I was under the understanding that copy protection (which uses
CSS encryption) must be licensed for each DVD. So how is Encore
handling this? The only other package I know of that can handle
that is Scenarist I think (and perhaps Maestro, the old DVDSP
for the Mac). Because you need to get your special CSS encryption
key from some company / forum.

Here's somewhat of a related question. I, too, have a PDX10 and shoot 16:9 aspect ratio. However, I have some older footage that I am considering using for a project that is 4:3. Other than letterboxing the 4:3 footage, if I were to include both 16:9 and 4:3 and encode it to DVD, is there a way to have each recognized and scaled appropriately on playback? I know I've seen some television programs that at least seem to incorporate both 16:9 and 4:3 footage intermittently.

What would you suggest for "mixing" the two aspects?

Michael

Rob, re: CSS

I'm just a hobbyist, so don't use CSS. But I do recall that the manual says that you can only do copy protection (CSS, Macrovision, and one other) when output is to DLT. I'm guessing that is by design so that the licensing can be handled through the company that presses the commercial-type discs.

I believe that Regional Encoding is also only available when outputting to DLT from Encore.

Amir:

Seems that "decent" DVD authoring software is not cheap. Just from what I see here on the board, seems like Encore and DVD Architect strike the best balance of price/performance (when bundled with their video editing cousins, eg Premiere, Vegas). But there are a number of authoring packages out there and I'm not familiar with them. I'm sure others will share their opinions on their favorite or most reviled software!

Michael:

Others may have more elegant ideas, but I think that "pan and scan" or straight letterboxing either to or from widescreen will allow you to combine footage without squeeze or stretch. Probably simplest (but not necessarily best) to letterbox the 16:9 into 4:3, then it can be viewed on older TVs, and zoomed up in newer widescreen HD monitors.

FWIW, I watch a lot of Nat Geo, Discovery, etc and it always annoys me when they do the "simplest" approach I mentioned above because I'll zoom in my widescreen so the 16:9 footage properly fills my screen, and then I'll realize the program has moved on to some 4:3 footage that's being severely overscanned at the zoom setting...but I guess that's a "downside" of having a widescreen HDTV. A regular TV viewer wouldn't have that trouble.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well, Pete. Seems to be
for professional use only eh.

Michael: normally the aspect ratio is not decided for the WHOLE
DVD but for each individual movie on the disc. So yes, you
should be able to have mixed footage, but not in one movie.

With MPEG2 encoding each file you should indicate that it is
either 16:9 or 4:3. In the authoring application you then should
be able to indicate for each title also if it is 4:3 or 16:9. Whether
or not your application supports this is the question. The DVD
format certainly does (most movies on a disc are in 16:9 and
most extra's in regular 4:3 for example).

Choppy playback with frame mode footage in Premiere Pro...
 

I capture all of my footage at 29.97 FPS in Premiere Pro. When I edit the normal mode footage in a 29.97 FPS project everything is fine, very smooth playback, no problems at all.

When I edit frame mode footage in a 29.97 project the video is extremely choppy. When I edit the frame mode footage in a 30 FPS project the playback is a little smoother than 29.97, but it's still choppy enough to notice.

I'm not sure if I'm capturing my footage wrong, my project settings are wrong, or the video rendering codec I'm using is wrong. (When I edit the footage at normal 29.97 it uses the DV NSTC video rendering codec and when I edit at 30 FPS I don't use any kind of rendering codec, it's just set to "None.")

This is very frusturating and I can't seem to fix the frame mode editing problem.

Any solutions?

Thanks a lot guys/girls!

Ryan Krga

For me at least, it looked choppy as hell when I was importing clips, but when I viewed them on the timeline and after export it looked fine...

It is probably choosing none with 30 FPS because the DV
standard doesn't know that framerate. Stick with 29.97.
Something else must be wrong. I'm guessing you have the
project set to interlaced mode instead of none (progressive).
Either that or some other settings is wrong. Can you post
your exact project settings for a 29.97 project please?

5.1 doby digital in premier pro
 

how do you add 5.1 doby digital to your premier pro project? I heard somethig you have to register with doby digital before you use it or something.

I haven't produced anything using Dolby Digital myself yet, so you and I both will need to read a couple of paragraphs of "how-to" in the manual or help. But it basically involves producing your 5.1 in the timeline and choosing same in the export settings (dialog boxes probably vary a bit depending on file format and codec you choose).

