Change Sequence Settings

[Mihael Tominšek]

Pablo Geh – You’re a life saver.
I had 90 minutes long feature with 243 nested sequences in SD (working as offline), trying to finish in HD. Nightmare.

Your solution is great but I would like to add:

– big premiere files are difficult to open in many program. They just crash. I tryed in Dreamwewer, Notepad, Word pad… But “Notepad++” opens instantly and replaces 3000+ instances in a second or two, while Dreamweawer (if not crashing) needs 10 minutes in same PC (2600K/16GB/2xSSD).

– dimension is not only to look after. If working from 1920×1080 to 1280×720 (and back), it’s ok. But if you have 1440*1080 HDV and working in DV which is 720*576, you need to change aspect ration as well. You can force PAR in Premiere, but again you can not change sequence settings.

You must find and change two things:

PixelAspectRatio 1024,702 (brackets are lef out)
FrameRect 0,0,720,576

to

PixelAspectRatio 1920,1440
FrameRect 0,0,1440,1080

There is a lot of things which could be “batch” changed or corrected this way in premiere projects, which Premiere does not allow for it self. Remember how long we waited for “remove filters” from multiple clips… I thing only from CS4+ we can do that. Before… Clip by clip.

If someone would write some simple software which would read PPro projects and present it in some graphic interface, we could easily convert, change, maintain thing.

Maybe I’ll write it myself, now I know this hack, thanks to you Pablo Geh 🙂

[Pablo Geh]

hi Mihael!
I’m glad you find the solution before smashing your PC to the wall!

My first choice was NOTEPAD++, I didn’t figure that it would be a problem to open in a Word.

About the aspect ratio, i had the same problem with a few sequences, but i just solved it making the sequence BIGGER
The videos where OK, but the composition was much WIDER.

Anyway Ill try your solution next time, but i try to work always with square pixels settings.

Good idea about the software, but I would vote for one that could FIX the broken projects.

Cheers from Argentina

[Mihael Tominšek]

Yes Pablo! My VOTE for FIXing broken projects as well.

But in facts for broken projects I was already opening projects before, to delete manualy all instances of some filter I knew they screwed project. But never thought to fix other things.

With your hack + my addition for aspect ratio we actualy invented everyday workflow for offline editing in Premiere with complex sequence structures and converting it to HD after being finished; so fast and efficient is. All I will do in next days will be simple find and replace script in PHP (I know to program that, but a lot of different programming languages could be used), where I will load project, enter numbers in fields and hit process. Or even better having radio buttons to just click desired conversion, or even better just buttons to hit desired processing. Instead of 2 minutes, only 20 seconds 🙂

I bet we can find/replace even place of footage, to shorten the time even further. Instead of manualy browse and double click for every missing file in project (or group of them, I have footage on several disks/NAS storages for better speed), we can just past old and new “path” and hit process.

Cheers from Slovenija
MIHAEL

[Maria Cepeda]

Michael,Pablo,

That sounds great! I would be happy to pay for some script to do that kind of things!

But right now my problem is not with the pixel/resolution, but with the frame rate of the sequence.

I created a sequence with 24p, as usually I do, but didn’t noticed the setting was changed at the camera and footage was filmed at 30p instead.

The problem is that I used that sequence to syncronize my cameras and audio and then nested it into another which I edited, so now, even if my last sequence is at the right setting, premiere does some weird conversion from 30p at the clip to 24p to the syncronized sequence and then back to 30p for my final sequence, so some ghosting appears, strange movements and so.
I am sure that is the problem as I already tried using the original clips instead of the nested sequence and they look great.

I searched the text file to see if I could change as well the frame rate of the sequence, but can not make any sense of it, would you know what to change?

Best regards,

[Mihael Tominšek]

Hi Maria.

I couldn’t figure out how to edit AdobePremiereProject XML this time. Framerate is “encoded” with some numbers… But I’ll give you my way of fixing this. It’s not as fast as editing XML, but reasonable enough not to jump out of the window.:)

1) You did 24p “multicam sync timeline” and place all 30p clips on it and synced it.
2) You did import 24p sync timeline into 24p “multicam edit timeline”
3) You multicam edited this timeline
…right?

FIX:

4) I created correct 30p (or 60i, or whatever your clips are) timeline and copy/pasted everything from (wrong) 24p timeline to it (Ctrl+A > Ctrl+C, than Ctrl+V). Since clips are already 30p, they will be perfect on new correct timneline, so ok at this point.

5) I Created new multicamera timeline with correct framerate too and imported new 30p synced timeline to it. It’s not edited yet of course… But you must enable “multicam” for this 30p timeline too, of course, before going on.

6) I copy and paste over (and under for audio) wrong 24p timeline. Select video2 and audio2 layer only so pasting will not overwrite 30p timeline. Or paste it at the and and drag above video1 and below audio1. No you should have 30p synced timeline on video/audio 1 and 24p synced timeline on video and audio 2. What to do next…

7) Select both video1 and vide2 layers (tracks), so SNAP to edits will work. Now just use shortcuts to jump from edit to edit and apply cuts to 30p timeline where they are on 24p timeline (use shortcuts for this too). Cuts will not be possible at the very same spot because different framerate, but within 1 frame accurate, so OK at this point.

8) You delete wrong 24p timeline than, so now you have cutted multicam timeline with correct framerate. All you need is to define “camera 1 / camera 2” to each clip. You will just select every second clip in timeline (selecting with “V” tool while holding Shift button).

Than you lift all selected clips to Video2. Now you can right click on one of the (still) selected clips and choose “multi-camera”>”Camera2”. When you select this, all clips will change acording to new camera selected.

If you made wrong camera selection you can easily select all clips just on this track to change camera again (if you would not lift the clips, now you would have to hand select them again).

For 4 camera edits, it’s a bit more work. But this is still better than THINK and FIND solution for all edits again.

I hope it helps.
But still I’ll ask someone if will have time to dig into XML to find “find-replace” solution for this task too. It’s not so rare to happen.

Regards,
MIHAEL

[Maria Cepeda]

Mihael,

Thanks a lot for the response, and yes I saw the encoded numbers for frame rate and did not knew where to change them.
I saw what number ment 24p and which one ment 30p, but did not knew where to change it I might try to just go and change them all and see.
If it works, I will let you know, in the meantime, I think I will try what you say.

Best Regards,