[Jeff Pulera]

I’ve seen super-long Windows file name paths do weird things…please try exporting to the root drive once. Not sure why your exports would be directed to an “auto-save” folder.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

You need the Black Magic M-JPEG .avi codec to play those files, available by installing Black Magic capture card drivers.

Go to this page: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/family/capture-and-playback

Look under Latest Downloads – Desktop Video 10.9.11 for Windows

Click WINDOWS then skip entering any info and select DOWNLOAD ONLY at lower left. Download and install driver, then you should be able to play/edit those files. CLOSE Premiere when installing.

Thanks

Jeff

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

The behavior of various software DVD players is going to be dependent on how the programmer set that up and you will likely have no control over that aspect of things. Just create and test your DVD to work correctly on a set-top (hardware) DVD player and the rest is out of your control, as you have no way of knowing how various users might view the disc later on.

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Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

“he wants it to go to the beginning of that chapter not the start of the previous chapter.”

That is how it works for me – when I want to go to a PREVIOUS chapter, I have to hit the PREV button TWICE. First time goes to start of current chapter, next jumps to previous chapter.

If using a software DVD player to test…don’t. Use an actual DVD player to know how the disc will really behave in a hardware player that must adhere to the official DVD specification – software players can do whatever the want to.

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Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Add a new colorbar in Premiere and place in timeline, then use the CAMERA icon to EXPORT to still image format of choice. Modify the exported file. Done.

Thanks

Jeff

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Posterize Time effect, to change the apparent frame rate perhaps?

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Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

You can have small file size, or good quality. Choose either ONE ????

3 to 5mbps is already very low for HD video. By using 2-Pass VBR, you can maximize quality, but you can only squeeze so much out of it. At the SAME bitrate, although 720p is lower resolution than 1080p, the perceived quality should be better since you have less pixels to compress into the same space.

Is there a reason you can’t take advantage of FREE hosting on YouTube or Vimeo perhaps, where you would have no quality limitations imposed by potential cost? Maybe this is a training video or something that you are charging for, so I can understand bandwidth concerns there.

Good luck meeting your goal

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Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Interesting about Scratch being licensed for ProRes, have never seen that mentioned before and I’ve seen a TON of threads wanting to know how to encode ProRes on the PC and no one ever brought it up before. Good to know.

Assimilate really, seriously needs to work on their marketing though. I thought “Scratch” sounded familiar, perhaps related to Smoke and Fire, but those programs are out of my league. So I did a Google search, and what comes up is a Scratch editing software put out by MIT (the higher learning place…). Assimilate Scratch must be a closely-guarded secret for some reason!

Thanks

Jeff

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Joseph,

Just to be clear, I never use H.264 as an intermediate and never recommend doing so under any circumstance, is only for final delivery.

About uncompressed versus Cineform, DNxHD, ProRes…these are “visually lossless” codecs for the most part, meaning mathematically some compression may show up if you cared to analyze the footage somehow, but your eyes cannot tell the difference and that is really what we are talking about – will I SEE any degradation using this route? The answer is no.

Back to DeNoiser, you are correct that if you do that step first, everything becomes easier after that. The less-compressed intermediate codec edits easier, you are not fighting the denoiser in Premiere that bogs down editing, and final render is MUCH faster since DeNoiser is not being rendered also at that point. Just a win-win-win situation.

Another plus is that there can be unforeseen side effects when combining DeNoiser software with other effects filters – which should be applied first? Does it make a difference? Will it cause encoding errors when combined with other effects? Just removes a lot of what-ifs to denoise first, then edit.

Sync issues – I haven’t used MOV/animation before so I don’t know if that’s an issue or not. I also never use Media Encoder, just encode right from Premiere, but that’s just my workflow, not right or wrong.

Cineform versus DNxHD? I haven’t tried to compare them directly for size and quality. Both should provide excellent results. Cineform is a .mov file so that may play into compatibility with other apps, while DNxHD creates an .mxf file which may not be as friendly with other apps. Create a short sample of each using same source and make your own determination.

I’d never heard of Scratch and a web search turned up something from MIT. Is that what you are using? If they are offering ProRes encoding on the PC, it’s probably using FFMPEG underneath since Apple does not support ProRes encoding on ANY PC software, has to be a hack/reverse-engineered solution basically if someone does it.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Joseph,

In regards to “I’ve favored MOV/Animation due to the uncompressed advantage.”

There is no advantage – since cameras all compress the heck out of the footage to start with. A majority of the image information that originally hit the camera sensor is discarded before the video ever gets to the memory card. Converting such compressed footage to uncompressed cannot retrieve any of that lost data, so it really is overkill to create those gigantic files.

So why not just convert to H.264 then to save space? Because of the high compression rate, even more picture information would be lost with each conversion (generation). Therefore we find the compromise between camera-compressed footage and uncompressed, which is a good intermediate codec like Cineform or DNxHD.

The file sizes are manageable while the new file is visually indistinguishable from the original footage. Uncompressed would give the same results, but the file sizes are outrageous, thus the intermediate codec.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers