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cartTutorials » Adobe a Safe Harbor blogUpdates to DVD Export Settings for MXO2 CS5.5 Users
If you’re using Premiere Pro CS5 or CS5.5 on the PC with Matrox MXO2 hardware, there’s some important information we’d like you to be aware of to get the best DVD export quality. This info only pertains to exporting "MPEG-2 for DVD" from a Matrox NTSC sequence – if you’re using a Matrox HD or Matrox PAL sequence, the cropping does not apply and you may disregard these instructions. With the CS4 drivers for MXO2, a Matrox NTSC project was 720x480, but starting with CS5, Matrox changed this to 720x486. Since DVD uses 720x480 resolution, the 6 extra lines need to be cropped at export to get the proper 720x480 size for DVD. If you don’t crop these lines, the entire image will be scaled down, resulting in a quality loss. Also, it’s very important to crop a specific number of lines from the top and bottom, as choosing the wrong top and bottom numbers will soften the output quality. With CS5, you need to crop 5 Top, 1 Bottom. With CS5.5, there are two cropping options to consider. If using the "Export" button to begin the encoding, choose 4,2. If using the "Queue" button that sends the job to Adobe Media Encoder, you must use 3,3. If you are working with a Matrox 486p sequence, use 6,0 for CS5, and 4,2 for CS5.5 (using either export method). To set cropping, first set up all the parameters for the DVD export as you normally would. Next, at the top left of the Export window, select the SOURCE tab and click the cropping icon at the top left to make the crop settings active. Click on the "0" to the right of "Top" and then enter a number from the keyboard. Next, click the "0" to the right of "Bottom" and enter the other number. Do NOT hit the "Enter" key – this will launch the export immediately! Just click in another area of the export window to deselect the crop settings.
Now, you can toggle between the SOURCE and OUTPUT tabs to see the "before and after" results of the cropping. The image shown under the OUTPUT tab should fill the screen with no black borders. After double-checking that you entered the correct cropping numbers and that the output image looks correct, you can proceed with the encoding.
For more information, CS5 and CS5.5 users can reference pages 82 and 88 of their respective Matrox user guides. The above instructions are only for export to DVD; when exporting to a Matrox .avi file, CS5 and CS5.5 users should refer to pages 79 and 84 of their respective user guides for cropping charts. Staying Native or Going Intermediate? Transcoding and Premiere Pro CS5
In this brief video, Worldwide Product Evangelist Jason Levine will explain the basis of transcoding, showcasing the workflow outside of CS5; he''ll then show you what a native workflow is all about in Premiere Pro CS5, and explain some scenarios for staying native or moving to an intermediate codec. This video also points out some of the misconceptions about transcoding, but also highlights some of the round-tripping capabilities of CS5 with FCP and AMC. Adobe Premiere Pro 3D Stereoscopic Realtime Editing
In this 7 part series, Dave Helmly walks you through a complete 3D Stereo workflow with Premiere Pro CS5. This is a start to finish workflow and a must see for anyone getting started with 3D Stereo. It covers Active , Passive and Anaglyph viewing as well how to play your videos on a consumer 3D TV. This features a new 64 bit CS5 plug-in called Cineform neo 3d HD. Part 1 of 7 Part 2 of 7 Part 3 of 7 Part 4 of 7 Part 5 of 7 Part 6 of 7 Part 7 of 7 Make sure to subscribe to our blog to receive more tips and tutorials! 64-bit OS benefits Adobe editors
For years, computers have used 32-bit operating systems, meaning that the largest number the system memory could address would be 2^32, or 4GB. In reality, users could expect just over 3GB actually available for use by applications other than the OS. Data pathways inside the computer would also be limited to 32-bit. For standard-definition video editing, 3GB might have got the job done for most Premiere users, but many editors are now commonly dealing with HD video resolutions of 1920x1080 and beyond, with 2K and 4K cinema resolutions being popularized by the RED camera. An HD video frame has about 6x as much data as an SD frame, and 4K video is about 5x larger than HD, so you can appreciate the need for speed when working with these video formats. 64-bit addressing provides additional RAM capacity and makes it easier for the computer to deal with these large amounts of data more efficiently. With a 64-bit OS like Windows 7, Mac OS X, or Snow Leopard, the 2^64 addressing capability allows for the theoretical use of a ridiculous amount of RAM - 16 billion GB! Of course, your particular system’s hardware design will determine how much RAM can be physically installed and utilized. Both Mac and PC have offered a 64-bit OS option for a while, but most software was not optimized to fully utilize the benefits. While Photoshop already supports 64-bit, Adobe Premiere and After Effects are being completely rewritten as 64-bit applications, and these new versions will no longer run under a 32-bit OS. Being 64-bit native will allow Premiere and After Effects to each use up to 16GB of RAM, which will greatly improve performance. 