V1 and Premiere Pro

[Daniel Becerra]

I have shot different events as 30p and 24p on the V1 and am trying to figure out if Premiere Pro CS3 v3.2.0 (latest version) can adequately handle these formats in both capturing and editing.

Premiere claims it can handle HDV 1080 30p and 24p with the latest version.

The 30p uses a drop frame method and the footage I captured looks good though I have nothing to compare it to in order to see if it's properly reproducing 30p.

24p on the other hand is unsatisfactory. When I capture the HDV footage I shot in 24p using the presets in Premiere, the footage looks like it's ghosting. I even tried down-converting via iLink to SD and capturing the 24p footage with Premiere's DV 24p preset, but the ghosting still occurs.

So now I'm wondering if this is actually how the footage is supposed to look or if Premiere simply can't handle HDV 24p at this time, even though it claims it can.

I'm trying to avoid jumping to another program to avoid spending money and at the same time trying to avoid an intermediary like Aspect HD. I simply want one program to handle it all and I really want Premiere to be that program, especially since it claims to be able to handle all this with the latest version and because it's the most convenient for me to use at the moment. Of course I may be wishing for too much.

Any help/suggestions/comments would be greatly appreciated. Thx.

[Justin Zimmerman]

what do you mean by "ghosting?"

what is your final release format? DVD, 30P internet, film?

do you have a MAC? how about FCP Studio 2?

are you using miniDV tapes or the hard disc recorder?

can you post examples?

[Hugh Mobley]

try shooting 1080i and when you capture, deinterlace footage, put on time line as progressive, 29.97. render as progressive, I do this using cineform to capture, let cineform deinterlace, edit as progressive, I don't like using the V1 24p unless nothing is moving, under the right circumstances you can go down to 24p, from 30p or 1080i, try it you might be happy,

[Daniel Becerra]

I'm currently on a PC so switching to Final Cut is not an option. :-\

Also, I don't see a point in having progressive scan if I'm just going to shoot the footage interlaced, which is less resolution per frame. Yeah, I can de-interlace but that's usually just line doubling which means the resolution still isn't there.

I would like my final release format to be anything from DVD, Internet, Flash, etc.

Currently I'm just testing footage in 30p and 24p that I filmed on miniDV tapes and seeing if I can capture and export footage properly.

As far as I can tell here's what is going on with the 24p footage I've captured:
1) Premiere Pro actually captures the footage as HDV 1080@60i.
2) Premiere "seems" to interpret this footage as 24p while editing (ghosting is quite apparent).
3) Exporting does not always result in 24p footage; that's dependent on the file format being exported to.

I've noticed that when exporting the footage as a SD AVI using Premiere's "DV 24p Advanced" preset, the resulting footage is actually interlaced. I actually have to tell Premiere to deinterlace the footage which leads me to believe that there's something broken with this exporting method. So, Media player and PowerDVD interpret the exported SD 24p AVI footage as interlaced while Quicktime sees it as footage that is 29.97 fps.

When using Adobe Media Encoder to export the footage I seem to have better results.

Selecting the Mpeg2 Blu-Ray and the H.264 Blu-Ray Presets allows me to select a proper 24 fps export method and looks to be actual 24p though I can't confirm for sure.

Within Media Encoder, if I try exporting to a SD Mpeg2 24p format I am actually given an option to use either 3:2 or 2:3 pulldown; I haven't tried this yet. This is concerning because the Mpeg2 Blu-Ray preset does not allow me select a pulldown which means that Premiere could be doing this incorrectly.

In fact, in the Premiere help it says that Premiere is using 3:2 pulldown (or 2:3:3:2 pulldown if specified). From my understanding, the V1U uses 2:3 pulldown. This would seem to explain the ghosting that occurs since Premiere would actually be grabbing frames and combining them incorrectly.

Another reason for the ghost might be a result of the 1/48 shutter speed; the shutter at that speed is slow enough to actually see the 2 "snapshots" it takes per 1 frame.

The exported Mpeg2 footage can be found here:
http://www.dreamchaos.com/24psample.m2v

And a frame capture showing the ghosting can be found here:
http://www.dreamchaos.com/24pframe.jpg

The ghosting in the frame capture is especially noticeably in the shoulder/upper arm area and the bars in the background.

Here's hoping somebody can understand this and possibly help.