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uncompressed AVI output low quality
Hi, I am a long time Adobe Premiere user, my first license dates all the way back to version 4.2.
Lately, I have had to upgrade from Premiere Pro CS2 to CS5.5 and I am having a really annoying problem.
I am CG artist/3d animator and very often I need to work from uncompressed .avi files. This has never been an issue in the past but for some reason, CS 5.5 keeps outputting low quality uncompressed .avi files.
I am painfully aware about the head scratching ‘uncompressed Microsoft AVI’ format which already wasted a couple of hours and I am now using the Microsoft AVI with No Codec but the final video output is far from what I am expecting.
As you can see in the following screenshot, the final video is really blurry and I am now thinking it would be due to Premiere forcing the video to 8 bits instead of 16.
Would anyone know how to force Premiere to stick with 16 bits? As you can see I am already ticking the Render at Maximum Depth option and setting the Depth to 32 bit but Premiere CS 5.5 doesn’t want to comply.
As I wasted countless hours on this silly issue I eventually reverted back to CS 2 which worked flawlessly but I really need to know how to fix this in case my next gig involves CS 5.5
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15 Replies
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Are you editing in a Progressive Timeline with Progressive Media?
If you edit in an Interlaced Timeline with Progressive Media and then export as Progressive you will kill some sharpness in removing the sequences interlacing…
More details please. I couldn’t see the interlacing or progressive info of your sequences (Source)…
Cheers JB
Jon Barrie
Adobe Video Solutions Consultant ANZ
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
follow Jon with twitter -
Hi Jon thanks for replying.
If you look carefully on the first screenshot you will see that the original source material is progressive (summary section).
The output is also progressive.
I made sure the output and the input would be exactly the same just to try CS 5.5 uncompressed avi (Microsoft avi/no codec)
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Hi Olive,
Just a guess: Have you tried rendering without the “use previews” box checked?-jeff
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yes Jeff, even if it should still work with ‘use preview’ ticked, I still tried unticking it
I should have included the bottom part of the screen shot, here it is
Discard my idea about a bit depth issue. Premiere and KMPlayer call Bit Depth two different things
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Hi Olive,
I get a bit confused with the whole color depth thing, because video formats are usually 8 or 10-bit, yet I guess the COLOR can be processed at 16 or 32 bit internally. But I don’t think this is your issue at all.
I notice that you have the “Use Previews” button checked – therefore, if you had rendered any parts of the timeline (red bar to green bar), you are defeating the purpose of uncompressed because you are really working off the PREVIEW files, which might be of a much lesser quality MPEG-2 or whatever the Render Previews are currently set to, and THAT could be where the quality loss is coming from..
Also, if you have Mercury Playback GPU hardware acceleration enabled, it may be redundant to have MAX RENDER checked as the Nvidia CUDA rendering may do a better job. Sometimes checking every single available checkbox does more harm than good, though it may seem like a good idea at the time. Have you tried any exports with the DEFAULT settings prior to checking every option box? Good intentions gone bad perhaps?
Thanks
Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers -
I’m a little confused by the frame size of your output settings. It says 720 x 405. Is that the original size of your footage? Are you taking non-square pixel originals and exporting a square pixel output? That could cause some softness.
Kevin Monahan
Sr. Content and Community Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Follow Me on Twitter! -
Hi Kevin, thanks for replying.
On the first screenshot I posted, https://i1.creativecow.net/u/223874/premiere-cs-5.5-blurry-uncompressed-output.jpg
you can see that the original material is, that’s correct, 720×405 in Square pixels (1.0). That is also the output I am asking for 720×405 in Square pixels and at exactly the same frame rate 25fps. That’s what I have always been doing in Premiere and it always worked until I switched to Premiere CS 5.5
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I had already done several tests but since you are asking, I have done them again with different quality and bit depth settings but the result is still unsatisfactory
Premiere CS 5.5 is definitely adding some sort of compression to the original material.
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How is the saturation level looking in the Vectorscope? Are you within safe boundaries?
Kevin Monahan
Sr. Content and Community Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Follow Me on Twitter! -
I am curious to see what it looks like with the QT format and set to None and then set to Animation.
The banding is from exporting to 8-bit. which TV and Web are. I think you are working with something that is originally in wither 16bit or 32-bit float.
Dithering can help with the banding issue, but you will lose some sharpness.
I don’t know where the 405 dimension comes from, it’s not a standard anywhere and doesn’t divide by 2, 406 does. I’m not sure you are working to a standard that calculates well when exported.
– JB
Jon Barrie
Adobe Video Solutions Consultant ANZ
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
follow Jon with twitter
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