4GB of system RAM will provide baseline Adobe performance, while 8GB would keep most editors satisfied. So-called "Power Users" may opt for 16GB to 32GB to meet their needs. Adobe recommends 12GB for "optimum performance", and since many new motherboards take RAM modules in threes rather than pairs, 6GB and 12GB PC configurations would replace 4GB or 8GB options. Benefits for Adobe users will include improved Dynamic Linking, longer RAM previews in After Effects, less re-rendering, and better overall performance and reliability. Working on HDR still images with 32-bit floating-point color will be a much better experience with a 64-bit system. The overall performance gains of a 64-bit OS and more RAM, along with new 6-core processors and GPU-supported effects promise unprecedented HD editing power with the 64-bit Adobe applications, and I for one am really looking forward to it! Watch for a review of the Safe Harbor Tsunami 64-bit PC running the new Adobe products, coming soon. Patching a Video Background Using Photoshop
You just shot a really exciting seminar and can’t wait to get back to the studio to review the footage. The guest speaker looks great – the lighting, framing and focus are right on! Then to your dismay, you see it – the unwelcome item in the background. It could be a glaring red "Exit" sign, a restroom sign, or anything else that you find distracting or annoying, including a wayward bystander. Well, there is hope. The technique discussed here works for video shots that are "locked down," meaning the camera is on a tripod and doesn’t move. Movement includes zooms – the scene must be static! This would often be the case for an interview, a speaker at a podium, or an unmanned balcony camera at a wedding. The idea is that you don’t want the background to move – it must be totally stationary for this trick to work. Also, no part of the subject’s body can move in front of the item you wish to remove. On a recent interview shoot, I set up some additional lighting off to the side of my subject. The light caused a bit of a reflection on the glass of a picture frame in the background, but I didn’t think much of it – until I got back to the studio and reviewed the clip on the HD big screen. My "little" issue was no longer so tiny. In fact, it was suddenly commanding a lot of attention, to the point at which I was considering a do-over! I then realized that in just a couple of minutes, I could easily "fix it in post," as the saying goes. In this example, I’m editing with Premiere CS3 and using Photoshop CS3 for the graphics work; however, any NLE should work, as well as other paint programs that work with layers and save to formats that include an alpha channel. The first step in the "fix" is to use your NLE software to "grab" a frame of the video clip that clearly shows the offending item. In CS3, just position the play head on the desired frame on your timeline, and use File > Export > Frame to create a still image of the video frame. The file format shouldn’t matter – I used the default .bmp file type. CS4 (and other NLEs) will have different methods of exporting a still, but just access the HELP menu if unsure of how to export a still from the video. In my example, the offending clip is 1080i HDV, so the frame size is 1440x1080 pixels. Note that 1080i HDV uses a PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio) of 1.333, so when I import the still grab into Photoshop, it no longer looks like 16:9 widescreen video – it appears more square like a 4:3 image. The reason for this is that paint programs assume "square pixels" with a 1.0 PAR, so video grabs may appear distorted. It’s important to realize that if you were to use the "Circle" tool in Premiere to create a perfect circle on this grabbed image, the circle would look oblong when viewed back in Premiere, since the 1.333 PAR of the video project would "stretch" the image horizontally. Not to worry – in Photoshop, just go to Image > Pixel Aspect Ratio and choose the correct PAR preset to match your video format. This tells Photoshop how to interpret your image shape and everything will then come out right.
I next use the Clone Tool to replace the area I want to remove with clean background from the surrounding area. If you don’t know how to use the Clone Tool, check the HELP menu or Google it and you’ll likely find many tutorials. Cloning allows me to "paint" using other areas of the image as my "color," so I can choose a clean area of wall for instance and paint that over an EXIT sign. In this example, I need to touch up the corner of the picture frame. It doesn’t have to be perfect, since I’ll be the only one that’s looking for it. The casual viewer is watching the subject and would probably never notice if the fix isn’t perfect.
Once the offending area is painted out of the picture, the next step is to isolate that area. I first create a New Layer, then turn off the Background Layer so it’s transparent. Working on the topmost image layer, I use the Rectangular Marquee tool to draw a box encompassing the repaired area of my image, then use Select > Inverse (Ctrl + I) to Invert the selection, thus choosing everything outside the selected area. Hitting the DELETE key removes everything but the repair area, leaving me a nice patch to overlay above my video clip in Premiere. For irregular shapes, you can define the selection with the Lasso tool and freehand a shape.
