Help with premiere pro project settings

[Alan Lloyd]

Can you not export the PPT deck as a multi-page PDF, pull it into Photoshop, and convert the images to 720 x 540 JPEG files, which will have the proper aspect when you import them into PPro and click “scale to frame size”? (And then possibly expand them to 102% in the scale part of the motion menu?)

That just works. As for the Camtasia screen grabs, what file format are you saving them out of Camtasia as to start? The less compression there, the better. And again, “scale to frame size” is your friend.

I’ve done a lot of these. What I’m describing works. Whatever you do, export the PPT larger and scale it down, not smaller from a screen grab and scale it up.

[Don Chard]

Thanks, I am trying that also.

I’m following this tutorial… In Caps I will highlight where I’m completely lost, and have no idea what he’s saying. 🙁

Yes, I’m looking on the adobe.com for the help, and that too is french to me unfortunately.

Preparing the Captures:

Use Techsmith codec to capture.
Open the Techsmith AVI in VirtualDub
Go to Video / Compression and choose Lagarith lossless codec. Made sure that it is set to RGB and null frames are enabled (checked)
Add Video / Filters / Resize and set it to Absolute: 2048×1530, filter mode: Nearest Neighbor. Here, you are using “point resizing” to double the image size while maintaining maximum sharpness. The kind of resizing does not usually work well for photographic images, but it is ideal for screen captures: maintaining the sharp, boxy look of non-antialiased text. It will help us from losing too much detail when the video is scaled down later on.

File / Save as .avi from VirtualDub

Cropping, Scaling and Filtering the Captures in After Effects

Open After Effects and create a composition that matches your intended output (such as 720×480, DV aspect ratio, 29.97 fps, etc.) and set it to the length of your screen capture.

Place your (very large) AVI on this timeline and scale it to fit within the safe area (something like 25% of original size), call this composition “establishing_shot”
Create a new Adjustment Layer above the main video track. Apply Effect / Blur & Sharpen / Fast Blur to the Adjustment Layer (Blurriness=0.5, Blur Dimensions=Veritcal, Repeat Edge Pixels checked). This is to soften it a bit vertically to prevent issues on interlaced screens.

Duplicate the “establishing_shot” comp and rename the new one, “medium_shot”
Modify the scaling of the AVI in the medium shot to approximately 45% of original.

HERE IS WHERE I AM COMPLETELY LOST!

Add motion and/or scaling keyframes to keep the focus loosely on the main action on-screen; such as the area where the mouse pointer is. (You may want to set the keyframes’ Temporal Interpolate to “Hold” so it will simply cut to the action instead of trying to animate all of the panning.)

How exactly do I do what is described above?

Duplicate the “medium_shot” comp and rename the new one, “close_up”
Modify the scaling of the AVI in the medium shot to approximately 75% of original. Add motion and/or scaling keyframes to keep tight focus on the action.
Render all 3 comps from AE as either DV (for better editing performance) or Lagarith (lossless quality)

Editing in Premiere Pro

Import your 3 “shots” into Premiere and place them in a Multi-Camera sequence
Nest the Multi-Camera sequence in your main timeline and switch back and forth between the 3 views as needed

So, the “establishing shot” will show them the entire screen. Small text will not bet legible, but it will give them a good idea of how things the screen is laid-out. The “medium shot” will let them see text fairly well – and it allows them enough space to see how the “focused” text relates to other elements. Finally, the “close up” will give them the best view of individual menu items and buttons; showing how things highlight when clicked, etc.