I'm no lawyer (the opposite, actually...an MD!), but I think the following is true (lawyer types, jump in here if I veer off course). Obviously, if you produce something just for yourself, nobody is the wiser. But if you intend to distribute anything containing Dolby Digital to anybody, you do need to go through Dolby. Just recently, there was a discussion about this, so you can definitely find the internet link in a search of DVInfo.net. I believe it won't cost any additional money, but there is an online form to submit and Dolby actually has the right to review/approve -- or not -- use of their technology in your product.

Importantly, don't forget that Premiere Pro includes only 3 tries at exporting Dolby Digital. After that you have to pay a couple hundred dollars to purchase the 3rd party portion of the program that does the Dolby Digital.

I took a look at the Dolby website for you all to summerize it
here, this is what I found:

Dolby Licensing site

The main points of the TSA are as follows:

This would "suggest" that you can use it wherever you want
without an license as long as you are not mentioning Dolby,
Dolby Digital, their logo('s) and use any of their trailers. At least
I couldn't find anything to the contrary in my quick scan of the
license stuff. Ofcourse you want to be sure on this and contact
Dolby directly. Nor I or DVInfo.net can be hold responsible for
any of the information in this post.

You need to be able to supply samples as well it seems:

Futhermore it looks like you need to use an approved encoder
if you want to use the logo and such:

Dolby Digital Professional Encoder Manufacturers

The engine Sonic Foundry/Sony is using with Vegas is on the
list, but I didn't saw and Adobe their. So either they aren't on
the list or they are using someone else's encoder (I don't have
Premiere Pro, so I don't know what they are using).

I just got the adobe video collection and with it came a training DVD. I was watching the part about adobe audition, and it was showing how you can do 5.1 with it. It never mentioned anything about it being dolby, even though it was 5.1. (dolby isn't the only company out there ever to invent surround sound, they are just the industy leader)

During the premiere section of the video, the host mentioned the 5.1 capabilities, but again never said anything about dolby.

The only time dolby was mentioned was in the Encore DVD section, and he stated that encore would convert all 5.1 information into dolby.

I think what this means is that in premiere and audition, any work in 5.1 is done by the adobe software, and it is not dolby 5.1 at this point. rather that only when you encode the dvd, does it get encoded into dolby.

It is custom if you are talking about 5.1 you are talking about
Dolby Digital, or as it is called technically AC3 (yes I know it
doesn't have to be 5.1). If PPro has an AC3 output option then
it is using Dolby Digital encoding.

Realtime Preview in Premiere Pro?
 

I'm thinking of upgrading from 6.5 but realize that one of the things I will lose is realtime video with my Pinnacle ProOne card (the card isn't supported and doesn't work in Pro). Does Pro do realtime preview via 1394 out? If so, I could use my old miniDV camcorder to do digital-to-analog conversion, and I'd still have realtime analog preview.

Will this work?

The "problem" with such boards is that they require their own
drivers and codecs to work. So there is a real chance it won't
work with Premiere Pro indeed. The best way to test it out would
be to just download the demo version of Premiere Pro here.

It's a whopping 107 MB though and you need to register with
Adobe (free). But it does give you the best option I think. Even
if it works for somebody else everything system is unique and
it might not work for you. Better find that out with the demo then
when you bought the product!

Re: Realtime Preview in Premiere Pro?
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Tauger : I'm thinking of upgrading from 6.5 but realize that one of the things I will lose is realtime video with my Pinnacle ProOne card (the card isn't supported and doesn't work in Pro). Does Pro do realtime preview via 1394 out? If so, I could use my old miniDV camcorder to do digital-to-analog conversion, and I'd still have realtime analog preview.

Will this work? -->>>

Hi Paul,

I use my Canon XM2/GL2 that way right now with Premiere Pro - works like a charm!

// Lazze

I have been working with Premiere Pro on and off for a couple of weeks now and I have to say that until today I have been quite impressed.

The improvements over 6.5, to me, are very nice. Previously if I rendered a clip, then moved it along the timeline, it needed to be rendered again. It always seemed silly that the designers would permit this but it never worked for me. Now its rendered once and I can move it. If I use slow motion and render then later cut the clip. It doesn't need to be reworked. I love that feature.

Also the idea of nesting sequences is great. Its like virtual clips but better.

And the Ken Burn's effect can now be done in Pro. Vegas does this nicely and I was considering learning it just for effects similar to that since previously one would have to go to After Effects to smoothly pan and zoom on a still. Pro works well in that regard.

And it seemed to be quick with non of the hesitation you mentioned....until yesterday. Then I saw it struggle at times. I would hit the space bar and wait. After awhile I opened Take Manager and clicked on the performance tag. I noticed that though I had nothing else running, there were times that I would use up all but 3 meg of my 512 meg, and this seemed to happen at random times.

I remember using a memory manager that helped a lot with Windows 98 when that happened and it seems like I am just short of memory at time. Possibly Pro is a memory hog. I will have to upgrade to a gig of memory and see if that makes a difference.

I think Ppro performance depends a lot on your system. If you dont have a "supercomputer" then it seems to run slow.

When I first received my copy I had to uninstall my matrox rtx100 card to install PPro. just out of curiosity, i did some editing on my comp without the matrox card installed. this is a 2.5 GHZ pc built specifically for video editing, with nothing else on it. premiere was without a doubt sluggish in places. when i installed the rtx100, WOW, what a difference. There is no delay, no matter what i throw at it.

just thought i would share, and i wouldnt recommend Ppro unless you have a suped up comp. also lets not forget being able to interchange any adobe software imaginable with it. that is a BIG bonus for Ppro (photoshop and AE come to mind)

I wouldn't get excited about editing with PPro without the RTX/100. Like Jonathan said, you would need a super computer. Hey, new software in the realm of digitial video editing is going to need all the help it can get. Enter Matrox.

Well here's something I can not figure out about Pro. I have been working on a project each night for a couple weeks. I was amazed at the way the program responded. The jog shuttle is faster, the scrubbing is incredibly fast. I could go on. Problems I had with Premiere 6.5 were gone but as I continued with the project I started noticing that everything was slowing down.

That is when I started to monitor the memory and I watched it change radically though there seemed to be nothing to correlate with it. I never did think to check the amount of available resources but at time I have to start playing from the timeline a few times in order to get the video to play without jerkiness. I swear as I added sequences the overall speed dropped.

The problem I now have is that when I export to an .avi file the audio is distorted when the music track begins to play...not the pops and hisses that others have complained about but rather as if I had the gain turned up too high. I have read the recent posts on Adobe's User to User forums and am convinced Adobe will have to fix this problem. User posting lengthy workarounds will not cut it for me.

So I will, after I finish the current project in Pro, begin to delve more deeply into Vegas and see how it turns out.

and thanks for the advice on the Matrox card. I am a bit gunshy about using cards after SEVERAL bad experiences with Pinnacle and Pinnacle support. I am stuck with a DV500 card and don't have the money to trade up to Matrox. I just wonder about their support.

The user forums on the Matrox support are apparently assigned to different tech staff. I have found them both responsive, honest, and sensitive to users. No doubt, there are those who need their problems solved yesterday, and fuss about it. But generally, I'm impressed with the way they handle both the people and the problems... and in the community setting, other users are helping to troubleshoot or add important info to Matrox support along the way.

Not sure if you need to register to gain access (don't think so), but here is the link to the support forums in case you want to see for yourself. It's also a good "heads up" to see what common issues people are having so you can make informed decisions:

http://forum.matrox.com/cgi-bin/rtx100/ultimatebb.cgi

Kent

I did a little research and here is what i came up with. When working with 5.1 in Ppro, you are using adobe's software. Once you are ready to export, you have three options for encoding:PCM, Surcode, and something else (i forget). Surcode is a codec used to encode your audio information into dolby surround sound. and yes you only have 3 chances to do this.

however, up until this point, any work done in 5.1 is NOT dolby 5.1.
5.1 of course refers to the 5 channels of audio that are played on your system, and the .1 represents the subwoofer channel. therefore, although we all associate 5.1 with dolby, it is in fact not dolby, unless specifically stated as being dolby (it becomes dolby ONLY if you use one of their codecs).

That's what I meant. If you are talking about outputting (encoding)
to 5.1 usually you are talking about a Dolby Digital encoding
(which is something else then just plain Dolby Surround).

You are correct that the 5.1 just stands for the channels. It is
all very confusing since a lot of people don't fully explain what
they are talking about (not pointing the finger to anyone here).

Surcode is both available for Dolby Digital and dts. However, it
will be highly unlikely that it is doing dts with PPro.

Right, but you can also encode 5.1 to the other two formats as well (PCM and the one i cant remember). Dolby is just one of the choices.

Are we on the same page here?

PCM can be unlimited channels basicaly. you can also do multi
channel mpeg (unlimited to in theory). Then you have the two
mainstream formats: "Dolby Digital" and "dts". I'm don't think
there is any other format [I'm not talking application specific
here]

you mean sub-titles as in for foreign language, or for hearing impaired?

i always wondered how to do this and i just read how in the manual for adobe encore, that is adobe's dvd mastering software.

i don't know if you have this, but it has directions on how to do it in a text file where the text is linked to the timecode, seemed a little time consuming but fairly straightforward.

that last reply was just how to do plain old titles, not subtitles.

matthew

wait realtime preview via 1394 out?? You mean like a DV in signal to a camera??

Paul,
Yes, PPro does realtime output to 1394 just fine. I use it all the time, no problem. If your camera has 1394 in and some form of output such as svideo or RCA to a monitor, you'll be just fine.

I also have the Canopus ADVC-100. It works GREAT. The PC and PPPro sees it as a 1394 camera, and you don't have to keep a camera plugged into it.
http://www.canopus.us/US/products/ADVC-100/pm_advc-100.asp

Creating subtitles that each appear and disappear at just the right timecode is a traditional pain in the a**.

You can buy specialist tools that create and/or read text/binary files containing descriptions of exactly what the subtitle text is, when it starts and finishes, its font, colour, and size. And puts them onto the video. This can be software only (eg DVD authoring software), or hardware (eg broadcast environments).

Or you can add them one at a time as in the first answer, tweaking each one till it's right. And just swallow the time and effort hit.

Premiere, and other PC NLEs, aren't really designed to provide a proper workflow for this kind of thing.

Regards,

Julian

Ok, I'm confused... at DV Expo in LA the Adobe guy said 24p wouldn't be available in Premier until sometime this spring. I shoot with a DVX and have been checking out various software (hate FCP, leaning toward Avid Express Pro, though I'm more and more impressed with the Vegas Demo). But from this thread it appears it's available now? Is it true 24p support like the others I mentioned?

I have Vegas--and I believe Vegas supports 24p. Vegas has alot of interesting plug-ins available (Excalibur, Tsnumai, Neon), available with demos also.

Cool, Barry. Will go hunt them down and check them out...

Is there such a thing as a free plugin for Premier Pro?
 

Hi all

I'm looking for a old style film effect for use in Adobe premier but all that I can find are expensive plugin packs. Any way I can do this for free as it's a short sequence that needs this effect.

Thanks
Donie

If you buy Quicktime Player Pro, for around $30 dollars, you should be able to take that footage into the player, apply there old film filter, adjust it to your liking, and then save it as a DV file to take back into Premiere.

A lot of effects can be made with a little time yourself by using
the filters that come with the package and combining those.
It will take time to learn what does what and what happens if
you combine them, but it's cheap!

A combination of filters will do it.

Premiere 6.5 also had a film look plug-in, but it's a bit overdone and cheesy for my tastes. The viewer will definitely get the point and the film effect as far as I remember wasn't annoying (unlike some of the crappy film look imitations I see on TV) so it's alright.

there is also sony's SDDS (7.1) but it is only used in cinemas. there are also MLP layers of DVDs for DVD-Audio and DSD for SACD. lots of digital mayhem... basically =).

Color matching in Premiere Pro
 

Can someone please tell me the best way to color match footage shot from different cameras. I know there are many tools for this. I recently shot a dance performance and used 3 cameras; a Canon XL1s, a Canon Gl2 and a Sony TRV950. The GL2 and XL1s footage is almost identical, but the Sony footage is a little light (blownout) and a little hotter (reddish. How can I get the Sony footage closer to the other cameras'?

Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Joe

24fps support
 

With PremPro you would use dvfilmmaker to convert the raw 24PA file to something PremPro could use.

Vegas supports the advanced pulldown from the panny directly without any plugins.

Avid supports the panny out of the box also.

I'm sure (and can't wait...) that adobe will provide an update also.

Need help on finding a plug in...please!
 

I need to find a plug in for my Adobe pro. The plug in I am looking for is where I can make white accents in the film glow more and have control over the softness. Something dreamy or something you would use for like a wedding or creating memories.

Thanks in advance. I was using Big filmfx and installed a new motherboard which caused me to lose my program I was using.

after effects would have this.. or um.. uhem.. vegas has it built in cough ;)