[David Furst]

it worked !!! ????

thank you so much ! this was becoming a real headache.

i wonder why nesting would have that effect on things. or, rather, why not nesting would make compositing so painful…

i’ve heard good things about final cut, but i’m on pc so making the jump would take quite a bit of effort i think.

anyway, thanks much for your advice, that solved the problem. 🙂

[David Furst]

perhaps i wasn’t clear.

the TRACK MATTE was at 100%.

the source video was scaled.

there is NO REASON IN HELL the source video should be scaled back UP if i’ve already scaled it down… doing so is counterintuitive and a stupid way of accomplishing things.

forgive me if i can’t raise myself to your level of genius, but perhaps you could still enlighten me w/your years of experience, given i’ve only been working with this software since february…

posting a sarcastic comment to elevate yourself at my expense, rather than some helpful guidance, is sincerely not appreciated.

[David Furst]

perhaps i wasn’t clear.

the TRACK MATTE was at 100%.

the source video was scaled.

there is NO REASON IN HELL the source video should be scaled back UP if i’ve already scaled it down…

[David Furst]

well, i’ve solved this issue — finally. long story short, it turns out there were several adobe weaknesses working against me here. i’m posting my results in hopes that other unfortunate souls who run into similar issues won’t end up committing seppuku, as i was about to do…

one problem was that adobe software can’t handle multi-head setups where the displays use different graphics hardware. i connected both monitors to the same card and voilà, problem gone.

the most difficult issue, however, is that premiere pro cs6 can’t handle h.264 very well, and it can’t handle 4k at all — it simply chokes. although i didn’t have much 4k stock in my project, there was enough to cause grief, and most of my stock was in 1920×1080 h.264 mp4. after quite a bit of research, it seemed most of the knowledgeable posts i read recommended scaling down 4k to a more manageable size [e.g. 1080] and transcoding anything in h.264 to an ‘intermediate codec’ for editing. they had favourable things to say about DNxHD, which i’d never heard of before, and which, even though it yields a much larger file size, allows pp to work w/the video much more quickly. in order to fix this second problem, i transcoded most of my footage into DNxHD MXF and, finally, into DNxHD MOV. if you’re not interested in the steps to do this and how to get the software, stop here.

my search led me to a nifty little program called ‘ffmpeg’, which will allow you to transcode from dozens of formats to dozens of formats, in ways you can customise down to the smallest hair on your aunt’s rear end. best of all, it’s freeware [you can get it here]. there is a windows-based ffmpeg site here.] getting it to work correctly was difficult; the language used to make it go is pretty arcane. i found a useful ms-dos batch script here that will allow you to convert a number of common formats to DNxHD.

i also found a somewhat-friendlier front-end called ‘streamclip‘ and another one called ‘ffmpeg console‘. both are much more limited than the command-line tool, but if you’re only looking for common conversions, save yourself a few headaches and try them. streamclip requires the actual dnxhd codecs from avid. it’s installed as part of quicktime, so using it means you have to use quicktime. one caveat : in streamclip, don’t select ‘file=>export to quicktime‘, but rather ‘file=>export to other formats‘. then on the following page, select ‘quicktime’ on the pull-down and click the ‘options’ button to select dnxhd.

i wanted to get away from being dependent on quicktime, though, so i used the ms-dos script as a starting point to transcode my footage to mxf-encapsulated dnxhd. unfortunately, despite what adobe says, ppcs6 can’t import mxf — or at least it wouldn’t for me, as i continually got the incredibly-informative ‘The importer reported a generic error’ message. >:( so i finally ended up transcoding everything into dnxhd in a .mov container, imported those, and now premiere doesn’t freeze up any more. i wish the mxf had worked, so i wouldn’t have all of these quicktime processes hanging about.

all in all, this was an extremely disappointing exercise, i lost 2 days with this shite. hopefully my experience will save someone else some time.

good luck !

[David Furst]

@jim scott : thank you very much ! this is helpful. ☺ i’m surprised adobe don’t have a proper user’s manual though. 😕

@greg janza : the machine was originally purposed as a dedicated music production workstation, and was built without networking because apparently a machine will allocate a fair amount of computer resources and processor to networking and network-related activities, doing things in the background even when you’re not actively surfing the net. this can lead to dropouts, clicks, pops, and other undesirable glitches. as a result, some manufacturers make machines without networking, or have it all turned off.

[David Furst]

wow, that is some amazing software !
thanks much for the tips, guys. really only just starting to get into video, it’s fascinating, but sometimes a bit daunting.
cheers.

[David Furst]

Hats off to you for doing all of that work but yes, there’s a much easier way. Purchase a pre-built transition that has alpha channel, drop it on your top layer and then change the blending mode of the transition layer.

well, that was money well spent. ☺

i am still trying to learn how all of this works, which is why i went through the exercise and didn’t go the easy route at first.

so when i use chroma keying [the ‘ultra-key’], is that converting a colour layer to an alpha layer, making it transparent ?

or maybe more to the point : why does the pre-built fire transition work so well [better than my attempt, anyway] ?

and am i wrong in thinking that the overlay i used [the one with the flame on a chroma-green background leaving a black hole] would really only be useful if you want to transition to black instead of to underlying footage ?

[David Furst]

thanks for the help gents, i think i’ve got this sorted. my only remaining question is, what i’ve done seems pretty complicated… i was wondering if there’s a better way to do it ?

here’s what i did :

on v4 i have an overlay.
on v3 i have a matte.
on v2 i have the 1st sequence i want to transition from, starting at 0.
on v1 i have the 2nd sequence i want to transition to, starting at about 10 seconds in.

the overlay is a burn transition effect that was filmed with chroma green on the outside of the burn hole, leaving black on the inside.

i made the matte from a copy of the overlay by putting a fast colour corrector on it to desaturate it and increase the contrast, so i could use it as a track matte for the footage on v2 [the opening sequence].

i put a track matte on v2, setting it to matte luma and using v3 as the matte.

i treated the overlay on v4 with an ultrakey keying out the chroma green, as well as a luma key, because without it, the black hole [the ‘burned’ part] covered the second sequence instead of revealing it.

that’s about it. so is there a better way to do this ?

[David Furst]

thank you both for your replies. very good info there! that clears up a lot of the mystery.

i’ve also stumbled on a huge stockpile of tutorials here on this site, currently wading through the ones on mattes and masks. i’m relieved to find out there are much easier ways to do a lot of the things i’ve been doing than the ways i’ve been doing them, right out of the box.

cheers!

[David Furst]

thanks very much, vince, that sounds like a good idea. i’ve been finding quite a few cameras that cost $5,000 a few years ago that are literally selling for 1/10 of that now used, and i think that’s going to be my target, but there’s still a lot of info to sift through.

i don’t want this thread to devolve into a ‘what do you think about model xyz v. abc’ thread, do you know of any good online buyer’s guides? something that’ll introduce me to the more important concepts and what to look for in a camera. i’ve found lots of reviews on individual models, but w/o being able to sift through the dross, i’m losing a lot of time [for example, i’ve only just recently found out what P2 is, and that one of the features i probably want is ‘3CCD’, and knowing that in advance would’ve saved me lots of time researching other models].

thanks
david