Premiere Pro CS4 issue

[armisiano]

I have infamously had issues with exporting. I now have CS4, and need a little help.

- I shoot 24P(ADV) on my DVX100B.
- I create a project in Premiere Pro: DV - 24P, Widescreen 48kHz
- I export as a Microsoft AVI, NTSC DV Widescreen 24p, DV Codec 24p (Advanced)

The footage comes out so ridiculously interlaced with hard looking pixels throughout the footage and titles. I don't get it. What am I missing here?

 

[JeganRX]

I have infamously had issues with exporting. I now have CS4, and need a little help.

- I shoot 24P(ADV) on my DVX100B.
- I create a project in Premiere Pro: DV - 24P, Widescreen 48kHz
- I export as a Microsoft AVI, NTSC DV Widescreen 24p, DV Codec 24p (Advanced)

The footage comes out so ridiculously interlaced with hard looking pixels throughout the footage and titles. I don't get it. What am I missing here?

Premiere will still OUTPUT interlaced footage even if it's set to 24p(A or not), since DV standards require a 29.97fps timecode. The footage is perfectly fine, but it needs to be inverse telecined or encoded in a native progressive format from Premiere.

I typically just use AVISynth and do my own IVTC for videos since I tend to export to several formats after making the master file.

 

[Smifis]

It sounds like a pulldown problem to me

 

[armisiano]

Premiere will still OUTPUT interlaced footage even if it's set to 24p(A or not), since DV standards require a 29.97fps timecode. The footage is perfectly fine, but it needs to be inverse telecined or encoded in a native progressive format from Premiere.

I typically just use AVISynth and do my own IVTC for videos since I tend to export to several formats after making the master file.

When you say, "or encoded in a native progressive format from Premiere", what would be an example of a native progressive format from Premiere?

 

[David Jimerson]

What are you exporting this FOR? The only real reason to export to NTSC DV would be to go back to tape with it. Pretty much any other purpose would have a better, non-interlaced, solution.

 

[armisiano]

What are you exporting this FOR? The only real reason to export to NTSC DV would be to go back to tape with it. Pretty much any other purpose would have a better, non-interlaced, solution.

What format would you recommend exporting as? The exported clip is intended for possible future editing, as well as possibly burning to a home viewable DVD.

 

[armisiano]

By the way David, wow, 19,999 posts. You're about to hit 20 grand. Holy merciful crap.

 

[PDR]

The whole point of shooting 24pA is to return the progressive frames less painfully than standard 2:3 pulldown

There is no issue with exporting a 24p (progressive) format. This is what you should be doing.

For example, farther editing will be alot easier (not all editors can process 2:3:3:2 pA cadence, but all can handle 24p), and it's compatible with DVD (with 24p footage you just add 2:3 soft pulldown flags when authoring), and all software players can play 24p , but not necessarily 24pA , or 24p with 2:3 pulldown

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

What format would you recommend exporting as? The exported clip is intended for possible future editing, as well as possibly burning to a home viewable DVD.

If the clip is intended for future editing, then exporting to a codec that did not compress with loss.

Here's a reference from the adobe site:

http://www.adobe.com/de/designcenter/aftereffects/articles/dva8at_maniccomp_print.html

 

[armisiano]

If the clip is intended for future editing, then exporting to a codec that did not compress with loss.

Here's a reference from the adobe site:

http://www.adobe.com/de/designcenter/aftereffects/articles/dva8at_maniccomp_print.html

Sadly that link is in german.

The whole point of shooting 24pA is to return the progressive frames less painfully than standard 2:3 pulldown

There is no issue with exporting a 24p (progressive) format. This is what you should be doing.

For example, farther editing will be alot easier (not all editors can process 2:3:3:2 pA cadence, but all can handle 24p), and it's compatible with DVD (with 24p footage you just add 2:3 soft pulldown flags when authoring), and all software players can play 24p , but not necessarily 24pA , or 24p with 2:3 pulldown

Please explain simpler, step by step, as you would to a child. WHAT DO I NEED TO DO WHEN EXPORTING? WHAT SPECIFIC SETTINGS SHOULD I CHOOSE?

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

Sadly that link is in german.

Oops... well for those who read German, here's the English version...

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/aftereffects/articles/dva8at_maniccomp_print.html

 

[armisiano]

Oops... well for those who read German, here's the English version...

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/aftereffects/articles/dva8at_maniccomp_print.html

Well damn, that didn't help at all.

It's amazing that noone can answer this. My mind is blown. I hate being technically retarded. I'd like to think I'm just technically unfortunate, since noone else has ever encountered this problem.

 

[Jaime V]

Since I came here way back in Horrorfest 2006 (ah the memories), I've always exported raw (uncompressed) from Premiere and used Quicktime Pro to encode to h.264.

Since you say you would possibly want to edit this in the future, I would recommend exporting uncompressed...otherwise you're gonna compress it...edit it later and compress it again..and that probably won't look good.

Keep your uncompressed 'Master' file and you can edit it or convert it to whatever you want later. Of course, it takes up more space..but them's the breaks.

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

Well damn, that didn't help at all.

It's amazing that noone can answer this. My mind is blown. I hate being technically retarded. I'd like to think I'm just technically unfortunate, since noone else has ever encountered this problem.

The point is, you do not 'want' to encode output from your editing, back in to DV, unless it is absolutely going to be displayed on a real NTSC monitor/TV. By removing the telecine process of the 24pA material, that just happened to be encoded as DV for the benefit of the camera and tape, you have what you want.

So, choose an output codec that does not put it back into NTSC format. Otherwise you will see the artifacts while playing the computer.

The other element of your question was how to perserve quality, when you output. So, lets go over this slowly.

Don't use DV as an output codec.
Select a codec that maintains the 24 fps.
Select a codec that does not lose information.

The article stepped through using the 'animation' codec, with a goal of lossless compression, to get a little bit of compression benefit.

An alternative is that you select Mpeg-4, select H.264 for your codec, make your 'play' version, but when you want to re-edit, use your original project.

 

[armisiano]

Okay, so, I've exported about 30 versions of this damn video clip, and here's what I got; Trying every kind of file extension, settings, and codecs, the best results came by exporting the video clip as an "Uncompressed Microsoft AVI", using the "UYVY" codec, quality "100", "24fps", field type "progessive", and aspect "square pixels" and setting the resolution (it's standard def wide screen) at 864x480.

 

[David Jimerson]

(not all editors can process 2:3:3:2 pA cadence, but all can handle 24p),

No, that's incorrect. 2:3:3:2 pulldown is simply a different arrangement of fields to conform 24p to 60i. While 60i, any NLE can edit it as though it's NTSC DV, just like they can with 24p standard. Any editor which can't remove 24p pulldown will simply capture and edit 24pA as 60i.

What not all editors can do is remove 24p standard pulldown, while every editor which can remove pulldown can remove 24pA (2:3:3:2) pulldown.

and it's compatible with DVD (with 24p footage you just add 2:3 soft pulldown flags when authoring)

This is true if you make a 24p DVD (which is what you should do). But you can't make a 24p DVD without first editing and exporting as 24p, and for that, you want to shoot 24pA.

And, if you don't have a 24p-capable editor, and you edit 24pA as 60i, you can still export as 60i and make a DVD from it; it'll just be 60i. Of course, if you're going to do that, you should shoot 24p standard, but that's not because the editor can't handle it -- it's because the arrangement of fields in the 2:3:3:2 pattern can make heavy motion look jerkier than the 2:3 pattern will. But the editor won't know that, and if it happens, it's not because of the editor or the video player.

and all software players can play 24p , but not necessarily 24pA , or 24p with 2:3 pulldown

Any software player which can play DV can play 24pA or 24p standard in a DV stream. It will simply play them as 60i.

 

[David Jimerson]

What format would you recommend exporting as? The exported clip is intended for possible future editing, as well as possibly burning to a home viewable DVD.

That's two different purposes for which you'd want to export different files.

