Prem Pro CS 5.5 + Lagarith anyone? et. al.

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

Lagarith and CS 5.5 et. al?

I'm starting to use CS 5.5 in earnest and am confused about how to export the entire timeline as a Lagarith AVI and what settings it takes to get it done as it should be. I'm using the 64-bit version on Windows 7.

My goals with Lagarith are twofold: back-up project as lossless but more importantly in order to create a AVI file which is part of the process when converting HDV programs to SD.

Let's fast forward to Adobe media encoder video tab!

1) For the purposes stated above, should I check off the "Prevent upsampling when decoding" or not? what ramifications does that have?

2) Should I choose YUY2 or YV12 for colorspace? What's better for Premiere encoding to MPEG-2 DVD after it gets converted/downscaled elsewhere to SD?

3) Now for the kicker. The aspect ratio for HDV source material is typically set to 1440 by 1080. When manually typing in either one of those dimensions it automatically comes up with the other as "wrong".

a) When I type in 1440 it gives me 1440 by 960.
b) When I type in 1080 it gives me 1620 by 1080.

There's no obvious way of getting around it.

Is there a square versus non square pixel issue here?

I don't want areas of black displayed when viewing the projected output file when the entire screen should be filled and 16:9.

Please lead me along the path here to a solution. How to I get 1440 by 1080?

4) Lastly, what does frame blending do? When should it be selected or left un-ticked? Does it make an important visual difference?

Thanks in advance for contributions to my growing CS 5.5 knowledgebase.

[poisondeathray]

1) For the purposes stated above, should I check off the "Prevent upsampling when decoding" or not? what ramifications does that have?

This is what the homepage says
http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

Checking this option and having the mode set to RGB or RGBA will prevent Lagarith from performing any colorspace conversions when encoding or decoding video.

2) Should I choose YUY2 or YV12 for colorspace? What's better for Premiere encoding to MPEG-2 DVD after it gets converted/downscaled elsewhere to SD?

YUY2 or RGB . Interlaced YV12 is problematic

If you are coming out of Premiere and have used filters like color correction, you will be in RGB, and should use RGB for everything until final delivery

RGB takes more bandwidth than YUY2 . RGB is not subsampled 4:4:4, YUY2 is Y'CbCr with 4:2:2 subsampling

Things like graphics, titles are RGB overlays. They will be more sharp and crisp compared to YUY2

Unfortunately DVD is YV12 4:2:0 subsampled. Each colorspace conversion causes some quality loss (even with a lossless format like lagarith) - the point is to reduce the number of uncessarly conversions

3) Now for the kicker. The aspect ratio for HDV source material is typically set to 1440 by 1080. When manually typing in either one of those dimensions it automatically comes up with the other as "wrong".
a) When I type in 1440 it gives me 1440 by 960.
b) When I type in 1080 it gives me 1620 by 1080.
There's no obvious way of getting around it.
Is there a square versus non square pixel issue here?
I don't want areas of black displayed when viewing the projected output file when the entire screen should be filled and 16:9.
Please lead me along the path here to a solution. How to I get 1440 by 1080?

I don't have it open right now, but I think you set the PAR Pixel Aspect Ratio to 1.333 then enter 1440 x1080 in the dimensions. HDV uses NON square pixels, upper field first. If it's still not working , uncheckmark the chain link icon that constrains options

4) Lastly, what does frame blending do? When should it be selected or left un-ticked? Does it make an important visual difference?

It does nothing unless you have speed changes or use deinterlacing.

Frame blend off means frames are duplicated for speed changes instead of blended mix. Same with deinterlacing, blend = blend deinterlace. Blend off means cubic deinterlace.

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

Update:

Sorry, I need to catch up as you are most helpful by relaying crucial information which is a vital part of a solution.

Wed + Thursday I was on out of state on a 2 day trip and had no capability to further this discusssion.

Friday (today) am scheduled to go on another trip returning home about mid next week.

Please bear ne as I find your assistance and advice to be extremely vauable!

I'll be in touch as soon as achievable.

Thanks so much

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

Thanks for the addtional information and for clear answers provided.

I spent most of the last week out of state and am now resuming this mission.

[edDV]

I fail to see why Lagarith codec* should be used with Premiere Pro except for possible archive after the job is done. For post production use a tuned codec (Cineform, Avid dnxhd, AIC, ProRes422). HDV is an alt.


*Lagarith is for deep freeze archive, not for high performance editing.

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

edDV,

Lagarith only comes into play:

After the editing is finalized then the HDV 16:9 master will be:

1) Both archived and

2) Converted to SD for dvd delivery to the local cable station.

Can one use Pro Res 422 with Premiere?

Curious.

[poisondeathray]

Can one use Pro Res 422 with Premiere?

Yes, you can decode it , but not encode it on a Windows machine

[edDV]

edDV,

Lagarith only comes into play:

After the editing is finalized then the HDV 16:9 master will be:

1) Both archived and

2) Converted to SD for dvd delivery to the local cable station.

Can one use Pro Res 422 with Premiere?

Curious.

Yes deep freeze archive. Someday you may need to revive it (e.g. mars mission).

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

It's ok edDV,

I usually keep all of a project assets and master timelines stored on an external HD just in case I need to resurrect and re-assemble a project in the future!