Hi folks,

It has been a while since I played with exporting multi-channel audio, but I do THINK you should be able to get your 5.1 onto DVD.

Since the Surcode trial only give you three tries, I'd export from PPro (and possibly Audition for the audio) in an uncompressed AVI that has multichannel PCM audio, or as separate (multichannel PCM) audio and video files. Then import into Encore, transcode, and transcode/burn. You should be able to use either AC3 (and thus burning up a trial run of Surcode), or to multichannel PCM.

I'm not 100% sure, but from what I can recall, PCM isn't inherently stereo audio -- it is required as a format that DVD players worldwide can read -- BUT output through most PC audio systems gets downmixed to stereo.

Limited time right now so not able to check into this, but perhaps in this evening I can dig into it a little again and refresh my memory.

Hey Guys I just found a box in the video capture prefrences window I think and it asks if you want ppro to fit the images. I tried it and it worked great. I had also resized like you Guys said and that went well also. The reason I got the chance to try the box was when rendering ppro just shut down. Well I've been used to that so it turned into a learning experience. Now that thats done im off to try to export to a dvd. Thanks again TAG

Yes, Surcode works fine. I've produced one DVD containing 5.1 audio. It sounded fabulous, but not fabulous enough for me to plunk down $300 for Surcode. I understand that this is cheap as far as AC3 encoders go, but not cheap as far as my budget goes.

>>>BeSweet it will not open a file exported from PPro unless I break up the 5.1 into 6 separate files.

Correct. That's the way all the standalone surround encoders that I'm familiar with work.... it doesnt really slow the process down much - just a few extra mouseclicks.

There's an ongoing debate about 'correct' AC3 volume - not sure where the latest version of BSweet is with that.

>>>PCM isn't inherently stereo audio

Correct again - what I was meaning to say is that the PCM audio stream on a DVD player cannot provide true 5.1 audio; the spec calls for AC3 or DTS.

Hi John, Perhaps you have had a chance to duplicate the functionality that I referred to earlier?
It's minor, but I think a sensible direction toward effortless keyframe placement.

You may want to view the free video tutorials at Wrigley Video (http://www.wrigleyvideo.com). It will help you with keyframing.

I previously used Windows Movie Maker 2 to edit video and I was annoyed that I could only have two audio tracks, which I used for the orginal audio and music but if I wanted sound f/x I'd have to get rid of the music. How many audio tracks can you use in Premiere Pro?

I believe its unlimited, or perhaps 99. In avid, you are "limited" to 24, but you can always nest and mix down. I think most people would be happy to have at least 8... dual tracks for dialogue, effects, music and ambience at the minimum.

Question about this topic. When I go into the media encoder and selest mpeg-2 or mpeg-2 DVD there are lots of pre-sets. This is something new to me from the older 6.5 version. How do I read this? How do I know what settings to use? What are you using?

Something I noticed under Mpeg-2 is there is no 720 60i, it says 60p. Not sure if this is a typo or what. When I click on it it does say 60fps not 30. Under the dvd option there isn't a high quality 16:9 option. Why is this? Are two passes better than one?

Some insight on this would be great. thanks.

Is there a better mpeg-2 encoder than the one that comes with Premiere? Not saying I don't like it but I'm sure there are some others out there that might give better image quality or compression. Thanks.

I was wondering if I film a large gray stone tower, is it possible for me to change the color of the tower realisitically to black?

Jim -- I have not needed to do any keyframing in Premiere Pro since my last post. The next ad that will require motion keyframes will be done in 6.5, simply because it's a reedit of an old spot that I originally did in 6.5. But so far I've not had any problems with either 6.5 or Pro.

That last part should certainly be possible. Give it a try!

Drew: with all due respect I don't think you understand what you
are asking. Yes, it can be done with the AVC because it contains
After Effects & Premiere, both who support greenscreen removal
etc. Any program with such a feature can help in that regard
(which I already explained in my first replay and gave you a direct
answer that PPro can do this, After Effects can do it ever better).

However, this is very complicated stuff and takes a lot of practice.

There are no specific tutorial for your questions (crowd replication,
arrows etc.)

But if you did a google search (like I have done) like:

greenscreen OR bluescreen tutorial

You'll find links (including an after effects 4.0 tutorial) like:

http://www.jushhome.com/Bluescreen/Bluescreen.html
http://www.jushhome.com/HiddenPhantom/Tutorials/MSPComp/MSPComp.html
http://www.beepworld.de/members33/darkmoon3/tutorials.htm
http://www.darkskies.info/key.html
http://www.swfanfilms.com/makingmovies.htm

This should give you an idea what it takes. You can also see the
difference in quality between certain keys (ie, the way the footage
is extracted from the green/bluescreen and then composited into
other footage).

