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  1. Hi all,
    SCENARIO:
    - Premiere Pro 2.0/.../CS5
    - Original video in Full-HD
    - PAL timeline
    - Import our big video
    - Let's create a title, or a shape... anything which may seem vectorial... and overlay on the video.
    - Now export in Full-HD

    1) Will the video be treated like: downscale (PAL) -> upscale (Full-HD) ...so that quality degrades?
    2) How about elements which can be easily handled as vectorial (titles, shape, illustrator file ....). Will be processed with downscale and then upscale?

    Thank you
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  2. Member budwzr's Avatar
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    I don't know about Premiere, but in Vegas there is no such thing as vector graphics. It's all raster. Use PNG with alpha to bring in outside work, JPG will get pixelized.
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  3. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Adobe Premiere uses rendered raster typefaces.

    Adobe Illustrator uses vector text. Can be scaled to any size or resolution.

    Name:  study1-e-vector.png
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    Name:  scrnfnt1.gif
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Size:  5.5 KB<- raster

    In video, anti alias grey scale is used to smooth edges

    Click image for larger version

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    Last edited by edDV; 9th Feb 2011 at 00:27.
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  4. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Actually, edDV, I think in both Premiere, Vegas, FCP and AVID typefaces used are vector (PS, TTF, OTF) sources, which remain as a vector during edit time, usually with a low-rez raster preview, but get rendered to the video raster resolution at render/export/play time.

    Similarly, Premiere and Vegas have vector-based shape libraries with low-rez raster previews, which also get rendered to the final video raster resolution at render/export/play time.

    None of these allow for manipulation of the individual bezier points (whereas Illustrator does), but most allow global adjustments (size, rotate, stretch).
    Anti-aliasing is applied during the render-to-raster.

    If those were TRUE raster sources, the quality would quickly deteriorate and you would see anti-aliasing of previous anti-aliasing which would be very blurry, or anti-aliasing of larger raster blocks, which would be noticeably square-ish.

    Earlier versions did use raster versions, but I'm pretty sure they've been upgraded, just like Photoshop used to use raster type until ~v6 or 7.

    Scott
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  5. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    To answer the OP's question,
    1. If source=HD, timeline=SD PAL, and export=HD, then YES you will get down+upscale and degradation.
    2. The vectors (if they are that), will get rendered to the resolution of the timeline (SD), and then upscaled for export. Still SOME degradation.

    Curious, WHY have the timeline in SD at all? Make it HD and then it might be able to smart-render.

    Scott
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  6. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    It would be fairly straightforward to do an A/B test to confirm my theory.

    Create a bit of video with a separate type layer overlayed. Render at same size. Reimport.
    Take original and rotate the the type layer and video layers separately by 45 degrees. Render at same size. Reimport.
    Then take the 1st render, rotate 45 degrees, Render at same size and Reimport.
    Then, do a splitscreen of Render#2 vs. Render#3.

    If they are identical in quality, they're raster, if #2 is better quality than #3, then they're vector.

    Scott
    Last edited by Cornucopia; 9th Feb 2011 at 03:55.
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  7. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Just meant they got rasterized and antialiased during export render.

    Typeface masters can be large bitmaps or vectors.

    Illustrator text can remain vectorized until converted in printer.
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  8. Originally Posted by Cornucopia View Post
    To answer the OP's question,
    1. If source=HD, timeline=SD PAL, and export=HD, then YES you will get down+upscale and degradation.
    2. The vectors (if they are that), will get rendered to the resolution of the timeline (SD), and then upscaled for export. Still SOME degradation.

    Curious, WHY have the timeline in SD at all? Make it HD and then it might be able to smart-render.

    Scott
    Thank you everybody...

    Nothing wrong with HD timeline... SD is more manageable in terms of cpu work...

    My idea was preparing a model for subtitles in SD... work/edit/subtitling etc with a low-res video...
    Then new HD timeline, import SD project with all trimming /titles inserting, changing the clip with the original hd master and export HD with titles on...

    Is it clear? I'm sure 99% video will be almost perfect... but will I notice degradations on titles?
    Thank you...
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  9. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by elmuz View Post
    Originally Posted by Cornucopia View Post
    To answer the OP's question,
    1. If source=HD, timeline=SD PAL, and export=HD, then YES you will get down+upscale and degradation.
    2. The vectors (if they are that), will get rendered to the resolution of the timeline (SD), and then upscaled for export. Still SOME degradation.

    Curious, WHY have the timeline in SD at all? Make it HD and then it might be able to smart-render.

    Scott
    Thank you everybody...

    Nothing wrong with HD timeline... SD is more manageable in terms of cpu work...

    My idea was preparing a model for subtitles in SD... work/edit/subtitling etc with a low-res video...
    Then new HD timeline, import SD project with all trimming /titles inserting, changing the clip with the original hd master and export HD with titles on...

    Is it clear? I'm sure 99% video will be almost perfect... but will I notice degradations on titles?
    Thank you...
    This work flow is known as proxy editing. It needs testing with titles in Premiere. Just test it with one scene to see if the titles render at HD resolution (great) or upscale (bad).

    If your method doesn't work, here is what I'd try.

    1. Create a 16:9 SD proxy project, import HD video (or converted SD 16:9 proxy) to the timeline. HD video will downsize when rendered for preview.

    2. Create, render and preview titles in SD. Only the frames with titles will need to re-render.

    3. When satisfied, change project properties to HD resulution. Re-render the timeline. The video and titles will will now render in HD resolution. If you used SD proxy video, replace with the HD clips before render.
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  10. Member budwzr's Avatar
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    Proxy editing is fine for camera footage, but I don't see how you can scale up generated text. Outside text, fine. In Vegas the text is generated based on a font size that you determine. Wouldn't 36 point text always be 36 point?

    Maybe I'm missing something? I usually do.

    Addendum: I just tried it in Vegas, and the text remains the same size when the project size changes. Maybe I should clarify that by "same size" I mean it should shrink if I change my timeline from 720X480 to 1280X720, but it doesn't.

    So that means the point size you select is NOT related to actual screen pixels and just a number with no actual scale, and just a reference. Seems like.

    So to the OP: WYSIWYG
    Last edited by budwzr; 9th Feb 2011 at 16:08.
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  11. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by budwzr View Post
    Proxy editing is fine for camera footage, but I don't see how you can scale up generated text. Outside text, fine. In Vegas the text is generated based on a font size that you determine. Wouldn't 36 point text always be 36 point?

    Maybe I'm missing something? I usually do.

    Addendum: I just tried it in Vegas, and the text remains the same size when the project size changes. Maybe I should clarify that by "same size" I mean it should shrink if I change my timeline from 720X480 to 1280X720, but it doesn't.

    So that means the point size you select is NOT related to actual screen pixels and just a number with no actual scale, and just a reference. Seems like.

    So to the OP: WYSIWYG
    No the point is in Premiere you would prepare text at SD resolution and then re-render at HD project resolution. This what the OP wants to do presumably to speed preview rendering on a slow laptop while preparing text. There is no text scaling going on, the project is re-rendered at HD resolution.

    The text size would be WUSIWIG relative to a 16:9 frame size.

    In Premiere you have the typeface source as either vector or very high resolution bitmap. When you render a timeline, the text is rasterized to the project resolution. If you change project resolution, a new timeline render is required and the text gets re-rasterized to the new resolution.
    Last edited by edDV; 9th Feb 2011 at 16:31.
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  12. Member budwzr's Avatar
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    OK, I get it. Like a still photo, you can upsample it. Well that's good to know. I guess I never thought about it because all that is taken care of automatically. "It just works", as those pectin peels might say. Hahaha
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  13. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by budwzr View Post
    OK, I get it. Like a still photo, you can upsample it. Well that's good to know. I guess I never thought about it because all that is taken care of automatically. "It just works", as those pectin peels might say. Hahaha
    There is no "upscale" of titles. Titles get re-rendered (created from the typface master data) each time you change project resolution settings. Vegas is slightly different. They maintain a low res auto preview but re-render to project resolution during export. I haven't run every combination but this is how it appears to work.
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  14. I was wondering this exact thing so I did try it (the reason for having a SD timeline is that I had an existing image montage project I wanted to update to HD) It used imported still images with plenty of resolution and vector typefaces for the titles so I had 'hoped' that by taking the SD timelines and importing them into a new HD timeline I could scale them up and that Premiere would be smart enough to just 'figure it out' and use the original sources that had the resolution needed re-rendering the type at the new resolution.

    Short answer - it doesn't.

    The titles are obviously upscaled/pixelated from rasters generated at SD resolution. So now I'll have to re-create the project from scratch to get the HD output I wanted - unless someone else knows a better way?
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  15. Member budwzr's Avatar
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    How can you import a timeline into a new timeline? That doesn't even make sense.

    So you're saying you have a render in SD that you want to resample to HD because you don't have the source files anymore, and that it's getting stretched instead of resampled?
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  16. Originally Posted by budwzr View Post
    How can you import a timeline into a new timeline? That doesn't even make sense.

    So you're saying you have a render in SD that you want to resample to HD because you don't have the source files anymore, and that it's getting stretched instead of resampled?
    I import/insert one or more timelines into another all the time. Here is what I meant by that:

    I have a photo montage project that is multilingual:
    Timeline 1: just the images and transitions for those images along with the underlying music track
    Timeline 2: contains timeline 1 on it along with English Titles
    Timeline 3: contains timeline 1 on it along with French Titles

    I do this a lot in Premiere even when I'm building up projects that are not multilingual, it's a lot like using layers in Photoshop and helps keep things organized. You just drag one timeline into another inside the project to do it.

    I have all the original source materials here (this is all in one project) what I tried doing is creating a new timeline 4 (@1080p) where I inserted timeline 1 and 2 from above and scaled each to about 226% (or basically SD -> HD) the reason for doing it this way is that the scale kept everything in place and aligned, but at the new resolution - I had hoped Premiere would use the original source materials but it looks like it renders things to SD first and then composites them together. I'm NOT using any prerendered material - just the timelines within the project.
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  17. Not in premiere. Nested timelines are rasterized

    In AE, there is a "collapse transformations" button, which allows it to treat the nested composition vector layers as a vectors, instead of being rasterized

    In premiere you would have to scale it in the 1st timeline
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  18. Originally Posted by poisondeathray View Post
    In premiere you would have to scale it in the 1st timeline
    Know if there is any way to do that in one fell swoop - ie just scale the whole thing proportionally?
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  19. When I said scale it in the 1st timeline, I mean the sequence settings should be HD. i.e setup an HD project. I don't know of an "easy" way to do this besides re-doing parts of the project.

    Do you care more about ease of use ("one fell swoop"), or do you care more about quality ? Premiere upscaling of raster elements isn't very good. Many people use other programs

    If your other raster source elements like photos weren't SD, then you should be ok. This is why it's advisable to do an HD project with HD source material, even if you weren't planning on HD exports (it gives you more options later). It's easier to downscale then upscale.
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  20. Member budwzr's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by pawprint_net View Post
    I do this a lot in Premiere even when I'm building up projects that are not multilingual, it's a lot like using layers in Photoshop and helps keep things organized. You just drag one timeline into another inside the project to do it.
    Oh, I get it, nested projects.

    Well, I would say Premiere is doing what's logical according to the order of what you fed it.
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  21. Originally Posted by poisondeathray View Post
    If your other raster source elements like photos weren't SD, then you should be ok. This is why it's advisable to do an HD project with HD source material, even if you weren't planning on HD exports (it gives you more options later). It's easier to downscale then upscale.
    Oh I totally agree about working in HD now...

    However, this is a 5 year old project. It was done in SD back in the day just because the system we had back then couldn't hack HD. However All the photos are 2000-4000pixel images that have been scaled DOWN for the SD timeline so we have plenty of data. It's just a complicated timeline and I wanted to be sure I wasn't missing something obvious before I went back through the whole thing and re-create it exactly the same just larger. It will use all the same source media though.
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  22. Is this the same version of premiere as 5 years ago (probably not) ?

    How do you have it set up with your edits ? Describe "complicated timeline" in more detail. Are they just photos, with some overlays with the titler?

    Did you try selecting the SD sequence, ctrl+A to select all, ctrl+c to copy, navigate to the HD sequence then ctrl+v to paste? If depends how you have the scaling setup; if you had the SD timeline set to scale automatically, then this might work ok - give it a shot . You might have to redo or reposition some elements. There might be issues with PAR and interlace for SD (non square pixel) depending on the original project setup
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  23. Can't remember what it was first created with - could be as far bask as Premiere 1.5 it's been around a while - slowly being changed and updated over time from version to version.

    The image timeline includes transitions both default transitions and keyframe based scaling and placement of images.

    I didn't try a copy and paste but I will and let you know if that makes it easier - thanks for the idea.
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  24. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    You could also try this:
    1. Make a safety copy of your original SD project.
    2. Open one copy of the SD project and, using the 1st timeline (the core/photomontage-only one), change your project settings to HD rez.

    What happens to the layout of timeline1? If all the elements are still there in correct layout/scale, then render to HD settings and look at it. If it's clear and sharp, you're 1/2 way there. Try the copy & paste thing with one of your text layers on top of it and see if it retains its proportion to overall scale.

    Personally, I don't know why you nested timelines when you could have just had multiple text layers and just hidden the ones you didn't want to show during an export. It also helps you keep ~sync between languages that way. This also may have made things easier with the proxy change.

    Scott
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  25. I tried converting the timeline and/or copy and past of the image timeline into a HD one but it's completely messed. It may serve as a starting point as it looks like the source media is retaining it's scale some of the time but not all of the time and the positions of the sources are being automatically adjusted. This resulted in many images remaining small and appearing in a relative position to their SD location. So I might be able to start there and just manually re-scale all the images again.

    I had MUCH greater success with the titles timeline. That scaled perfectly by doing a copy and paste and then using the clip menu's Video|Scale to Timeline with everything selected. So that will save me about half or more of the work which is huge - so Thanks for that!

    I'm rending out a HD version now using the upscaled images and HD titles on top just to see how that looks.

    As for why to use nested timelines. I find it MUCH easier to deal with. First the images timeline is 12 tracks and the titles have 6 tracks per language. Rather then deal with 24 video tracks on one timeline I can keep the numbers down. Personally I find that much more manageable then a single multi-lingual timeline with what would turn into 24 video tracks (Yikes!) This was actually Adobe's recommendation at one of their Max seminars a few years ago.
    Also we may do other languages in the future so nested keeps things segregated - I could add German later by just doing one more timeline. I don't understand the comment about proxy though as there are no proxy elements here. Personally I see no reason NOT to use nested timelines and as I said I use them in projects all the time to keep things grouped and facilitate changes across versions and/or languages.
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  26. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Sorry your Pix aren't all scaling correctly - sounds like Premiere's fault there. Do what you can do.
    Glad about the copy&paste of the titles working ok.

    I guess I just can't visualize the necessity of it, but SIX TRACKS PER LANGUAGE? 12 TRACKS FOR THE PIX? No wonder you need to nest! I don't have anything at all against nesting, but really only when it's necessary. I think it might be your background - I learned at the tail end of Linear A/B editing, so you figured out all kinds of tricks one can do while still keeping it down to 2 (or maybe 3) tracks. I do use more tracks now, but usually for complicated 3D/CGI/Compositing-style stuff.

    Nevermind the proxy mention, I got your thread mixed up with another. It's clear you're not using proxies.

    What to do now? Go through your SD Picture timeline and make note of all the sizes (relative to the window size). Then do the setings change to HD and slug through it all, changing the sizes so they're still the same relative. Not an easy fix in Premiere, sorry. One more reason why I use Vegas now for my low-mid end editing & compositing needs.

    Good luck,

    Scott
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