Warp Stabilizer in Premier CC or AE CC ?

[Ivan Myles]

In CS6 the advantage of AE is the ability to set composition settings different from the source file.

Note: Edited to review erroneous statement.

[Walter Soyka]

Warp Stabilizer is different in Ae CC than it is in Pr CC.

Ae CC has Warp Stabilizer VFX, which has some new features [link] not found in the previous version, called Warp Stabilizer, which is still found in Premiere Pro CC.

Premiere Pro CC’s Warp Stabilizer is accelerated, but it does not process in YUV in either CS6 or CC.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Alexandre Brandt]

I see. I guess I have to make test to see if the Stabilizer VFX from Ae does a better job.
What are the advantages in working in YUV ?

Thanks!

motion pictures + storytelling = ?
-> FILMMAKING !

[Ivan Myles]

[Walter Soyka] “Premiere Pro CC’s Warp Stabilizer is accelerated, but it does not process in YUV in either CS6 or CC.”

You’re right. Sorry, my mistake.

[Walter Soyka]

[Alexandre Brandt] “What are the advantages in working in YUV ?”

In RGB, brightness and color are co-mingled across the red, green and blue channels.

Many cameras store their output natively as YUV, wherein the brightness of a pixel (the Y channel) is processed and stored separately from its color (the U and V channels). (YUV is a technical term that describes a specific color system; today it is nearly always mis-used as I have above to refer to a system that stores luminance separately from chrominance. We should technically be saying Y’CbCr for digital component video.)

YUV can be transformed to RGB losslessly when using floating point, but for integer RGB formats (8 bits per channel or 16 bits per channel), some clipping (lost detail in overbright highlights or ultradeep shadows) or quantization (rounding errors that slightly alter pixel values) can occur.

Many cameras think in YUV for acquisition, and many video file formats also use a YUV model. The advantage of processing in YUV, then, is avoiding the possible clipping and quantization from imperfect YUV/RGB transformations. A significant advantage of YUV is chroma sub-sampling: since the eye is more sensitive to changes in brightness than it is to changes in color, you can throw away half of the color information (4:2:2) without compromising visual quality too much.

But YUV is really an alternate way of representing RGB data. Most image processing has to be performed in RGB because there’s no way of doing the same underlying math directly in YUV.

In general, you don’t have to worry about whether effects process YUV or RGB, other than being careful about values over 100 IRE being clipped to white. This doesn’t result in visible data loss unless you try to recover the highlights. Any YUV effects that pull down the highlights should be applied before RGB effects in the effects control panel; if they are placed afterwards, you won’t have recoverable detail.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Alexandre Brandt]

Thank you Walter.
I have a few question then that comes to me after reading your post.

First, where do I find in Premiere Pro what my footage is (RGB or YUV) ?

Second, if I edit and then export my shots in Annimation format will it convert to RGB, will it keep YUV ?

Third: I have some footage that I will bring to a colorist for color correction/grading. In some shots I will in deed need to try to recuperate some details the highlights. Now, my workflow was going to be apply my Warp Stabilizer in Premier Pro before doing color correction. But now that I read your post, I have a feeling that the color correction (especially to go get info in the highlights needs to be done before I put Warp Stabilizer which is an RGB effect is that correct ?

Thanks for your assistance !

motion pictures + storytelling = ?
-> FILMMAKING !

[Walter Soyka]

[Alexandre Brandt] “First, where do I find in Premiere Pro what my footage is (RGB or YUV) ?”

Open the reference monitor (Window > Reference Monitor). In the panel menu flyout (the arrow and four lines icon at the upper right corner), make sure it’s set to YC Waveform. You can uncheck Chroma, then you’ll have a luminance waveform monitor. If that goes above 100, your footage is YUV.

[Alexandre Brandt] “Second, if I edit and then export my shots in Annimation format will it convert to RGB, will it keep YUV ?”

Animation is 8-bit RGB only.

[Alexandre Brandt] “Third: I have some footage that I will bring to a colorist for color correction/grading. In some shots I will in deed need to try to recuperate some details the highlights. Now, my workflow was going to be apply my Warp Stabilizer in Premier Pro before doing color correction. But now that I read your post, I have a feeling that the color correction (especially to go get info in the highlights needs to be done before I put Warp Stabilizer which is an RGB effect is that correct ?”

You can use ProcAmp or Fast Color Corrector before the Warp Stabilizer to pull the brightness down and recover the highlights. Keep the waveform monitor open while tweaking. Anything over 100 IRE will be clipped by an RGB effect that’s not also 32bpc.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Alexandre Brandt]

Ok.
What codec accessible to export at in AE and Premier supports 10bit ?

Thanks !

motion pictures + storytelling = ?
-> FILMMAKING !

[Walter Soyka]

[Alexandre Brandt] “What codec accessible to export at in AE and Premier supports 10bit ?”

Avid DNxHD, Apple ProRes, GoPro CineForm, and maybe Grass Valley HQX are all compressed options. AJA 10-bit RGB and Blackmagic 10-bit RGB are uncompressed options.

You could also use image sequences, like DPX.

In Ae, make sure to work in at least 16bpc. In Pr, make sure to render at maximum depth.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Alexandre Brandt]

Thanks Walter.

Yes in Ae I set my projects to be 32 pbc actually.
I’ve been working a lot with ProRes 422 and 444, Animation and HDV. But maybe I’ll have an opportunity to use some DPX on this current project. Ruffly how much GB for 10 min at best quality in 1920×1080 25p is it ?

I have a question that goes back to the Warp stabilizer, RBG effect processing etc.
I have some shots that already have Warp Stabilizer on them. As you told me I got to apply ProcAmp or Fast Color before Warp Stabilizer to bring down the highlights. Is there a way to take the Stabilizer effect off but keep the settings, then apply Fast Color and then bring back Stabilizer in a way it does not need to calculate again the image ? It would be really great because I’m on a MacBookPro from 2008 so…

Thanks!

motion pictures + storytelling = ?
-> FILMMAKING !