[Steve Siegel]

Thank you Tero,

Yes it is CS5 (sorry). I sort of suspected it was filming at 59.94. Why do they tell you it’s 120 fps, and then not make it clear in the instructions that you need to do manipulations to get there? Ruined a whole week of shooting because I thought I was getting 120 fps native.

[Steve Siegel]

The phenomenon happens even when the bitrate is fixed. Cineform is a good example. I put a 100 MB file into my NLE and export it out as
Cineform and it comes out as a 3.5 GB file. Thirty-five times bigger. What is all the extra stuff…you can’t blame it on bitrate.

[Steve Siegel]

I probably shouldn’t waste anyone’s time on this really naïve question, but hopefully someone will take pity.

I’m trying to compare file sizes on my original XDCAM-EX clip, and on it’s Premiere Pro CS 5 (Windows 7) export. I assumed that with every step taken in import and export, some codec compression would have been applied, and the result would have been a smaller, less detailed, file. Not so.

The original file, out of the camera was 132 MB. Importing it gave a file of 43MB, pretty compressed, but what can you do? Then with no alterations whatsoever, I exported with the best quality selectable into H264. It was 442 MB. In PhotoJPEG it was 880. Where is all this extra data coming from? I know that PPro isn’t making my clips more substantial. The extra data must be instructions of some kind? Does file size really have no bearing on the quality of the image?

Thanks for a simple explanation with as little jargon as possible.

[Steve Siegel]

Brilliant!

[Steve Siegel]

Matthew,

Thanks for the input. Unfortunately not all the frustration is due to user error. A lot is, but in a program that is so intricate there just is, and has to be, important material that is never explained. Take making a cropping mask with the pen tool. Several websites actually say cropping is not possible, or is difficult in AE. Well, with the pen tool it is very easy…but you have to do it just right in away that is not intuitive. Try to find a website that explains it! I finally found that Classroom In A Book solved most of my issues, clearly and easily.

[Steve Siegel]

I have no idea what the particulars are. All I know is what the Canon tech told me, and the fact that people at 20th Century Fox are able to do things with my uncompressed tape footage that they are only able other wise to do with higher quality stuff.

The only experiment I have done is this. Take a clip from tape and import into Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Export as MPEG 2 24 fps, 1920×1080. You get an 80 MB file. Export the same clip as an AVI file using the setting “uncompressed 4:2:2” and get a 2 GB file.
Blow each of these clips up 2 or 4 times and the pixellation on the first one is noticably worse than on the second. There has to be more information in the second clip, and it has to come from somewhere.

[Steve Siegel]

Michael,

Thanks for your reply, but I think you misunderstood the question. I now have an answer that may interest you. Of course you can bypass tape and record vis HDSDI to a flash card in 4:2:2. That’s a given.
What is generally unrecognised, however, that MPEG2 4:2:2 data is stored on the tape as well. It is also apparently saved when footage is captured (at least in Adobe Premiere CS4) It just isn’t accessed by the commonly used codecs. It is accessed by exporting as “uncompressed”. The file you get is perhaps 9 times the size of a standard QT or AVI file.
I had the opportunity to look at the same footage displayed on a large professional monitor. First we looked at “raw” footage imported from tape. Then we looked at the same clip imported and exported as uncompressed. The pixellation in the former was absolutely absent from the latter at the same magnification. There was evidently information hidden in that file that could be teased out to give a superior image, and in my limited experience, was similar to that obtained with a Nanoflash.