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HD Workflow AE and Premiere – searching the best codec
At the moment I’m working on a project which is an instruction movie for barbers. It’s about how to colour hair the best way.
We’ve shot or footage with the Sony EX-1 and working in full HD (1920×1080 square pixels 25f/s) in premiere.
During the movie there are a lot of shots where a hair color product ‘slides’ into view en the ‘slides’ out again. Typically this kind of shots have a duration of 5 seconds.
I’m making these product shots in AE (also in full HD) but then I have to export them out to premiere. And that’s where my question comes into view.
I have to export out in full HD with an alpha channel (very important). But the only codec I’ve found so far is uncompressed AVI (that’s the only one i’ve found that supports an alpha channel).
So for a typical product shot clip of 5 seconds I’ve got a clip with a size of 1 or 2 GB.
Storage is not the problem so I don’t care, but Premiere thinks differently. I’ve got a lot of these clips and they’re really slowing Premiere down. At this moment I’ve reached a point where premiere will crash every 15 minutes when working in this project.
I really think the problem lies within these huge clip sizes because I don’t have this problem with other projects who contain less AE clips.So keeping the above story in mind… What is the best codec to export in AE in full HD with alpha channel. Apparently size does matter because premiere crashes when I make the files to big.
Any input would be gratly appreciated
Thank, Bjorn Vije -
3 Replies
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Here’s a short list, but you can skip all this and just use Adobe’s dynamic link or proxies.
-free codecs
-4:4:4 8 bit
quicktime animation
quicktime jpeg2000
uncompressed non RLE-image sequence
tiff lzw off millions 8 bit or trillions 16bit
PSD millions 8 bit or trillions 16bit-buy
4:4:4
16 bit
Sheer Codec
Cineform
4:2:2
Mainconcept codec
Blackmagichttps://technicolorsoftware.hostzi.com/
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Hi Dave,
I appreciate your help on the other thread I started about removing pulldown after editing. Very bad move. I am now trying to prepare myself for the process of removing pulldown from all my clips in After Effects, rendering them out, and THEN editing in Premiere. You recommend a Quicktime PNG sequence. I have tried rendering out in this codec and the playback is rough and blocky. My friend said that it has something to do with the computer not being able to keep up with the amount of data in the video file. I would rather not edit with this footage in Premiere if this is going to be a constant problem, as I would like to view and edit my footage in real time. So as of right now, I am just considering my options as I try and find a good workflow. Thanks!
Jake Huddleston
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Thanks Dave. That’s great info. However, the problem I have run into is space. I’m a Mac guy as well (yeah baby!), and I’m using a Macbook Pro. I have a 250GB hard drive, and I have about 10 minutes of HD footage in my film that needs pulldown removed, and it’s more if you take the total length of all the clips combined, since I’m rendering them out of AE unedited. I had 90GB of free space when I began rendering them out as Quicktime PNG files and woke up the next morning to find that only about 1/4 of them had been rendered, and had already taken up the full 90GB I had left on my hard drive.
I would still like to stay lossless as I render, but being the amount of footage I need and how big lossless files tend to be, I’m not sure how realistic this is. How do those other codecs you recommended compare in terms of final size? What would you say my options are at this point? Thanks Dave.
Jake Huddleston
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