[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Greg,

To add to Jon’s comments – in Premiere, right-click the 4K clip in the 1080p timeline and select Set to Frame Size (not SCALE to frame size). This will make it so you can see the entire 4K clip inside the HD frame, but you can still use Adobe Motion effect to scale and pan in the image as Jon said – maybe you want to zoom in closer to highlight something in the image. Premiere will use the extra pixels available in the 4K source to provide a clean zoom in HD. As long as you don’t zoom (scale) past 100%, no quality loss. In fact, you can go above 100% and still look good, up to you how far to push it.

Sometimes easier to cut source clip into pieces and apply different scaling to each piece than to struggle with keyframes. Meaning, when you want to go from original “wide” view to a closer blow-up, use the Razor tool to apply a CUT in the clip. Now each “piece” of footage can have different scaling applied without keyframes being needed.

I shoot stage events on a wide angle using 4K, then edit as 720p and can cut or dissolve from a wide shot to a medium or close-up and it looks like multiple cameras were used. The quality is excellent since no pixels are being blow-up/duplicated using the higher-resolution source video.

When done editing the 1080p Sequence, export as 1080p.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hey Dave – how about a 720-hour film, to be shown once, then be destroyed?

https://www.thelongestfilm.com/

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

“It would be interesting to know why the OP regards that as necessary.”

Art piece 😉

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Vasco,

Video compression schemes work using very complex math to crunch the video down to a very small size, while still trying to maintain quality. This takes a lot of processing power to accomplish, not just for the compression, but also to decompress/play the video. The compressed file needs to be reconstituted into the full video frames on the fly, no small feat! The cameras have specialized hardware chips in them to do it efficiently.

The less-compressed a file is, the easier it plays back. Uncompressed files would play back the easiest, since no decompression is needed, however then you are moving a LOT of data and hard drive speed (and capacity!) become an issue.

Therefore, you want something with mild compression as a compromise, which is easier to decompress, but not too large. So even though HD frames are much smaller than 4K, by using less compression you can still end up with larger files.

What you could do is choose a codec with a lower bitrate. I believe Avid DNxHD has a proxy format that would result in smaller files. Cineform is not really a proxy codec, would call that a high-quality intermediate, thus the larger files.
Proxies don’t have to look really good, as they are just temporary. Look for something that is 8-bit rather than 10-bit, that should help for starts. I’ve never used a proxy workflow myself, but do a lot of reading on these forums.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

CC 2017 dropped support for some older GPUs. Currently supported card listing shows Quadro M2000 and K2000, but not Quadro 2000, possible it was dropped.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

I’ve never used QT PNG in my lifetime. Ever. I think that might be a decent format for perhaps exporting an animation out of After Effects, where you want to keep every bit of color and alpha channel goodness for your edit, similar to uncompressed. I can’t see exporting entire videos in that format. The idea is that if you CREATE graphics/animations from scratch in AE, then those have never seen compression, so maybe you want to keep them uncompressed to get very best results in compositing/keying. But for video that started life as highly compressed, nothing to gain from an uncompressed format. I’d scratch that from the list.

I don’t want to claim to be something I’m not, which is a professional colorist. Been making videos since 1992 and have a fair amount on experience and knowledge, but “high end” video/film is not my background. More corporate, weddings, stage events. That means I’ve not worked with really high-end gear or workflows.

That said, let me explain 8-bit vs. 10-bit a little. Computers use bits and bytes to store data. A byte is 8 bits. Each bit can have a value of 0 or 1. https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs101/bits-bytes.html

Most camcorders record using 8-bit color. The largest value you can have with 8 bits is 256. If you ever play with the color sliders in Photoshop, you will find that the brightness or color slider can go from 0-255 (256 options). You have Red, Green, and Blue sliders, so 256x256x256. That is how many different colors total you would have in your palette with an 8-bit codec.

With 10 bit, the highest value is 1024 for each of the R, G, B colors, so 1024x1024x1024. Quite a huge difference!! With an 8-bit video clip, you might see banding in a blue sky since there are not enough different shades of blue available to make smooth transitions from one shade to another. 10 bit fixes that, IF the camera can record the video using 10 bit color. My friend has a Sony X70 camcorder that can record 10-bit 4:2:2 color and results are gorgeous! My cameras all use 8-bit 4:2:0 (not so gorgeous).

https://www.techhive.com/article/171223/10_bit_color.html

Watch the “Ask Alex” video at this link, just found it and it explains Color Space the best way I’ve ever seen! – https://crewofone.com/2012/chroma-subsampling-and-transcoding/#comment-7299

As far as I know, DSLR video is usually is 8-bit 4:2:0, so I don’t know what the advantage of saving as 10-bit would be – you can’t replace the missing color information that was never there to start with. Maybe someone can explain if I have that wrong? I do understand that if for instance some graphics and such were added in Premiere (which were not previously compressed) that saving in a higher-quality format would preserve more quality in those areas, but again, can’t make the video content portion better than it was.

