question about project settings

[Todd Kopriva]

Here’s a video that I made that addresses most of your questions:
“FAQ: How do I choose the right sequence settings?”

Note that even though your subject line refers to project settings, you are actually asking about sequence settings.

The very simplistic answer to your questions is that you should create a sequence that matches the settings of your primary footage type or—if you’re mixing a lot of different kinds of footage together—your primary output type. But you don’t need to be rigid about it; the strength of Premiere Pro is that it can scale and interpolate and otherwise compensate for a lot of things that don’t match the sequence settings. The more care you put into matching the sequence to the primary footage type or output type, the less processing needs to be done to compensate for differences.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
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[Benjamin Oliver]

So, to further my question,

If I have a timeline set to my DSLR footage, and I add text or graphics, and then export them to the web, the graphics and titles won’t look like crap because they are being rendered at the codec I am using for the sequence? The graphics and titles will always be really crisp and clear?

I remember in FCP, if I had a DV timeline, with dv footage, I would have to at the end, chance my sequence to uncompressed to avoid my text looking all choppy….

Thanks,

-Ben

[Todd Kopriva]

A primary and crucial difference between FCP and Premiere Pro is that there is no codec for the timeline/sequence. There are sequence settings that define such things as the frame rate and frame size, and there is a codec setting for the codec used for preview files, but the sequence itself is not tied to a specific codec.

Regarding sharpness of graphics: The pixel dimensions of the sequence matter, of course—i.e., if you have a 5,000×5,000 still image, and you bring that into a 640×480 sequence, you’re going to lose a lot of detail.

Similarly, your output settings matter (of course) such that you’ll lose detail/quality if you output with high compression settings or to a small frame size.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
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[Benjamin Oliver]

If I want a 1920×1080 24p timeline, I make that.

I bring in my footage, stills, graphics of whatever codec or size I want.

If I then were to render out to the Animation Codec, Pro Res, Uncompressed, DNXhD or similar, I will be getting the most of out each type of file….

Thanks for all your help!

-Ben

[Tim Kolb]

As Todd said, frame size, pixel aspect, and frame rate are the only things a sequence in Premiere Pro really cares about. The presets are in there so people don’t have to set it all up themselves.

1920x1080p23.976 will work for any format with that framesize regardless of codec… If your graphics are vastly different sizes than that and you’re scaling them, you may notice that, but your graphics created at that frame size will be great.

Since Premiere Pro doesn’t have to create that “master output clip” like FCP does…it doesn’t matter what you want to send it out to as the Media Encoder just reads the sequence (you can make a master clip for archival if you choose to…you just don’t HAVE to…).

That’s kind of the point with Adobe…the integration cuts the extra interim steps necessary to get from edit to output.

So…make the sequence the right size and rate and off you go… I used to give all my colleagues who use FCP a hard time that I mix formats constantly and haven’t seen a “render” frame in 10 years.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor