[Trip Nixon]

A little bit confused about what you mean about utilizing the mercury playback engine. I have it set under preferences to utilize the mercury playback engine. What exactly are you meaning? Sorry for the incompetence.

[Trip Nixon]

Sorry…didnt mention, yea Im on mac and premiere.

As for an intermediate codec….I find it not very applicable as native runs just fine on my computer in CS5. I havent yet started to dabble with 10bit color space or firstlight by cineform…but havent really seen the need so much with what I do.

The problem is that, I run Neatvideo, magic bullet looks, ProDad mercalli on almost every clip to some degree (mercalli not as much, but the other 2 definitely). This makes for an EXTREMELY long export as neatvideo in particular is heavy. It takes me about a day to export a 35 minute wedding highlight video. (around 500 or more clips). All are getting manual color correction to each with gradients, spot exposures, etc. This does not include my transition effects like blurs, etc. I can really cut down on my exporting time if I make a master copy first, then use it to export my web, blu-ray, and other copies. As of last night, I started an export using quicktime with codec set to NONE….and the file looks like it will be 186gig. This is fine, as I really only need to KEEP this file for a short time while making the applicable copies, then I will just make a trimmed version of my project and archive the project minus the master copy. I dont usually EVER have to come back to a project, but I archive weddings for 1 year just incase. If I DID need to come back to it…I would have to do a new export of the project…but the chances of that happening are slim…and space (I have about 5TB) is not that big of deal…however, as I need space…I just think I will delete the master uncompressed versions slowly as time passes by and the wedding is mostly in the past.

Anyway, does this sound like a good workflow for me?

[Trip Nixon]

Thanks for the help! As for white balance…I have come to the conclusion that since I shoot weddings, and am trying to balance 3 camera colors at different times…and having to change memory cards at crucial times sometimes…its so much easier to use a preset on all the cameras than it is to try to manual white balance. I simply cannot do a manual white balance when a card changes during a first kiss or a speech…and I find it a lot easier to do post production when all the cameras had the SAME setting rather than different. Its easier for me to fix a general white balance then apply it to all the clips…than it is to try to MATCH cameras. (as I am partially color blind…not so bad…but can be a struggle sometimes to match colors) So yea, I always take the time to find the best preset…preferably one that makes the dress or suits look as close to true white as possible…leaning on the side of blue…because like you mention…noise in the reds are terrible! I agree!

About quicktime…is this really true…quicktime player decoder makes it noisy? This would explain a lot with my problems!!!!!! Can you show my some info stating this?

Also about color correction…I use first light and magic bullet looks…depending on the complexity of the project. All my projects get quite the post production, even for a wedding…but neat video is still seeming to be my best friend on getting rid of even small amounts of noise…I use in on every track. I mean, ive done everything in my power to get the perfect exposure, correct white balance, proper lighting, etc…and still get little bits of noise or…better word would be compression noise I think…mostly noticeable when viewing the files from the camera in quicktime for the first time. Once to youtube or vimeo…they usually look ok.