Cineform with Still Photos?

[William Gardner]

Hi Everybody,

I'm working on a project with a mixture of 1080i HDV material and still jpeg photos on a PC with AspectHD and Premiere Pro. The HDV material converted to the Cineform format is working fine, but I'm having lots of trouble in dealing with the still photos. In particular, a sequence with a long string of photos (between 20 and 50) seems to bomb out ("Sorry, a serious error has occurred...") during rendering, even with no transitions, zooms, etc.

Has anyone dealt with lots of still photos in a Cineform project before? Any advice? Specific questions are:

1. Any advice on rendering strings of photos to eliminate/reduce the "Serious error" messages?

2. I notice that some of the photos don't have resolution to fill the 1920x1080 screen. Before they're rendered, the unfilled areas are black, but once rendered, the unfilled areas appear green. Any reason why this is so, and any way to change the background color?

3. Any advice on zooming and panning? I want to animate these photos ala PBS documentary style. What are the advantages/disadvantages in doing this using the AspectHD pan/zoom effects vs. the standard motion controls in the effects control window?

Thanks in advance,
Bill

[Don Blish]

I haven't done a great number in a row yet, but I was already resolved to make "video copies" of each image just for PPro/AspectHD. I too want to export to 1080x1920, but if your project includes HDV, you had to call it 1080x1440. To get the HDTV out to show them in real time, that seems to be the res you want, not 1080x1920,

I still run Photoshop7 which only understands square pixels. So take your image and size it first (square pixels) to 1080x1920. Then before saving the video version, go "image size", uncheck "constrain proportions" and make the width 1440. Then "save as" that copy.

I have routinely made video copies from Premiere6.5 days since I will crop to the video aspect ratio without disturbing the "original". Don't forget that most HDTVs crop some, so you can "pad" an edge with black to keep some important detail from running off-screen.

I also like the idea of panning, a la Ken Burns. That was awful in Premiere6.5 because it did it on a 720x480 knockdown, no matter how big the "original". I have yet to try it in PPro. If that isn't satisfactory, you may have gotten AfterEffects in your bundle. Anybody out there have some input on this?

Hope this helps.

[David Newman]

Hi Bill,

I try to answer your questions.

1) Unfortunately I haven't seen this one. It might be a Premiere issues with the size of your source images. If you are not panning into a frame with motion, use a tool like IrFanView to batch convert the images to 1920x1080 (yes, square pixel is best.)

2) This one is a bug, and I have placed in the bug database. Here is the simple workaround. Place your photos on track 2, and place a black clip (or any color you like) on track 1.

3) The Pan & Zoom effects is optimized for zooming into video that is the same size as the time, it does this a little better than the motion panel. However the motion panel is much better for zooming on an image that is larger than the timelime. You should use the motion panel for your Ken Burns style photo pans.

[William Gardner]

David Newman wrote:
"The Pan & Zoom effects is optimized for zooming into video that is the same size as the time, it does this a little better than the motion panel. However the motion panel is much better for zooming on an image that is larger than the timelime. You should use the motion panel for your Ken Burns style photo pans."

Is this also true for the transitions (for example, to do a cross dissolve between two panning/zooming images, should I use the AspectHD cross dissolve, the PremierePro cross dissolve, or doesn't it matter)?


Regarding the green background for small rendered images: I also found that if I make any change in the motion controls (e.g., scale the image by 100.1%), the green changes back to black.

Regarding the rendering crashes: I found that if I introduce 4 or so images at a time and render those 4 at a time, PPro doesn't crash. It's kludgy and painful, but at least it lets me build a sequence with a lot of photos in a row.

And finally, Don, I have done a lot of Ken Burns panning on stills in a DV project in PremierePro and it works quite well. The problem with resizing all of my images to the "right" HD size is that panning and zooming at the desired HD resolution then becomes impossible.

Thanks,
Bill

[David Newman]

In Aspect HD the CineForm dissolve and the Premiere dissolve are completely interchangable, both work fine (and we accelerate the Premiere dissolve to real-time.) Only in Prospect HD would we recommend using the CineForm dissolve exclusively we have a 16-bit dissolve vs an 8-bit dissolve.

Your work-around for small pictures in even easier than mine.

[Don Blish]

I now see that, unlike Premiere6.5 that knocked stills down to 720x480 first, the motion effect in PPro works on the original size still. As an experiment I took a 4:3 still that was 3072x2304 and made it 3413x2304 in Photoshop to match the .9 size pixels in standard screen DV. When droped on the timeline it shows a 720x480 patch from the center by default. I enabled FixedEffect/Motion on the clip, clicked the animate icon and established two keyframes at the beginning and end. At one end I wanted it 100% scale (ie zoomed into the central 720x480) and at the other end I wanted a scale of .208 (2304/480) to size it out to full screen. I just can't seem to figure out the click sequence to "stick" the two different scales to the two keyframes.... Obviously, I'll need to figure this out to animate any effect.

I'm so close - but what am I missing?