Generational Quality Loss in PP2.0?

G

GL2guy

Active member
Hey guys... I am desperately seeking some help and guidance on this question I have about editing HDV that I just can't seem to find a detailed explanation of.

I just bought a Canon XH A1 HDV camcorder and I have Premiere Pro 2.0 and AE7. I also have a quad-core editing workstation with 4 GB RAM.

I keep hearing people suggest that heavily editing native HDV (mpeg) in an application like PP2.0 will cause the video to degrade over the multiple generations of renders... is this correct? So what you are saying is, if I pull the untouched mpeg file natively into the timeline, perform some color correction, render a preview, then perform some transitions, titles, cuts, etc, then do another render preview... then save the project, my movie I created has lost resolution/quality over each step I mentioned? I thought PP2.0 made special "video preview" files that kept the original source footage untouched?

And what happens if I go out and shoot a whole bunch of stock footage (quick clips) of various things and want to come home and razor up that footage in the timeline into smaller individual clips, then save each individual clip to their own mpeg file? Do I lose quality by doing this?

And lastly... I have been reading on here all about Cineform AspectHD, and if possible, I'd rather edit natively since my computer can most definitely handle the heavy intensive processing, but if the major issue here is quality of picture and degradation of quality of picture, then there is no way I would sacrifice quality for $500 bucks.

I appreciate any help or guidance on this matter, thanks so much for any light you can shed on this for me.
 
The problem comes from exporting an mpeg-2 to say, After Effects, then exporting another mpeg-2 from after effects, then rendering that in Premiere. That files is a third generation mpeg-2. Using Cineform as a codec allows you to save multiple times with very little degredation. No matter what you do within Premiere, the render will be a first generation, and the quality will be good. Or as good as Premiere can render a file. It's the same with DV files, save a file 3 times using the DV codec and it starts to look like mush, now do the same thing using uncompressed and the quality is retained.
-Kevin
 
As long as you do not perform additional editing on those preview files, you'll retain the quality. This is true for all NLE because everytime you compress a video by render it out, you throw away informations. Preview in Premiere or render a copy to check out, then make whatever changes you want in the Premiere timeline and not on the preview file.
 
also, with the new adobe dynamic link, if your working in AE and PPRO for a project you can link your comps right to the PPRO timeline so you dont have to render the output in AE and then import into premiere for additional editing, you can just scrub and edit the final output content of the linked comp within PPRO and perform your additional edits and corrections/effects in the PPRO timeline all before actually rendering the material, so you really just have to render it once in PPRO and never even need to render in AE.
 
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