Yes, do a search on the boards with the following:

Procoder CCE Tmpgenc

You'll find lots of posts (specifically by me) with more information
on better encoders. ProCoder seems to be the best at the moment
with CCE & TMPGEnc a close second.

p.s. Premiere uses the MainConcept encoder (Sony Vegas uses
it as well), which is good, but not great.

60i is probably called 30 fps interlaced (I don't have Premiere).
Usually multiple pass encoding (VBR) is better than single pass
(CBR) encoding indeed, the more passes the more efficient it can
encode the video (and the longer the encode will take). I've seen
encodes of 7 or 9 passes (with CCE or TMPGEnc, see your other
thread) that looked very very good.

It might, depends on things (like the background etc.). What you
need to look at is color correction and more specifically a secondary
color corrector. This allows you to isolate a certain color (just the
gray, and if that was in other parts of the picture you could first
mask out just that section (on a duplicate track) and then put the
secondary CC on there) and then shift it in color or intensity etc.

I found out the hard way that Premiere does not have built-in capability to properly edit MPEG files...

Once I got to use a plug-in, everything worked out fine.

How does the sorenson pro mpeg2 codec measure up??

Ok cool so it's like cleaner, it's sole purpose is just encoding. Thanks alot Rob. As usual, you're the man.

My guess is that you are using the preset for HDV which includes 5.1 sound. Use that preset. I do. But you must change the audio to stereo instead of 5.1.

No need to use Squeeze. I am getting great results from the Adobe Media Encoder using Stereo.

You can also export to Cineform AVI and use the Microsoft encoder. But there really is no need to do so.

I am playing the WM9 files on my AVeL Linkplayer2 HD DVD player. They look great.

John: I have no idea personally, I've never heard of it being a good
encoder. That doesn't mean it isn't, just that I know about the
3 I listed above. They seem to be generally accepted as the
best encoders around (for pro-sumer work).

Clint: yeah, it's solely for encoding to all kind of formats (including
MPEG-2). Thanks for the compliment <g>

i believe that sorenson squeeze 4 uses the mainconcept encoder(?).

In Premiere 6.5 it was very easy: right-click on the audio track and choose "duplicate left" or "duplicate right."

In P Pro I can't find any easy way of doing this. You can separate stereo tracks into 2 mono tracks, but only from the project window -- not from within the timeline once you've started editing.

The only workaround I've come up with is to export the audio from the edited clips, then separate the stereo tracks from this version to 2 mono tracks, keep the track I want, then re-export that as its own audio track (because P Pro will only seem to let me place the split mono channels on track 4)

Any advice on making this less complicated? I don't understand why Adobe dropped something so simple, yet functional -- or was I the only person using it? This is very frustrating, as I often record audio to only one channel (or, as with the video I'm having problems with now, record a lav on one channel and a shotgun on the other).

Audio Effects -> Stereo -> Fill Left, Fill Right

Check the Help to make sure you're using it correctly.

Hmmm... one of the first things I tried, but it didn't seem to help... but as you said, perhaps I did not use it correctly. Thanks, I'll try it and let you know...

I regularly use the Fill Left/Right for the same reason. I also shoot with two microphones, or I set the volume levels differently with one microphone so in case one channel gets overloaded, the other channel is still safely under.

Hello,

I imported my 16:9 XL2 footage into PP and it works perfectly until I apply video effects. When I render, the video plays as 4:3 footage (meaning my picture is squeed). Anyone else have any experience with this? Any help is very appreciated.

Seems to work -- I think I was doing something wrong before. Thanks for your help, David!

Glad to hear it worked and I hope you've wondered along with me why "Fill Left" means "Fill from Left" instead of "Fill the Left channel".

Heh, heh -- that's exactly why I didn't think it worked before! I dropped in "Fill Left" and said, "Hey, that's not any better at all! Must not be what I'm looking for..."

When editing projects in the 2:1 anamorphic project setting, and then importing clips and interpreting them as 2:1 anamorphic, preview and project monitors show the correct aspect ratio except for when effects are applied. Simple dissolve transitions kick back into 4x3 for the duration of the transition, and then switch back to the correct aspect ratio when they are finished. Any advice?

Problem is with Pro 1.5. Works fine in 6.5. NV

Have you tried outputting to an AVI file? Maybe the preview uses the original aspect ratio for performance reasons, but the render will be correct?

Thanks for your response Joshua,
The output rendering is fine in AVI. The visual "banging" in and out of anamorphic is very problematic in the timeline mode. A point of interest is that in 16:9, everything stays constant. It's as though they left out a calculation for the 2:1 setting. I've searched high and low for the switch but so far, no luck.

Nick

Are you absotively, posilutely certain that your EXPORT setting was 16:9? I've had no problem with 16:9 export in PPro.

Hey Pete,

I tried exporting the footage and it turned out fine but when I render my timeline, it plays back on my monitor in 4:3 and not 16:9. When I unclick the effects, the footage goes back to 16:9. It's very strange! Thanks for your help Pete.

We shot footage yesterday on the Panasonic DVX100A in 24PA mode and today after we imported to footage into Premiere Pro 1.5 in a 24p project the windows in the back of our shots are all flickering.

This is a first for us becuase this has never happened before. When we import the footage into a the Matrox DVCAM project, the windows do not flicker, but will it still be true 24p?

We are using a Dell Windows XP system with Premiere Pro 1.5 and the Matrox RTX 100 Extreme.

Does any one have any thoughts on this.

Thanks

Chris Vaglio

Hi Chris,

My first guess is that the windows in your background were bright enough to clip at 100IRE. There is a known issue with clipping and 24p in PPro. The linked thread described a problem similar to yours and contains links to Adobe's FAQ and the thread in the Adobe Forums that generated the FAQ:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37100

If that isn't on the mark, let us know...I suppose it could be something to do with the Matrox hardware, but I don't happen to use any Matrox stuff so can't say help with that.

Cheers,

What are the effects you are applying?

I only use uncompressed while editing because I dont have to worry about any recompression loss. It is slower and it does consume enormous amounts of disk space.

Before comitting to uncompressed I would find my self getting "stuck" with an unacceptable video quality on a piece that I had spent days on and the only way to fix it was to redo most of it using uncompressed... Now I always go uncompressed.

You're looking at about 1.5 gig of hard drive space for every minute of footage. but with 250 gig HDs going for under $200 thats a small price to pay for a higher quality end result.

Hey guys, I was wondering if there is any way I can export an .avi clip 24p in image batches like .tiff composition in Premier Pro 1.5 ?

Thanks

I had a corrupt AVI file on one of my projects. I thought, no problem. I'll just go back to the tape and recapture the footage.
Now using my recaptured footage my keyframes are out of sync. Not much, maybe 10-15 frames out of whack. I probably started recording a few frames earlier than the original capture.
I was under the impression that Premiere used the timecode to link up the original project file and the AVI file. Is this not the case? Is there an easy way to fix this without going through the entire thing and moving the individual keyframes?
Thanks
Cliff

If you do File> Export> Movie
then select settings. Then from the file type drop down menu you can choose various picture formats (Win BMP, GIF, TGA, Tiff). (Make sure that the frame size and frame rate is set correctly)

Remember though that it exports each frame of the movie into individual pictures - This can take up quite a lot of space on your HD.

Hope this helps,

Are there any codecs that are transparant with regards to re rendering and putting effects on dv. Im looking for a bit more info

One River Media (http://codecs.onerivermedia.com/) has a bunch of information about video codecs. You should also dig around at Adam Wilt's (http://www.adamwilt.com/index.html) site as well because he has a collection of articles and links you could spend months reading.
I haven't seen much really current information out there lately. Everything seems to be about 5-7 years old which is terrible because we have come so far in that time.
Dmitry Gromov had a site (offline (http://members.home.net/dgcom/MiniDV/DVcompressors.htm)) with a really decent comparison on it actually showing the generation losses but it's been offline for quite a while. I have it archived on my computer if anyone wants it. I offered it to Adam Wilt (because he refers to it on his own site) but because it is not his own work, he rightfully declined. If anyone knows Dmitry, you might ask him if it is still relevant and if he wants it reposted on Geocities (where it was originally).

As far as an excellent uncompressed codec, Microcosm is a very fine way to go. You can buy it here (http://www.digitalanarchy.com/micro/micro_main.html).

That was very helpful thanks Ed :)

I'd say do it manually and be done with it. Will save you more time
in the end probably. I have no answer as to why this may have
happened...

In Vegas I can render out decent looking 24p but in Premeire Pro the video does not play properly. It just flickers on and off.

Any help from anyone who works this way?

Have you enabled the "remove/reduce interlace flicker" option?