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Premiere Pro 1.5 better with Effects than CS3?
Something strange.
On a whim, I decided to reinstall my old Premiere Pro 1.5 because I remembered it being so much faster on my old P4 machine.
Doing some 400% zoom pixel comparison tests in CS3 of footage rendered by both 1.5 and CS3, I found that it rendered video to .avi no differently than CS3. I then decided to test DVD Encoding. The videos turn out a bit differently, but not by much and it’s hard to tell which one is “better.”
However, when I applied a simple brightness and contrast effect, the results were vastly imbalanced in both .avi and .mpg/m2v rendering: the video produced by 1.5 produces a nice, crisp image, but the output of CS3 is fudged and blotchy. The video effect was the same in both programs – Brightness +50, Contrast +75.
I’ve double checked the export settings, and the fact that I get the same results with two completely different types of encodes tells me that CS3 is outmatched by 1.5. This just doesn’t seem right. What’s going on?
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3 Replies
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Interesting. Could you post your comparison results from a screen grab (print screen+paste)?
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Jon Barrie 🙂
Jon Barrie
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Actually, I just found out that the differences are because I’m using the open-source Cedocida DV codec to downconvert the footage. Apparently Premiere 1.5 and CS3 handle Microsoft DV AVI very similarly – CS3 possibly slightly better – but they process a Cedocida .avi both differently than they do a Microsoft DV .avi, and also very differently from one another in that respect.
It seems that Premiere 1.5 likes the open-source codec and works well with it, but CS3 absolutely hates it. So in terms of quality:
Cedocida 1.5 > Microsoft DV CS3 > Microsoft DV 1.5 > Cedocida CS3
Then again, this is pretty subjective, but the Cedocida in 1.5 seems to produce a more crisp end result, which is what I think I prefer.
I have yet to test how any of these compare to how either program handles uncompressed .avi. Perhaps I’ll try that next.
Stills from each version can be found here:
https://fileshare.chinagreenelvis.com/images/premiere
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It appears that 1.5 and CS3 render Microsoft Uncompressed AVI exactly the same, and that the way 1.5 renders the Cedocida codec is pretty close to that.
So, in terms of quality, we now have:
MS Uncompressed in 1.5 or CS3 > Cedocida 1.5 > MS DV CS3 and 1.5 > Cedocida CS3.
I suppose the next step would be to add CS4 and CS5 into the mix, but I would imagine that if you’re capable of running either of those, you don’t need to downconvert in the first place. However, it seems if you do need to work in SD, going with the Cedocida codec in Premiere 1.5 is the better deal without going fully uncompressed.
Surprisingly, it produces files smaller in size than MS DV.
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