Next, SAVE the image using a file format that retains the alpha channel (the transparent area that was just cut out). I use the Photoshop .psd format since Premiere likes it. During Import into Premiere, be sure to choose the correct layer of the .psd file that you wish to display. In Premier, just put the overlay on any video track above your original video clip and it should mask out the offending area. Note that if the lighting should change during the scene, your patch may become visible since the surrounding area can become lighter or darker. I made a patch to cover a stain on a church carpet in a wedding video, and it looked great…for a while! During the wedding, some clouds moved in to block the sun, changing the lighting in the church, and then "the patch didn’t match" the surrounding carpet (I decided to leave the stain).
If you have the Photoshop skills, adding some transparency to the edge of the patch may help it to blend in better, though with consistent lighting, even a hard-edged patch should be invisible. Having put my patch over the glaring photo frame, it looks perfect and I can again sleep at night. Since I edit with the Matrox RT.X2 realtime edit hardware, no rendering is required. Premiere software editors may get a red render bar. There is another fix along these same lines that you may find useful. Say you have a great shot, then someone wanders into the frame in the background. Grab a still from a frame of the video clip that has a clean background, then another frame with the offender in the background. Open both frames in PS, then Copy and Paste the bad image over the clean image, each on its own layer. Using the Lasso tool, draw around the bad guy. Disable the bad layer and select the good layer. You should still see the "marching ants" of the Selection box (now over the good layer) – Invert using Ctrl + I and delete the background. There’s your good patch of background to hide the offending body.
Note that I would never remove the good Padre from a wedding video – this is simply an example video clip I had handy. As discussed, this will not work if your camera moves at all, but in many situations it can provide quick and satisfying results. If you have decent Photoshop skills, you could even use this overlay method for product placement, company logos, or whatever else you might want to add in to the background. Change the Cola can to a Root Beer, or whatever you need to do. Have fun with it! Consistent White Balance for Live Events
When videotaping live events such as wedding ceremonies, school plays, concerts or dance recitals, the videographer typically has no control whatsoever over the lighting. To make matters worse, the lighting may be constantly changing during the event. A church may have stained glass windows, meaning any entering sunlight may be tinted by the color of the glass. In this case, manually white-balancing the camera may produce good colors, but what happens when the outside light coming in alternates between sunny and cloudy? It can have adverse effects on the white balance. Also, cameras set up at different angles in the church may produce inconsistent colors due to the mixing of electric lighting and window lighting, resulting is mismatched clips when mixing footage from two or more cameras. Stage plays and dance recitals will usually have mood lighting applied, with different scenes having unique lighting treatments to set certain moods. There is no simple way to compensate for all the different setups. Most camcorders allow one custom WB preset, and some now offer two manual presets (A and B), but even two presets will likely not cover the range of lighting you will encounter. You also may not even have an opportunity to test the lighting to set your white balance prior to the event. Many videographers will forego manual white balance and simply set all cameras to the same preset, such as incandescent. While the colors in the recorded video may be off, the idea is that all the cameras will have a matching image and the colors can be corrected in the nonlinear editing suite. Once an appropriate color fix is created in the software, it can be applied to video from all cameras for matching results. I recently did a two-camera shoot of a school play. Some scenes were well-lit, while others were very dark to simulate evening scenes, and many scenes made heavy use of pink gels, giving the scenes an overly pink tint. I simply set both cameras to the "incandescent" WB factory preset, and only changed the exposure during the shoot, leaving the WB constant.
In post, using Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 with the Matrox RT.X2 hardware, I was able to quickly color correct each scene from the close-up camera. I then used "Copy" and "Paste Attributes" to apply the identical effects to the wide camera clips, creating a perfect match when cutting between cameras. There is no possible way I could have attempted changing white balance between scenes during the live shoot. There are certainly many situations where a custom white-balance setting may give the best results if you know the lighting will remain constant for the duration of the shoot. For ever-changing situations as described in this article, your best bet may be to choose a common preset for all cameras and color correct in post. Each situation is unique, and as a video professional you will need to make the call on each shoot yourself. For the play I’m editing, I’m very happy with the speed and ease with which I’ve reached good, matched colors throughout the production. Leaving the white balance alone during the shoot allowed me to focus on composition and exposure, which was enough work running two cameras by myself! The end results speak for themselves.
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