For DVD, you'd want to export a 23.976 progressive MPEG (or just open the project in Encore).

For possible future editing, a DV file with 2:3:3:2 pulldown would work. You can also do an uncompressed 23.976p file. Those are going to be your best bets for preservation of quality. The uncompressed file will be large, but at SD resolution, probably wouldn't be that onerous for a modern machine. (EDIT: I see you tried that.)

As others have mentioned, though, exporting as DV will produce an interlaced file, just as it would be on tape -- but if you bring the file back into a 24p sequence, Premiere should remove the pulldown again and give you back your progressive frames. You will see the interlacing in any media player, but you shouldn't in Premiere.

 

[PDR]

No, that's incorrect. 2:3:3:2 pulldown is simply a different arrangement of fields to conform 24p to 60i. While 60i, any NLE can edit it as though it's NTSC DV, just like they can with 24p standard. Any editor which can't remove 24p pulldown will simply capture and edit 24pA as 60i.

What not all editors can do is remove 24p standard pulldown, while every editor which can remove pulldown can remove 24pA (2:3:3:2) pulldown.

Perhaps you misunderstood what I meant.

(not all editors can process 2:3:3:2 pA cadence, but all can handle 24p),

When I said 24p I meant an exported 24p native sequence (any lossless format, like uncompressed, lagarith, etc..). I wasn't referring to a 24p in 60i DV export. Any editor or media player can handle a 24p native sequence, but not necessarily those streams with any form of pulldown. My point was if you are shooting 24pA, then you should export a 23.976 progressive format - that's the whole point of shooting 24pA in the first place - to recover the progressive frames

This is true if you make a 24p DVD (which is what you should do). But you can't make a 24p DVD without first editing and exporting as 24p, and for that, you want to shoot 24pA.

Exactly my point!

Again, not correct. Any software player which can play DV can play 24pA or 24p standard in a DV stream. It will simply play them as 60i.

I think you've misunderstood what I was saying. I was suggesting exporting a 24pN (i.e. 24p) format like uncompressed 24000/1001 format, not DV. There is no reason to go back to lossy DV here, unless you are going back to tape for some strange reason

 

[David Jimerson]

But the only reason you'd ever include pulldown is to conform it to a DV (or other 60i) format, which any player would play. There's no player or editor which would get hung up on 2:3:3:2 pulldown at all. Incompatibility would never be an issue.

Now yes, if you can, you should export as 23.976 and forget pulldown at all -- if you can. But there's no problem with 2:3:3:2, and in fact if you WERE going to export back to DV with the intent to edit again, it's what you SHOULD use.

 

[PDR]

But the only reason you'd ever include pulldown is to conform it to a DV (or other 60i) format, which any player would play.

Exactly. Ditch the pulldown. Since the OP is already editing in an application that can remove pulldown, there is no reason to add it back

There's no player or editor which would get hung up on 2:3:3:2 pulldown at all. Incompatibility would never be an issue.

"Never" is quite a strong word. You're limiting this perspective to common "pro" software.

Many players , editors, and software get hung up on pulldown , especially 2:3:3:2 pulldown, without the use of special treatment or scripts. e.g. Virtualdub, VLC, Mplayer, KMPlayer, MPCHC, many , many more. Flash players , sites like Youtube, Vimeo etc.. can't handle it. It's much better to export and use progressive IMHO.

Standard 3:2 or 2:3 pulldown is handled more easily in those applications, because it's more common (e.g. retail DVD's)

24p native (not referring to 24p in 60i) will be far more compatible in any application, wouldn't you agree?

Now yes, if you can, you should export as 23.976 and forget pulldown at all -- if you can. But there's no problem with 2:3:3:2, and in fact if you WERE going to export back to DV with the intent to edit again, it's what you SHOULD use.

That's the point - forget pulldown, and I agree 2:3:3:2 is better than standard pulldown if the intent was to edit , because you can just discard fields and recover progressive content more easily . But 24p (as in real 24p) will have far less incompatiblities in all programs.