[Jeff Pulera]

If I’m understanding the workflow correctly, it may be incorrect/not optimal.

If you are putting the 4K footage into a 4K sequence, and doing pan/zoom in that sequence, you are immediately losing quality the moment you scale past 100%. Since you want to export as 720p, then edit ALL FOOTAGE in a 720p sequence, not 4K.

You shouldn’t need nesting, just put the two clips into the 720p Sequence and edit them. I don’t use MultiCam either. Put “Main” camera on V2, and other cam on V1. With a wedding for example, the wide shot/balcony cam will be on V1. The V2 cam follows the action. I scrub through V2 clip, and whatever parts of clip I don’t want to keep gets cut away, revealing other V1 cam footage below (my go-to shot).

For the 4K clip, be sure to right-click in timeline and select Set to Frame Size. This will allow you to pan/zoom while retaining the quality made available by all the extra 4K pixels in a 720p frame size. Do NOT use Scale to Frame Size, that dumbs down the 4K footage to 720p before you ever start scaling.

When scaling the 4K footage – just put a razor cut in clip each time you want to change scaling, like wide to close. Otherwise, you are dealing with lots of tedious keyframe work. By cutting clip into pieces, each piece is then treated individually when applying Motion effect. Remember, you can Copy/Paste Attributes from one clip to another which can really speed up production rather than configuring each clip one by one.

I’ve been shooting 4K stage events on wide angle, then I edit in 720p sequence and I can zoom in very far without degradation.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Jon,

Will just add that I just edited a Premiere CC project using 60p clips in a 30p sequence (59.94 and 29.97 to be technically correct) and when applying 50% speed, slow-motion was silky-smooth, beautiful!

Nothing special to do, it just works.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Jason,

Just tried this and it works, but does assume all clips start at same point. If they do not, one could razor cut them all the same to create a uniform start point (at the cut).

Add keyframes to one of the audio clips. Right-click and Copy that clip. Multi-select the other audio clips, then right-click and Paste Attributes

Hope this helps

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Martin,

If you can share what the destination is for your videos, we may be able to help suggest best encoding options. If sharing with another editor, then you’d want a good intermediate codec, but for most “delivery” options then H.264 is the current standard.

Thanks

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Are you looking for a Sequence Preset for QuickTime perhaps? Doesn’t exist. What you want is a preset that matches the footage, meaning frame size, frame rate, pixel aspect, fields.

Import your clips. In Project Bin, right-click a clip and select New Sequence from Clip. Or drag clip onto New Item button. Or dropping a clip into an empty timeline sequence, it should ask if you want to change sequence to match the clip. Any of those methods will yield same result.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi John,

You should be able to edit the clips natively. For best chance of success, follow these steps:

Copy ENTIRE contents of SD card to a NEW folder on your hard drive. Don’t copy just the video clips – copy everything over. There is metadata in the folder structure that Premiere needs. In Premiere, import using Media Browser, rather than File > Import.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi David,

Could you please post a screen grab? Not seeing those options on my end.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Martin,

Chris is right on with the QT Player advice, has long been a known issue for Premiere users. For what purpose/destination is the export used for? Maybe get away from QuickTime if you can.

As for keying, it’s mostly about the lighting. And it doesn’t have to be expensive – I get the metal bowl clamp-on lights from the hardware store and properly positioned, I can pull really nice keys.

Tips:

Keep talent at least 3 feet from green background is possible, to minimize spill (green reflection onto talent). This can be a real issue around head and shoulder areas.

Lighting on green backdrop does not need to be real bright, rather it just needs to be uniform/evenly lit as possible. The brighter it is, the more green reflected light spills onto talent, means harder to get clean key edges.

Put a small light source above and behind talent, to put some light on head and shoulders. This helps a lot with key edge, otherwise these areas fall off into shadow and there is not good separation between talent and background.

Record using 4:2:2 color if possible. Most camcorders (AVCHD, HDV) record using 4:2:0, which discards a LOT of color information, making it harder to get a clean key. Some camcorders now offer 4:2:2 recording. Or record to Atomos recorder or Black Magic Video Assist. Either will record to ProRes with 4:2:2 color (and far less compression which helps overall). Another option in the studio is connect HDMI or SDI output of “live” camera into a PC or Mac-based capture device, such as those from Black Magic. Some use Thunderbolt interface, others use a PCI-e card. Connect camera to capture card and record LIVE to computer hard drive with very high quality, bypassing compression that happens in-camera.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

To echo comments of others, DeNoising is incredibly slow! My workflow has become to denoise first, before starting any editing. I run DeNoiser in AE and export to a robust intermediate codec, then import cleaned files into Premiere to edit as a normal clip. Trying to scrub/edit in Premiere with DeNoiser applied is not a pleasant experience, everything grinds to a halt, thus I’m doing it first as a separate step.

In your case, doing both DeNoiser and Looks at the same time is really doing on a job on the render times!

DeNoiser II does offer GPU acceleration that can cut render times, but I believe it has to be an nVidia GPU and of course you’d need to enable that feature in the software.

I have on a few occasions actually did all the editing in Premiere first using original source clip, then later created a DeNoised clip in AE, and in Premiere, used the Replace function to get Premiere to replace all the edits with the cleaned footage. That way, I could do the long DeNoise render when convenient, and not have it delay the editing process. This was basically for wedding ceremonies where I would have just one long clip – if you have a lot of small clips, then this method may not be practical.

It’s possible that if the source footage and export destination were different drives, that could help with the throughput to some degree, but it really comes down to processing power for the most part.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

It’s normal that the Sequence Setting preset name may not exactly match the footage – there are no “ProRes” presets. Rather, Premiere will look for the first preset in the list that matches your footage, and by match I mean frame rate, frame size, pixel aspect, and fields.

So when you edit the ProRes footage in the ARRI preset, you are editing your native ProRes clips, nothing is being changed.

As for Export, never use “Match Source” – you never know what you might get! Rather, take charge and select the output that you need. As Ann stated, if you are on a Windows machine, you cannot export to ProRes, Apple does not support that unfortunately.

For quality similar to ProRes, try QuickTime > Cineform, or Avid DNxHD for instance. Of course, you may need to manually check/adjust the parameters to match source (1920×1080, 23.976, 1.0 pixel aspect, Progressive).

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers