:43 AM	#7
Harm Millaard Trustee Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands Posts: 1,832	Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance... Curious. Why go to ProRes when you want to lose that step? Why not skip it all together?

July 10th, 2011, 10:39 AM	#8
Ben Freedman Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 188	Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance... Actually, if you read my first post, that's what I'm trying to do. I'd rather skip the ProRes step and just render to the final form, but the quality looks crappy compared to rending to ProRes first... B.

July 10th, 2011, 05:19 PM	#9
Bart Walczak Major Player Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Warsaw/Poland Posts: 716	Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance... Premiere does exhibit this strange behavior of exporting crappy SD files when there is a difference between the fields order between input and output or input and sequence. For some reason the footage gets automatically deinterlaced or even worse, edges are completely lost, and it looks almost like VHS. The only workaround that I found was to export first matching the sequence settings or at least to have the field order on the output matching the sequence field order. For some time I thought it was the issue with Blackmagic cards, but now I'm not so sure. __________________ Creative Impatience - The Solace of Simple Solutions. A few useful plugins for Adobe users, and my remarks on the tools and the craft in general.

July 10th, 2011, 07:48 PM	#10
Ben Freedman Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 188	Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance... The symptoms you describe are similar to what I'm seeing, but since this is dSLR footage and stills, and the output format is progressive, I can't see why field order would have anything to do with it... The stills show the worst of the depredation, and they obviously aren't interlaced... B.

July 10th, 2011, 09:54 PM	#11
Sareesh Sudhakaran Trustee Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Mumbai, India Posts: 1,385	Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance... Can you give us a screen shot of your AME settings? Are you working on a mac or pc? Can you give us a screen shot of the crappy v/s the 'prorezzed' footage? Have you tried another file size/type to render to? Have you tried exporting stills from the timeline? Do these have the same issues? Do you own After Effects? If yes, have you tried rendering directly off AE? __________________ Get the Free Comprehensive Guide to Rigging ANY Camera - one guide to rig them all - DSLRs to the Arri Alexa.

July 11th, 2011, 07:09 AM	#13
Marty Baggen Major Player Join Date: May 2005 Location: monroe, or Posts: 572	Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance... Ben.. you're not alone when it comes to the quirks of Media Encoder. My workflow is pretty much what you found yourself having to do. I output intermediate renders using Cineform and do all my final outputs in TMPGenc and avoid all the issues you have described while outputting excellent files. Tsunami, the company that makes TMPGenc has recently come out with an upgraded software which includes some basic timeline capabilities. While no substitute for Premiere, if it produces outputs as good or better as its predecessor, that's good news. Unfortunately, I don't know if it is available for the Mac. Some of the difficulties of rendering various formats and parameters from Premiere can probably be attributed to how it scales, interlaces, etc.... but since Premiere 2.0, I haven't messed with it. Even without the difficulties you mention, and all things being equal... in my view, TMPGenc's outputs are superior The render via After Effects could be achieved by an import of the Premiere project into AE. It's an effective means of bypassing AME. That has become a priority for many users over the years.

July 11th, 2011, 09:09 AM	#15
Marty Baggen Major Player Join Date: May 2005 Location: monroe, or Posts: 572	Re: Question on rendering for you gurus.... Thanks in advance... Actually, one of the true strengths of the Adobe suite is its ability to effortlessly work between softwares. Dynamic Link and the ability to import are actually methods to eliminate the need for intermediate renders, especially when creating sequences in AE that you want in a Premiere project. Granted, the reason for you needing to do so is not the greatest (bypassing one encoding module for another), but the handshaking between programs such as AE and Premiere can be a real time saver.