[Jeff Brown]

[John Lawton] “DV SD-PAL Widescreen Lower Fields First
Matrox SD-PAL Widescreen Upper Fields First”

Well, one of those is gonna be wrong for your project. I also think SD PAL is upper-field first. (I’m in NTSC land)
My question about what are you rendering TO was about the codec used: MPEG-2? MPEG-4? What compression settings? What’s the bitrate?

These are the things that will make a big impact on the final quality.

-Jeff

[Jeff Brown]

And what are you rendering _to_ ? (on the way to Encore)

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

(rant mode on)
Ah, people, people.
DPI is not relevant to video. To be more precise, it is MEANINGLESS in video. Video deals with raster sizes, and a 720×480 pixel image is the same whether you save it as “300 DPI” or “72 DPI”.
Here’s why: put the image on a 9″ monitor. How big is it? How many “dpi” does it have? Put it on a 72″ monitor. Same questions…

DPI is for print. Ignore it for video. Keep track of your image size in pixels.

The reason a “300 dpi” image looks better is that it typically has more pixels. If you are still not convinced, change it to “72 dpi” WITHOUT changing the pixel dimensions (don’t resample). Compare the two: they are the same image, until you _print_ them.

(rant off: it’s just a pet peeve).

Use the smallest stills (in pixel dimensions) you can for the project, that will help. Ideally, resize them in PShop, and don’t do any scaling in Premiere.

-Jeff

Jeff Brown
Fire Mist Media
http://www.firemist.com

Workstation:
Boxx 8700 dual-quad
4 GB RAM
nVidia Quadro FX 4500
WinXP Pro
AJA Xena 2K
CalDigit HDOne

Main Software:
3ds Max
Combustion
Photoshop
PremierePro

[Jeff Brown]

I’ve been trying to compare the two chips as well. My understanding (always suspect) is that the “guts” of the i7 and Nehalem-series Xeons are pretty much the same. Very close performance at the same clock speed. The main difference is that Xeons have architecture that allows for dual-chip motherboards; the i7 will not, now or in the future.
So, i7: more cost effective for a single-CPU system.
Xeon : allows dual CPUs, better for render-intensive work. I do mostly 3D, so the Xeons are worth the extra $$.

let me just add: I’m no expert on CPU architecture.
-Jeff

[Jeff Brown]

Try QTime PNG compression. Still lossless, but smaller than “uncompressed”. Test first, there are sometimes gamma issues in certain workflows.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

I thought it worked in Premiere, but I’ve never tried it myself. Only use it in Combustion.
Double-check the help doc, there are some quirky application-specific working methods that may apply to Premiere.
If you’re still stuck, reVision has always answered support questions promptly in the past.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

Try “Twixtor” or reTimer by re:visionFX. Takes time to render, but can produce very nice results.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

Have you tried 720p60 or 720p59.94 ?

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

Practice. A lot.
Do every tutorial of every piece of software you have. Even the “stupid” ones. Do any kind of work you can get for people who know more that you do.
Practice more.
Expect to do this for 5 – 10 years. Then you’ll have something.

-jeff

[Jeff Brown]

That is interlaced footage. It is hard to tell if it is “normal” interlaced (60 or 50 fields per second) or pulldown (3:2) interlaced from film or “24P” shooting.

-Jeff