I know some of the Adobe color effects use “deep color” and perhaps – maybe – if you apply those to your 8-bit footage, and then export as 10-bit, perhaps there is an advantage? That is what I need someone to explain to me if that is the case, I just don’t know, out of my realm so to speak.

So you might say “Jeff, if I can’t make the video better and it started as H.264, why not archive as H.264 then?”

Simple answer – H.264 uses heavy compression, and every time you re-compress your video, you add artifacts and lose quality. More averaging together of pixels and colors, more data tossed out in the name of efficiency. Yes, the original video was compressed, but if you save the edited version with a “lossless” format like Lagarith, you really lose nothing further when exporting – quality remains at current level, good as it can be based on what you started with. Certainly no worse though.

Of course, you can always deliver as H.264, for instance for web or Blu-ray, that’s fine. Just saying, don’t create your archive/master in such a compressed format. Find a good compromise between that and uncompressed, a middle ground with a balance of quality and file size.

I could go on, but that’s a lot to think about for now, definitely check out the links and video, good stuff there.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Just remembered this blog post I created a few years ago which might be helpful to read – https://blog.sharbor.com/blog/2014/06/mezzanine-codec-options-for-pc-video-editors/

Thanks again!

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Link for Lagarith Installer – https://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

Lagarith makes a really nice master file, from which one can later export to any other format needed. But again – BIG files – maybe test against Cineform and compare results for both quality and file size.

Thanks

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

When I used CS6, and had installed GoPro Studio, I then had the Cineform codec available in both the .avi and .mov formats. I don’t know if current GoPro software download still offers the same, could’ve changed maybe.

My reference to Cineform being .mov format is with Premiere CC – Cineform is now included by Adobe, but only as .mov and not .avi

To play or edit any video clip on your computer, your machine must have the codec installed to read that file. Codec stands for COmpress and DECompress. To write and read the files, the codec tells the computer how to do it.

I guess that’s different than .avi or .mov which are containers, but I believe to play ANY .mov file, QuickTime needs to be installed. On top of that then, you still need whatever codec that is inside the .mov container (like Cineform or DNxHD codecs).

When installing the “QuickTime” package from Apple on your PC, you should have the option to install ONLY QuickTime, or to also install the QuickTime Player. You’ll want to skip the Player install – that is the part that is subject to hacking, not QuickTime itself. Hope that makes sense. Or maybe don’t worry about it, this stuff gets blown all of of proportion. The only way for the Player issue to bite you is if you download and play an infected .mov file. If you are not doing that, then I don’t think there is anything to be concerned about. I could be wrong, that’s my understanding of the situation.

But in any case, many many users report that after they create files with Adobe then watch them with QuickTime Player, the colors have changed so not recommended to even use it, has a known issue/bug. Use VLC Media Player instead.

Back to Lagarith for instance, if you simply download and run Lagarith, the codec is then installed. In Media Encoder, choose AVI as the format, then down lower in the export settings panel you can open the drop-down for codecs and you will now see Lagarith and can encode to it. Be warned the files are pretty big – much smaller than uncompressed, but certainly larger than Cineform or DNxHD for instance. Maybe not an issue for short videos, but some of mine are 2 hours long and that is a few hundred GB perhaps!

Here’s the link for free GoPro Studio. Download and install and that will provide Cineform codec for CS6.
https://shop.gopro.com/softwareandapp/quik-%7C-desktop/Quik-Desktop.html

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Ayan,

After carefully crafting and posting a response a few minutes ago…it vanished into the ether…I don’t know where it went! So here goes again!!

If you run your own shop using all PCs, and do not need to share/collaborate with other editors using Macs, then there is nothing wrong with using AVI in your own workflow. However, do not use Uncompressed (the NONE option) – the file sizes are totally unmanageable, and since your DSLR source material was so highly compressed to start with, there is nothing to gain by bloating the file size.

With CS6, you have a few different options for high-quality .avi intermediate codecs. Lagarith and UT are both free downloads. Files are mathematically lossless I believe (I used Lagarith for some workflows). Another option I had used with CS6 was to download and install the free GoPro Studio application, which would install the Cineform codec which is highly regarded.

The issue with QuickTime on a PC is not the codec itself, but rather is the PLAYER. You can install the codec and opt out of installing the player, and that should work just fine then, no worries. With CS6, you could download the Avid DNxHD codec, which is quite similar to Apple ProRes in quality and file size. I should note that both Cineform and DNxHD are now included with Premiere CC (as .mov and .mxf formats respectively).

You are correct that there is no benefit to exporting uncompressed when the source material was very highly compressed H.264 material. Nothing to gain. Just use a good intermediate codec, excellent quality without the bloated file sizes.

Never use “Match Sequence Settings” when exporting. Some users think this will export to the exact same format they started with, such as XDCAM, AVCHD, or whatever, but that is not really the case. The camera formats are very compressed and lossy, so you would not want to “master” to that format anyway. Rather, take charge and manually select a good export codec yourself and do not trust automatic settings, as you never know what to expect from that.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers