XL2 and Adobe premier pro

[Glenn Chan]

It might be that your sony camera records images that are brighter and more saturated than your XL2, which is why they may look good on your computer while the XL2 footage does not.


I doubt it's because of 24p, as that does not affect color rendition. As far as I know, there is no way to mess up color rendition in Premiere Pro. It leads me to guess that it's your computer monitor. Go to http://www.kozco.com/calibrat/gray3.html and set the contrast and brightness on your monitor. Maybe that'll help.

[Angel Mario]

thanks man, but it is not my monitor, for i have tried it with 8 diferent computer now... and they all show a dull with no color image out of the mini dv that contains the images recorded with the xl2.

and, why does the mini dv upload better images than the xl2? that shoulnt be.....

im thinking that premier is not ready for xl2... either that, or firewire does loose quality, but then again, why doesnt it loose when i upload from the smaller mini dv cam...

my guess is that there should be a better way to upload images from an xl2 than fire wire and there should be a better sofware for editin that does support 24p...

i sy all this bacause, i know that you think ic could be the monitor, but trust me, it is not.. ive tried everithing, and it only goes wrong when the images from the xl2 are uploaded... so, its the combination of the two.. xl2 (24p) with adobe premier pro...

[Glenn Chan]

Maybe the camera (footage) is bad?

Have you tried calibrating the TV too? TVs with factory settings tend to be overly bright, contrasty, and saturated. If your footage is dull looking it will look good on the TV (and good looking footage will look garish).

my guess is that there should be a better way to upload images from an xl2 than fire wire and there should be a better sofware for editin that does support 24p...

Firewire is generally the best method to upload your footage and it is lossless (i.e. you capture exactly the same 1s and 0s that is on the tape).

Premiere is also a decent program. If you would like to try another program, you can try Windows Movie Maker or demos for other NLEs like Vegas. I still think it's a problem with your configuration though... one of:
Camera (it's defective, or the settings are messed up)
Poorly-shot footage (i.e. underexposed)
TV monitor is wrong (try calibrating it)
Computer monitor is wrong (try calibrating it)
The mini-DV footage looks better because it's highly saturated and contrasty, and you're expecting that kind of footage. If you want, you could bump up saturation on the XL2 with the camera settings. In Premiere Pro, apply the color corrector and try raising gamma, contrast, and saturation.

2- By no color, do you mean black and white or do you mean desaturated/dull?

3- Can you post frame grabs from your footage?

[Steve Smith]

I use an XL2 and PPro and do not have any problems, so the combination of the two works normally.

One question: How are you looking at the images
1) on the pc monitor
2) on the XL2 viewfinder via firewire out
3). On your TV?

If you are comparing the monitor render to the XL2 raw to TV, it will look dull, dark and nowhere near the quality of the rendered output.

One test would be to take a scene , capture it to PPRO (use the same settings as recorder i.e. NTSC or PAL, 16:9 or 4:3). Do not use the panasonic 24P setting at this point.

Render the scene in PPRO and view the rendered scene on your TV via firewire to camera and analog RCA jacks to your TV. You should not see any quality loss. If you do, run the rendered tape through another DV via firewire to your TV.

Also, you can capture with the other camera and repeat all steps. If the capture to PPRO and render out works only with the other camera, I would say you have a firewaire problem with the XL2.

Good Luck

[Arlie Nava]

As for me, I never trusted computer monitors in judging the quality of footage.

[David Lach]

im thinking that premier is not ready for xl2... either that, or firewire does loose quality, but then again, why doesnt it loose when i upload from the smaller mini dv cam...

my guess is that there should be a better way to upload images from an xl2 than fire wire and there should be a better sofware for editin that does support 24p...

Ok Angel, like I told you in the other thread, it is impossible to lose anything because of your firewire connection. You are looking the wrong way.

It is important you understand how this works.

Analog video is a lossy format because it needs to go through a capture card and be interpreted and then converted to binary language for digital editing. By doing this, you lose a generation.

Digital video is already encoded in 1s and 0s. That means it's a data stream that is already encoded in the computer language. When you do "copy" on a file from your computer, does the copy look any different from the original? No. It's the same thing here. What you have on your DV tapes is no longer an analog representation of your video, it's digitized. You CANNOT alter your footage by going through a firewire.

I'm not saying there isn't something wrong, but I, as well as probably everybody that will reply in this thread, will tell you that a firewire connection doesn't do anything to your footage, and by anything, I don't mean it will look almost as good as the original, I literally mean anything, it is a transfer byte for byte of your footage. This is really important for you to understand. The digital world doesn't work like a print of 16mm film or old analog video. There is absolutely no quality loss between transfers of original footage from one storage device to another.

Also, I don't understand either why you'd think the XL2 doesn't work with Premiere. I just finnished editing a 45 minute long short movie entirely shot on the XL2 in 24p and edited in Premiere Pro 1.5 without any problem.

To prove there's nothing wrong with your firewire connection, here's what you do:

Acquire about 1 minute of your dull looking footage from the XL2 to your computer via firewire using Premiere. Then don't apply any effect to it, just send it right back to your camera via the same firewire port and re-record in on tape. Play that re-recorded image on your TV set once again via the RCA jack on your XL2. It will look IDENTICAL to the original, even though it went through firewire 2 times, so that should show you your firewire connection isn't the problem.

To see if there's anything wrong with Premiere, here's what you do:

Click on the raw .AVI file you captured from the XL2 to your computer and play it in Windows Media Player or Quick Time Player (not in Premiere). Is it still the same as what you saw in the Premiere preview window? Chances are that it is.

So after you've done those tests (and you really should do them Angel), the only variables left are a monitor issue, a video card issue, a codec issue or a setting issue.

If you keep insisting there is something wrong with your firewire you will drive yourself crazy because it is not the issue. If there was a problem with your firewire connector, you would not get dull colors, you would get no video at all or on a lesser scale, dropouts.

If you want my opinion as to why the XL2 footage looks dull on your computer but not the Sony MiniDV footage, I'll offer my theory.

The XL2 does not saturate the image out of the box as much as a consumer MiniDV cam. It is meant to meet broadcast standards.

When you looked at your Sony footage on your TV, chances are it was completely saturated in colors and was over the broadcast standard. When you looked at your XL2 footage on the same TV, chances are it looked fine and still well saturated because TV sets always boost contrasts and colors at their default settings.

When you captured your Sony footage to your computer, it might have looked still well saturated because it was already so oversaturated in the first place. But your XL2 footage has much less saturation out of the box unless you tweaked the RGB settings, so that's probably why it appears much less saturated on your computer screen. This is absolutely normal. Computer monitors are always less saturated and contrasty than TV sets at their default settings.

If this is the case, you don't have to worry about it, you can edit your footage and when rendered back for TV output, it will look just as saturated as you first saw it on your TV set the first time. If it bothers you to do the editing on a monitor that looks less saturated than your average TV set (since after all it is intended for TV), you can always try re-calibrating your computer monitor or using a little utility like Nvidia offers to artificially boost saturation on your screen.

But the best thing for you Angel would be to use a calibrated NTSC monitor and feed a signal to it from Premiere via a S-Video or RCA output jack. If you don't have such an output on your video card, I suggest upgrading your gear so that you can monitor your video live on an external NTSC monitor while doing the editing in Premiere. This is what professionals do. You cannot rely on your computer CRT or LCD screen to know how it will look like on a NTSC TV screen. It will always be different.

[Pete Bauer]

NOTICE:

If this thread seems to go 'round and 'round a bit...there's a reason: CROSS-POSTING. Because different people responded to two separate posts that were asking exactly the same question, we decided to MERGE the two threads together, rather than delete one as we usually would do. That way, the efforts of those who responded to one thread or the other were not wasted.

This thread is a good example of why NOT to start more than one new thread on the same subject. Here's the notice found at the top of every forum prohibiting cross-posting:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/announcem...?s=&forumid=67

To clarify, the first 12 posts were the first thread, and the second thread starts with post 13 (Angel's post on 26 Mar 2005 at 23:34) and ended with post #21, the detailed answer by Dave that is right before this one. This post starts the MERGED discussion.

Hopefully we have, or still can, help Angel reach a satisfactory answer to his question.

Thanks!

[Brent Ray]

Just to say it straight out one last time, there is NO WAY you can lose any quality through the firewire and 24p has NO effect on image saturation. Neither of those things are the problem.

I have noticed that my XL2 images look a little dull when I capture them in premiere. I think it's just the way the camera is. It records more natural color tones and isn't as saturated as many other cameras of lower cost. If you are using the video for web or computer-only purposes, try playing with the color correction and saturation controls in premiere. If not, just use a TV monitor when editing your video to see the actual finished look.

[Kevin Janisch]

I have noticed that when I preview footage in Windows Media Player it looks more saturated with deeper blacks vs Premiere Pro.

[David Lach]

Kevin, I believe this is caused by enhancing features found in WMP. I don't know which version you use, but here I have v.10 and the specific option responsible for the deeper/richer/darker look can be found under Media Player's "tools" menu, then go to options/performances/advanced, and under the "video acceleration" section, there's a check box called "use superpositions" (well this is a free translation since I use a french version of Windows, so it might not be exactly those words but it'll be pretty close).

I am not sure exactly what it changes but it looks like it's modifying the gamma curve. I usually leave this box unchecked since it alters the original look of the video file but under the WMP default settings, it is ON, so I guess this is why it looks different for you. Let me know if unchecking it brings the footage closer to the Premiere look. It has worked for me.

[Kevin Janisch]

David,

Thank you for the run down. In Video Acceleration I unchecked numerous items and isolated it down to the "Use Overlays" box. When this is checked, I get the richer, darker look. Unchecked and it is indeed closer to what I see in Premiere. One thing though, I now see combing in motion areas on 24P footage. Oh well, no biggie, I don't use WMP for footage review anyhow, just downloads.

Kevin

[David Lach]

Doh! Sorry Kevin I meant "use overlays" indeed (which is the english translation of superpositions), must have had a brain cramp there.

You're right about the interlacing artifacts, so you must choose what's most important to you between accurate colors/contrasts and combing effect.

But it is best like you mentioned not to review your footage with WMP, at least not if you're trying to judge your visual content. I usually load the files in Premiere and preview them on an external monitor.

WMP doesn't do the best of jobs reading 24p DV files (nor does Quick Time for that matter), my suggestion was to further the point there was nothing wrong with Premiere.

[Angel Mario]

Thank you all for everything guys.. all the information has really helped me alot.

i really appreciate everything. thank you.