[Guy Kingston]

Thanks very much Mike

[Guy Kingston]

I understand that at 100% and zoom is bound to lose quality. But I am planning on exporting at around 25%. That should more than offset the loss of quality from the zoom … shouldn’t it?

[Guy Kingston]

Have you tried CS4 Clean (https://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cs4clean.html)?

I had similar problems with CS3. I uninstalled everything Adobe then ran CS3 Clean even using the hidden level 3.

You may not want to hear this, but ultimately you might have to do a fresh install of Windows on a newly formatted hard drive. But hopefully it won’t come to that.

Guy

[Guy Kingston]

Mike,

Try:

Project > Remove Unused

Good luck,

Guy

[Guy Kingston]

Hi Scott,

Good news, I have found a workaround.

My project is moderately complex, but by no means phenomenally so or beyond what we should expect of Premiere Pro. Despite best endeavours to keep project files in one location inevitably bits and pieces from elsewhere creep in, hard drives get defragmented and the project seems to grow in size and complexity all by itself.

Moreover, I am far from convinced that there is any real performance improvement using RAID 0 (striped) disks and suspect this causes more problems than are solved. Though in principle slower, I have found it faster overall (because there are fewer project crashes and Premiere Pro failures) to use single high capacity hard drives.

I have found Premiere Pro incapable of completing a glitch free export of such moderately complex projects in any way other than Export to Tape. My workflow was to Export to Tape and then recapture to get a master export file. Now, I simply make a copy of the Export to Tape HDVExport.hdv2 file after transcoding before it starts writing to tape (see below).

I made a copy of the original project file and worked on that lest I make a cock-up. I first went through the project bins deleting any unused sequences. Quite a few had been imported as they contained snippets to be re-used (but watch out that any sequence deleted doesn’t result in something dropping out from your principal timeline).

I then used Project Manager (Project > Project Manager) to copy the project to a newly formatted external hard drive (in my case via an eSATA connection). First I set the scratch disks (Edit> Preferences > Scratch Disks) to the freshly formatted hard drive. Then I went into Project Manager and used the following options:

Collect Files and Copy to New Location – Selected
Exclude Unused Clips – Selected
Include Preview Files – Deselected
Include Audio Conform Files – Deselected
Rename Media Files to Match Clip Names – Deselected

The project was copied to the external drive and both the resulting .prproj file and the overall project size were significantly smaller (loosing perhaps about two-thirds of their original size).

I then closed down Premiere Pro and opened up the copied version of the project that was now on the external hard drive. For some reasons any After Effects projects (.aep) don’t seem to get copied over but everything else does. I had to copy these over manually when compiling the newly copied project on the external hard drive.

On opening the project Premiere Pro spent some time indexing the files and then conforming the audio. However, I did not render anything.

Then with my V1 attached via Firewire I inserted a copy protected tape and set Premiere Pro to Export to Tape.

After 2 or 3 hours transcoding I then got an error message saying the export had failed because the tape was write protected. Before clicking Done or Render and Record I located the transcoded file. It was called HDVExport.hdv2 (they all are) and was located with the scratch disks. (Are you sure your system isn’t creating this Scott? Because if not then you are probably experiencing a different problem to me).

Finally I copied the HDVExport.hdv2 file to a safe location, renamed it and changed the extension to .mpg.

In my case I did not complete the export to tape because the .hdv2 was what I was after.

Finally, In Project Manager there is also an option Create New Trimmed Project. I have not experimented with this and so cannot speak with firsthand experience. However it is supposed to chop up large original capture files into just the bits used in the project. If it does, this might work for you if the problem is related to the size of your original capture file as you will end up with lots of smaller files.

Good luck with this, please let me know how you get on.

Guy

[Guy Kingston]

Ben, your post on this topic was really useful – thanks very much – and I wonder if you could help me clarify a few things.

I am just completing a project for distribution in both PAL and NTSC regions on both DVD and Blu Ray. My project was shot in widescreen HDV.

1) If I understand correctly, you are suggesting I re-export my project at 23.98p and then both PAL and NTSC DVD players will be able to play DVDs mastered using this export. Have I understood this correctly?

2) How concerned do I need to be about the active pixel size? Should I prefer 720×576 for PAL or 720×480 for NTSC? Can NTSC DVD players cope with 720×576 pixels?

Ideally, I would like one DVD to play worldwide, though if customers in different countries would get significantly better products if PAL and NTSC versions were created specifically for them then I will do that.

3) How do the above discussions relate to Blu Ray discs? Should I stick with 23.98p for Blu Ray as well? And, what about the active pixels? Do I stick with 1920×1080 for both PAL and NTSC customers?

Very many thanks,

Guy

[Guy Kingston]

Thanks for the advice.

My PC monitor is calibrated properly but I can’t tell how to check the camera’s viewfinder (I’m the producer not the camera operator – he’s away at the moment). We’ve got a V1 but a search of the manual for ‘calibrate’ and ‘calibration’ returns no matches.

I get the same (good) quality picture on the V1 viewfinder as I do on a TV. I haven’t calibrated the TV but it strikes me as an odd co-incidence if they were both mis-calibrated equally.

I use Spyder2express to calibrate the PC monitor and have always had great results with that in the past. It seems more foolproof than a manual calibration.

And, other stuff looks fine on the PC monitor. The problem seems to be specific to this particular footage. Or, at least footage filmed in similar settings (indoor, looks well lit through viewfinder).

Guy

[Guy Kingston]

Looking at the shot close up (100% of original size) there is still a little grainy-ness with the compound arithmetic filter. Not really a problem but I wonder why – if I’ve understood properly it is just adding two shots together, not boosting the gain or anything.

[Guy Kingston]

Jon,

You are a genius and surely sit at the right hand of God!

The compound arithmetic filter has worked brilliantly (though I did have to lay a second copy of the clip on an additional video track and get the filter to add the original to that – it didn’t seem to want to work adding the clip to itself).

As you suggested, I played back the tape from the camera in a TV monitor. The clip looked fine, just as it does on the camera monitor. So, I am assuming the camera settings were/are OK.

I also captured a sample clip into PPro and this looked identical (far too dark) to the original captured in Vegas.

I still don’t understand the cause and how to avoid this happening again, but at least I have a wonderful fix!

Very many thanks indeed,

Guy

[Guy Kingston]

It is a True Type font (or at least claims to be and behaves the same way in other applications).

Yes, it does work in Photoshop and that’s what we’ve used (thanks for the tip). Would be nice to have it working in PPro if we could though.

Why would it work in Photoshop and After Effects but not in Ppro I wonder?