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CS 5.5 + Lagarith and AME settings/need advice
Lagarith and CS 5.5 et. al?
I’m starting to use CS 5.5 in earnest and am confused about how to export the entire timeline as a Lagarith AVI and what settings it takes to get it done as it should be. I’m using the 64-bit version on Windows 7.
My goals with Lagarith are twofold: back-up project as lossless but more importantly in order to create a AVI file which is part of the process when converting HDV programs to SD.
Let’s fast forward to Adobe media encoder video tab!
1) For the purposes stated above, should I check off the “Prevent upsampling when decoding” or not? what ramifications does that have?
2) Should I choose YUY2 or YV12 for colorspace? What’s better for Premiere encoding to MPEG-2 DVD after it gets converted/downscaled elsewhere to SD?
3) Now for the kicker. The aspect ratio for HDV source material is typically set to 1440 by 1080. When manually typing in either one of those dimensions it automatically comes up with the other as “wrong”.
a) When I type in 1440 it gives me 1440 by 960.
b) When I type in 1080 it gives me 1620 by 1080.There’s no obvious way of getting around it.
Is there a square versus non square pixel issue here?
I don’t want areas of black displayed when viewing the projected output file when the entire screen should be filled and 16:9.
Please lead me along the path here to a solution. How to I get 1440 by 1080?
4) Lastly, what does frame blending do? When should it be selected or left un-ticked? Does it make an important visual contribution?
Thanks in advance for contributions to my growing CS 5.5 knowledgebase.
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9 Replies
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1) For the purposes stated above, should I check off the “Prevent upsampling when decoding” or not? what ramifications does that have?
I’m not familiar with Lagarith, is this a codec specific setting? For the life of me, I’ve never seen this as a standard checkbox in Adobe Media Encoder
2) Should I choose YUY2 or YV12 for colorspace? What’s better for Premiere encoding to MPEG-2 DVD after it gets converted/downscaled elsewhere to SD?
YUY2 is 4:2:2 while YV12 is 4:2:0. I’d pick the former.
3) Now for the kicker. The aspect ratio for HDV source material is typically set to 1440 by 1080. When manually typing in either one of those dimensions it automatically comes up with the other as “wrong”… Is there a square versus non square pixel issue here?
1440×1080 is anamorphic HD. When setting your size, unclick the chain between the two pixel dimensions (this locks their ratio, leading to the problem you described) and choose your aspect as ‘HD (1.333)’4) Lastly, what does frame blending do? When should it be selected or left un-ticked? Does it make an important visual contribution?
This setting interpolates or blends frames if you have a framerate conversion, are using mixed footage, etc, to keep audio synced.When turned off, if your output has a lower framerate than your source, it will drop frames, if it has a higher framerate it will duplicate frames.
For this to work properly, your timeline needs to be set to the framerate of your output. This may seem counter-intuitive to those who edit with their source’s settings.
Personal or situational preference. If you have a big conversion like 25 to 29.97 (PAL to NTSC) try both checked and unchecked.
– Angelo Lorenzo
– https://FilmsFor.Us Sell your film and connect with your audience -
Hi,
Some thoughts…
Others may chime in, but typically I stay away from the media encoder for something like this. I would do a straight up File > Export > Movie and go set your codec from there. I do a lot of compressing with Carbon Coder or other 3rd party tools so I usually would go uncomp or Cineform as a mezzanine format then compress down from there. All depends on your disc space available and your archive/backup solution. I have used the media encoder for mpeg output, but don’t
I think of lagarith and hufyuv like flac audio files – good for archiving, but not really designed to be edited – so if you are archiving to one of these – you prob will have to transcode to work back in PPro, I’m not sure. I think they are pretty proc heavy for even just playback. Are you using any hardware acceleration like Matrox or Blackmagic? I have had good experience with the Cineform codec, it’s like $300 and lossy (but very high quality), but you can get hardware capture and playback with some high end video cards, if you are software only it may not be any better than laga or hufy.
Have you done any tests exporting and reimporting to test quality and usability for the workflow?
The YUV2 vs YV12 question might be answered by some testing too, just do a minute of a project to test. I think there is a bit depth difference between the two, maybe someone else has more info.
Once you stretch the faux HD to full HD of 1920×1080 (square pixels) you shouldn’t go back to 1440 (since that is a squeezed, nonsquare pixel), just archive it at full HD.
Frame blending in the encoder has to do with different frame rates mixed on the timeline I believe, do a search for it here and you should find some info – someone was yelling about a bug with it – so be warned.
Don
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Hi Bruce,
Are you doing the “HD2SD” script thing? I started using this method of HD to DVD conversion a few months back and am glad I did.
I find it very simple to export my HD timeline to Lagarith – just choose “Microsoft AVI” as the format, and then choose Lagarith for the codec, and use YV12 for that workflow. I’m not touching any other export settings, default all the way.
After getting my Lagarith HD file converted down to SD, I use the free HC Encoder to create the MPEG-2, excellent quality!
Jeff
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Set aspect ratio to HD anamorfic (1.333) that will give you 1440×1080.
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Adobe Certified Expert Premiere Pro -
[Don Huckleberry] I would do a straight up File > Export > Movie and go set your codec from there.
Don, how would you be doing this when that option does not exist?
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Sorry, my fault – I still use an older version of PPro that has the export function – so with the encoder – I would still keep it simple and transcode in something else, which of course not everyone can do.
Don
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You can export to nearly any format you like with the Adobe Media Encoder.
You can even frameserve to a 3rd party encoder.
This can be done in all versions.
For using Lagarith just select Microsoft Avi.
Cineform has its own preset for exporting now (in older versions just select Microsoft avi)———————————————–
Adobe Certified Expert Premiere Pro -
Never had a problem with AME, and in fact find it far superior to Compressor.
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Thanks all for your input and especially for the full set of answers provided to the 4 questions at hand.
I do apologize for the lengthy delay in response as I was out of state for most of the last week and away from my video editing resources.
All the Best
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