Premiere 6.5 and 24pa - Friends or foes?

W

weathabee

New member
This forum has been an excellent resource for me over the past year of owning a DVX100a and I appreciate your support.

I don't really have a problem as much as I would just like to gather some opinions.

I've been working on a full length DV feature and we are deep into the post production stage. The film was shot using 24pa and an anamorphic adapter. Everything is coming together quite nicely and we're cranking along with editing.

The director is editing the majority of the film and I am assisting with a fraction of it. He has preferred Premiere 6.5 for some time now so that is what we are using for this project.

I have seen several posts throughout the forum about how this is an incorrect way of going about the 24p process, but I have outputted test DVDs of our footage (with Adobe Encore) and I haven't noticed any disheartening results. In fact, it looked quite impressive.

Am I missing out on something? We are too far into the film to switch NLEs - and more importantly, I haven't found a good reason to switch. I have a feeling that what I am getting is a "normal" 29.97fps DVD rather than a 24fps progressive DVD, but I'm not upset with the results. I just want to know the correct methods for my own knowledge.

So my process is this:
- shoot 24pa with anamorphic adapter
- capture (with Canopus DVRaptor)
- edit (Premiere 6.5 on a widescreen 29.97 timeline)
- export sections of edits to create master
- import masters into Premiere Pro and use Adobe Media encoder to create MPEG-2 files
- create and burn DVD in Encore

Thanks again for all your help and I wish you all well. Oh, and if you want to check out my site then go to www.oldschoolpictures.net (there's a quicktime trailer as well)

-Matt
 
What you're doing will work, but it's not the optimal way to do things.

You are editing on a 29.97 timeline, and will be producing a "60i" DVD. That's fine and will work in all DVD players. But if you'd edited in a 24P-aware application, on a 24P timeline, then you could master to a 24P DVD. That would let you fit 20% more footage on the DVD, or use a lower compression setting to get higher quality footage. And when played on a progressive-scan DVD player to a progressive-scan display (such as a high-def TV, etc) the results are significantly sharper and more impressive than an interlaced DVD is.

However, what you're doing will work, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just not optimal, but it's by no means bad.
 
What if I were to import the Premiere 6.5 timeline into the Premiere Pro project, and then do my MPEG encoding from there? That way, the footage on the timeline has not been exported - it should be just as I had captured it through the DVRaptor. Any thoughts?
 
I'd have to defer to some Premiere Pro experts, but I can't see how that would make the situation any better. It's not going to retain the 24p nature of the footage. If you cut on a 60i timeline, it's almost impossible to retain the same pulldown cadence throughout the project.

What you're doing will work to make a 60i DVD. And that'll be okay. Not the best, not as good as it could be, but okay. If you want to take the best advantage of the DVX, you've got to ditch Premiere 6.5 and go with a native 24P editor (I'd suggest Vegas, of course).
 
Although Premiere Pro 1.5 handles 24p, I'm with Barry. Go with Vegas until Adobe get's their act together. I use it, and can edit 24p on it, but there are issues (flicker and strobbing, which have been covered to death here).

Anyone know what adobe's doing to fix or release a new version?

Justin
www.beyondtimemedia.com
 
You can import the P6.5 timeline to PPro, but there's no going back. So make sure you keep a copy of the P6.5 timeline in case you don't like the results from PPro. I believe that PPro 1.5 will recognize your clips as 24p, but the transitions may not be exactly where you had them.

I agree with Barry that if you edit on a 24fps timeline, the quality will be better if you play back your DVD on a progressive player to a progressive TV. But most people don't have that. So a 60i flow is not all that bad.

But one comment on your flow. Why use PPro at all? Why not just export an avi from P6.5, then use Encore to do the transcoding and burn the DVD? My experience has been that Encore can do transcoding faster than Premiere.
 
jchenier said:
Although Premiere Pro 1.5 handles 24p, I'm with Barry. Go with Vegas until Adobe get's their act together. I use it, and can edit 24p on it, but there are issues (flicker and strobbing, which have been covered to death here).

Anyone know what adobe's doing to fix or release a new version?
Click to expand...
Do you know, or could you post links to some of the more informative threads which discuss this problem with Premiere (I have the same problems).
 
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