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File format questions
Hey everyone. I have a couple of questions regarding the way premiere handles files and rendering. This might be kind of long, and I apologize if it turns out to be, but this information would greatly help me out.
For now, I just want to deal strictly with DV video off of a mini dv or dvcam tape through firewire. So I start off with the appropriate preset and start my project and capture my footage. Everything is good. Now let’s say I want to create something in after effects and bring it into my project. It is my understanding that in order for material you bring in to not have any type of render bar above it, the footage has to match the project settings exactly. I know that you can render out in a different codec and bring it in and still have it play realtime if your computer is fast enough, but in order to not have the render bar even appear, is my statement correct in needing to have everything match exactly, from the codec to the frame size, etc?
If that’s the case, what codec to I want to render out of? Would that be AVI with microsoftDV compression? Would that mean I can’t render out of after effects with an alpha because it doesn’t support it and if I wanted an alpha, I’d HAVE to render out another codec and therefore HAVE to have the render bar? Does that also mean that I have to render out with fields because the project is lower field first and if I render out of AE with no fields I’ll also get the render bar?
One last question I’ll pose here. Obviously when I ingest DV through firewire, it’s always a fixed file size of X mb/min (don’t recall what it is). Once I edit my piece, how do I export out with that exact same file size? So if I have 10 minutes worth of material and I have X file size from it, edit it down to one minute, I should have 1/10 of the file size. Is that the MicrosoftDV option in export>movie? If that’s the case shouldn’t the quality be identical to what I brought in? I’ve tried using it before and it seems when I export it out with MicrosoftDV, the quality suffers some (but maybe I’m mistaken).
Sorry if these are lame questions, but I come from an Avid background and didn’t really have to deal with all of this because everything was transcoded to OMF on import. Anyway, I’d really appreciate any help people can give me on this subject. I actually have another set of questions, but I won’t be greedy and see if I get any bites from this set.
Thanks again!
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6 Replies
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Yes, you want to keep the same settings as the footage you are capturing in order to avoid rendering for DV.
For After Effects export, it is best to export using dynamic link, as this WILL not alter the footage, however you will see a render bar upon re-importing. Your other option is to export as you said using uncompressed. You can also export DV to After Effects (and that should also answers your last question) ONLY if your footage has simple cuts.
As soon as you apply any type of effect, color correction, or if you resize / move your footage in the frame, you cannot export to DV without applying new compression (the footage will become softer). From AE to Premiere, it will also have to be uncompressed (with alpha if needed)Vince
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Thanks very much for the reply.
One more quick question. Does that mean that when I’m done with a project and want a master file for it, that I should render out of Premiere uncompressed even if it just started as DV material? Let’s say within Premiere I did some motion effects and color correction (let’s take After Effects out of the equation), the best bet would be to export uncompressed? As you say, exporting back to DV would re-introduce extra compression now that the footage has been altered, but is there maybe a happy medium in another codec that could be used as a master file without the gigantic file sizes that uncompressed gives? (I say “master file” because the place I freelance for never ever masters back to tape, for reasons I won’t get into, but they want to save and keep a file of the finished piece so that they can use it if they have to encode it for the web or whatever else they need). Obviously keeping uncompressed files around of all projects can start to take up a lot of space. So long question short, is there a better codec for this purpose, or is the answer pretty much no?
Now that I think about it, wouldn’t mastering the program back to a MiniDV tape basically do the same thing as rendering out a DV file and reintroduce more compression to my altered and effected footage?
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You can also use Quicktime with the Animation setting. At 100% it’s lossless as well, it’s about 1/4 smaller than Avi uncompressed. You can lower that 100% setting and find a happy medium. If this is for long term archiving, you could actually put your files offline in the project. You’ll just need to recapture to be back in business.
Vince
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Oh yea, good suggestion. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that. Thanks!
The reason the place I freelance for doesn’t just delete the media and come back to the source tapes if necessary is the same reason we don’t master back to tape too…tapes there seem to disappear a lot, never to be found again.
Anyway, just out of my own curiosity, would mastering back to MiniDV, a program that originated in DV, create recompression artifacts and loss of quality if the footage had been altered and color corrected and all that jazz? I figure it would since you’re basically re-encoding to DV to lay it off onto the tape, the same way you would if you were to export out a DV file. Is that correct?
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Yep, same thing.
Vince
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Cool, got it. Thanks again for all the help.
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