Sequence setting for mixed formats

[Tim Kolb]

Hi Cody,

With Premiere Pro, you’re flexibility probably just improved by more than you can even see with your eyes.

If you were converting your DSLR to ProRes and then editing it on a DVCProHD timeline in FCP, you were doing a lot of conversions…

With PPro, each sequence is basically looking at frame rate, frame size, and pixel aspect ratio. That’s it. There are sequence settings that note different camera formats as a guide, but unlike FCP, those formats are not the “basis” for the sequence.

When you’re using DVCProHD 720p, it’s not a full raster codec. DVCProHD which would play out as 720 actually does not have 1280 stored columns of pixels (the full HD frame size) like HDV or XDcamHD…or ProResHQ does…it’s 960×720 and the pixels are all stretched horizontally to fill the frame. It’s one reason why editing DVCProHD is so fast to work with.

When you mix in DSLR, 1920×1080 full frame HD, you have both a frame scaling process to implement…and if you’re on a DVCProHD sequence, a resolution adapted PAR adjustment to make too.

PPro can do this…and in CS5.5, pixel and PAR scaling are CUDA-accelerated. My recommendation would be to use a custom timeline that was square pixel. I’d let the DVCProHD stuff scale across a 1280x720p square pixel raster and have the DSLR scaling down from 1080 without forcing it to also drop to a non-square PAR as well. I think you’d get better performance balance.

It’s up to you how you go about it. PPro is about as flexible an NLE as there is for mixed format editing, so I’d also let the frame and format I’m ultimately targeting weigh among the factors I’d consider for sequence settings.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[Todd Kopriva]

I agree with Tim.

What I tell people is to set their sequence to match the settings of the _primary_ footage type. If you’ve got a bunch of different footage types, then the primary output type can serve as a sort of tie-breaker.

Basically, you’re just trying to make Premiere Pro do the smallest number of conversions possible, since each such conversion takes a little bit of processing power.

Since, as Time said, even more of these conversions are accelerated using CUDA in Premiere Pro CS5.5, you can be even less concerned about this than before.

Here’s a little movie that I made about this:
“How do I choose the right sequence settings?”

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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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[David Dobson]

I usually chose my output specs for the sequence settings.

[Cody Walters]

Thanks Tim for this great information and for Todd’s insight to this as well. It sounds like Premier will handle the footage with no problem which is good to hear. I’m liking the whole “working with native footage” thing more and more.

I didn’t know that Premier only looks at frame size, frame rate and pixel aspect ratio. Very different from Final Cut. I’ll try your recommendations.

Thanks!

Cody Walters
JW Studio LLC
Houston Video Production
Houston Wedding Videographer

Final Cut Studio 3
Adobe CS5 Master Suite
Panasonic HVX-200
Canon 7D

[Raymond Wolters]

I gotta call “foul” on this whole “Premiere looks at only frame size and frame aspect etc” If I drop some Panasonic P2 clips onto the timeline they work great, no rendering needed and when I check the timeline settings, they match perfectly (Even labeled as Panasonic DVCPro HD timeline). Now try a ProRes clip and it creates a DNXHD timeline! Wait What? If all clips are the same to PP why does it default to a very specific codec used by AVID? Normally I wouldn’t care, but I edit with my DVCPro clips all the time and NEVER have an issue … I just got through an edit with ProRes (which my FCP handled with no problem) and it was a bear! It was a five minute timeline and it took me nearly 30 minutes to output! I am not on the latest computer, but its a 12-Core Mac with a dedicated NVIDIA card designed to work with CUDA! If I am doing something wrong let me know people, but ProRes which was about the ONLY format I could edit well with in FCP seems to be the WORST thing to use in PP!