Re: Help with editing and trouble shooting @ NWFC Equipment Room

[Aaron C. Wong]

Hi Will et al

I'm really sorry I missed the additional help session; I didn't get off work until 9 (was not planned but interestingly enough was for my first paid stop motion gig !)

My main question is what are you exporting as - format, codec, framerate, bitrate, whatever you can tell me. I know Premiere sometimes defaults to a 720 NTSC output and that may be the issue. If you describe your procedure in detail I might be able to help, Dixie. 

Also, if anybody needs to use any additional additional post help or workstation usage, my studio is available (2505 SE 11th). I'm usually here on the weekends and somebody is around on weekdays. Let me know and I bet we could work something out.

Best and good luck to all,

Aaron

--

AARON C. WONG  |  CINEMATOGRAPHER + EDITOR |  T: +1 347.661.7937  |  www.aaroncwong.com

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 1:19 PM, Will Vinton <willv...@comcast.net> wrote:

Hi Dixie  - 

(I'm including everyone since many may need a little help with post-production issues.)

Regarding your problem with interlaced lines on your exports from Adobe Premiere, there should be a de-interlace option for a whole export, but in worst case you should be able to  de-interlace individual clips as an effect while editing.  But again, you should be able to de-interlace the whole export.

I checked with Pam at NWFC regarding your trouble shooting needs and editing issues. Here's what Pam MInty said:

As for troubleshooting, anyone in the equipment room can assist with this. Since we're all Mac as well, we may be learning along with them, but I'm sure we can assist with figuring it out. Can he or she bring a laptop in?   -   Pam

So take your issues and questions to them if that's convenient.  

WILL VINTON

VINTON ENTERTAINMENT

1224 SE River Forest Road   Portland, OR  97267

Message 503 786 2026        Mobile 503 720 5555

willv...@comcast.net                wi...@freewill.tv

www.willvinton.net                        www.freewill.tv

[Dixie Downey]

Thank you!

I've been trying out different settings and what I have now is much better than when I started. However, I still have the interlace lines in my pan shot and in some of the faster action sequences.

I'll try to list the settings in the various places they are found. It's a challenge finding all these things, and I may not have listed them all, so feel free to ask questions.

First off, the basics:
1. I'm running all this on a desktop with Windows 7. It's not a laptop, so it's not portable and I cannot bring it in to the NW Film School.
2. I'm running Adobe Premiere Elements 9.0

Under Edit - Project Settings - General:
Display Format is 30fps Drop-Frame Timecode (other choices are "30fps Non-Drop-Frame Timecode" and "Frames")
Title Safe Area - 20% horizontal and 20%vertical
Action Safe Area - 10%horizontal and 10% vertical
Display Format - Audio Samples (other choice is "Milliseconds")

Under Edit - Project Settings - Capture
Capture Format - DV (other choices are "HDV" and "WDM Capture")

Under Edit - Project Settings - Video Render
Video Rendering Maximum Bit Depth is NOT checked
Previews Optimize Stills IS checked

Under Edit - Preferences - Stop Motion Capture
Onion Skinning Opacity Level is set to 50
Number of skins is set to 3
Playback Frame Rate is set to 24

Under Edit - Preferences - Device Control
Devices is set to "DV/HDV Device Control" (other choices include "none" and "USB Video Class 1.0 Device Control")

Those are all the general settings I can find that would relate to what's displayed on the screen. Moving on to output settings:

Under Share - Computer - QuickTime, there are quite a few settings. The default that comes up each time is "NTSC DV." However, lately I have been changing that to "Animation" which is looking cleaner. So, my current settings are:
Video codec - "Animation" (other choices are "BMP", "Cinepak", "Component video", "DV/NTSC 24p", "DV25 NTSC", "DV25 PAL", "DV50 NTSC", DV50 PAL, DVCPRO HD 1080i50, DVCPRO HD 1080i60, DVCPRO HD 1080p25, DVCPRO HD 1080p30, DVCPRO HD 720p50, DVCPRO HD 720p60, Graphics, "H.261", "H.263", "H.264", JPEG 2000, MPEG-4 Video, Motion JPEG A, Motion JPEG B, "None", PNG, Photo - JPEG, Planar RGB, Sorenson Video, Sorenson Video 3, TGA, TIFF, "Uncompressed YUV 10 bit 4:2:2", "Uncompressed YUV 8 bit 4:2:2", and "Video)
 Quality is set to 100
Width is 1024, Height is 683
Frame Rate - 24
Field Type - Progressive (other choices are "Upper First" and "Lower First")
Aspect - "D1/DV NTSC (0.9091)" (other choices are "Square Pixels (1.0)", "D1/DV NTSC Widescreen 16:9 (1.2121)", "D1/DV PAL (1.0940)", "D1/DV PAL Widescreen 16:9 (1.4587)", "Anamorphic 2:1 (2.0)", HD Anamorphic 1080 (1.333)", "DVC PRO HD (1.5)", "Custom")
Render at Maximum Depth is NOT checked
Depth - 24 bit (other choices are 8 bit, 16 bit and 32 bit)
Advanced Settings  - Key frame every 1 frame is NOT checked, Optimize Stills IS checked
Bitrate Settings Limit data rate to 1,000 kbps is NOT checked

I tried selecting "D1/NTSC Widescreen 16:9 (1.2121) for the Aspect because I thought Will said that a 16:9 aspect would be the best fit. However, all of my stills, credits and titles have a bright green vertical line on the right hand side. That line is not there on the animation. Granted, on the "D1/DV NTSC (0.9091)" aspect setting, the green vertical line is still there but it is thinner and not as bright (noticeable). Those only show up in my title and credit sequences and in the introductory stills that show different background shots of my set.

Thanks for all your help. Adobe Premiere has enough settings to make my head swim!

Thanks,
-Dixie
--

Dixie Downey, Admin. Assistant

Plant Services, George Fox University

x2016

[Aaron C. Wong]

Hey Dixie

Sorry it took me so long to reply. How are you bringing in the work you do in Dragon into Premiere? Are you exporting a movie from Dragon and if so what are you exporting as. Quicktime I'm assuming? Also what are camera are you shooting on? If you're exporting a movie from Dragon you would want it ideally at 1920x1080 (which is 16x9), hi-resolution, 24 fps (since you're shooting on 1s it sounds like), and a codec like Animation (which is good but huge), DVCPRO 108024p (which is an okay codec), or MPEG4 or H.264 (not the best codecs for editing but you should be okay, since you're on a PC MPEG4 is probably your best bet).

You could also export the image sequence which is even better but I'm not sure Premiere Elements works with image sequences.

Once you have that 1920x1080 movie file (again I'm assuming this a quicktime .mov or a .mp4 file) you bring that into premiere and edit that. Then when you export use "same as source" "same as sequence" or some other method to try to match these dimesnion, pixel aspect ration, codec, etc. so it's the same as what you brought in from Dragon

NTSC DV is going to be standard definition 720x480 or 720x486 (or some smaller dimension) and you probably want HD. Also, make sure you have square pixels, and not D1 or anything else, those are for broadcast on TVs.

Also, render at maximum depth whenever possible.

I hope that's helpful. Please feel free to email or call if I made things worse (:

Best and can't wait to see it,

Aaron

--

AARON C. WONG  |  CINEMATOGRAPHER + EDITOR |  T: +1 347.661.7937  |  www.aaroncwong.com

[Aaron C. Wong]

oh one more thing, forgot you're PC editing so .avi files are good as well, Cineform codec if you can

--

AARON C. WONG  |  CINEMATOGRAPHER + EDITOR |  T: +1 347.661.7937  |  www.aaroncwong.com