Common Adobe CS workflow

[Mylo]

I havent really thought about this until I got a fairly chunky amount of footage to edit few weeks ago.

So, for example, lets say we have few hours of footage, with few hours of audio being recorded outside the camera (Zoom or similar). Whats the most common (fastest?) workflow if one wants to:

- color correct (balace the look on all the clips you end up using from the footage)
- color grade
- throw in scenes with some effects (AE...I know its easy with Dynamic Link, but how to do it (or how did they do it) without it? Render from AE, doesnt that take away from the IQ?)
- noise removal
- fitting the recorded audio to the final edited clip (I suppose there is no other way but to import the entire audio file into the Premiere and then manually look for where to cut? )

[poisondeathray]

I havent really thought about this until I got a fairly chunky amount of footage to edit few weeks ago.

So, for example, lets say we have few hours of footage, with few hours of audio being recorded outside the camera (Zoom or similar). Whats the most common (fastest?) workflow if one wants to:

- color correct (balace the look on all the clips you end up using from the footage)
- color grade
- throw in scenes with some effects (AE...I know its easy with Dynamic Link, but how to do it (or how did they do it) without it? Render from AE, doesnt that take away from the IQ?)
- noise removal
- fitting the recorded audio to the final edited clip (I suppose there is no other way but to import the entire audio file into the Premiere and then manually look for where to cut? )

It depends on the type of project, and whether or not you are working with others . There might be interoperability , format or OS restrictions imposed. Some people have certain preferred ways of doing things or "habits", if you're not flexible there might be conflicts

In general you sync up audio first , or you will have headaches later - it helps if you used a clapper or similar method during the shoot. Premiere doesn't have an autosync feature - interestingly , the less expensive FCPX (mac) does. However, there are utilities such as Plural Eyes 3 that can help you as well .

Noise removal usually done at least after a rough edit - the reason is there is no use wasting time processing footage that will cut out anyway (good NR filters are usually very slow, even GPU accelerated filters)

Usually grading is done near the end because effects on the timeline or through dynamic link will slow down editing (although if you have CS5/6, the mercury playback engine makes many effects render much faster) . It also gives you maximum flexibility if you or clients decide they "want a different look" later on . Often you will showcase several graded versions and let the client decide what they like

It also depends if you are "1-man team" or working with others, and what type of "effects" you are intending. Some effects may require you to have an idea the intended final look beforehand . In productions where you have different people working on different things, a rough ungraded edit is sent off at an early stage, so the FX people can get started right away especially if there is any 3d compositing or more complex effects

If you don't have dynamic link or are working in a team, you send off either proxies (if you need a quick check) or full quality lossless exports. Many times "near lossless" is good enough (e.g. cineform, prores422) . Final renders are usually never done in AE (fewer options, no mulitpass) . Commonly used lossless formats out of AE - TIFF sequences, PNG sequences, QT Animation codec (mov), uncompressed AVI, lossless compression (lagarith) AVI .

[budwzr]

- color correct (balace the look on all the clips you end up using from the footage)

That would be done using the "White Balance" tool. Correcting white balance is critical, do not overlook this step. What you want is to neutralize any strange tones or casts. Also, you may need to desaturate to prepare for the color grade.


- color grade

Create a grade layer that gives you the look you want, and composite that on top. A film look is an applied effect achieved by combining different brightness/contrast/saturation and "tone" or color palette. Technicolor is an example of this effect, but that's a "system", whereby you shoot for dynamic range then apply a "lookup table" in post.


- throw in scenes with some effects (AE...I know its easy with Dynamic Link, but how to do it (or how did they do it) without it? Render from AE, doesnt that take away from the IQ?)

Simply render out to a PNG sequence, or 32 bit RGBA. Get a portable USB drive.


- noise removal

Use the noise removal tools, or brightness/contrast.


- fitting the recorded audio to the final edited clip (I suppose there is no other way but to import the entire audio file into the Premiere and then manually look for where to cut? )

As you trim media, the audio will trim too. If you have dialog, that can be mixed with a soundbed, and you can add narration as well. External audio, like laughter, fireworks, car horns, whatever, can be brought in, or created as Foley from a sound fx collection.


Bottom Line:

Never commit changes that you can't roll back to. By this I mean save your project in incremental steps as separate files.

Prerender as you go, and build up like a pyramid. Each row in the pyramid should be a project file. This way, when you get to the top and somebody says they want to change Rudolph's nose to blue, you can go back down and easily do it.

[budwzr]

Personally, I never buy "canned" anything, because my NLE can do it free. So can AE and Premiere. Here's an example of a simple saturation tweak:



The trick is to figure out the color palette to use, then use that as a whole project treatment.

[Mylo]

Amazing replies guys...hats off to you.

One question though - what if I want to use non Adobe color grading app like Resolve? How can I export the footage without losing info, grade it, then import it back to Premiere?

I'm afraid those export processes will ruin some of the IQ, no?

[poisondeathray]

One question though - what if I want to use non Adobe color grading app like Resolve? How can I export the footage without losing info, grade it, then import it back to Premiere?

I'm afraid those export processes will ruin some of the IQ, no?

As mentioned above - you use a lossless intermediate or Near lossless. Resolve is most compatible with MOV container , so you might use something like animation codec (if working in RGB) , or Prores HQ, or DNxHD

[smrpix]

This tutorial is pretty good http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0S2MJT9wDY

Obviously you can ignore the BMC camera part. It doesn't always work properly on clips without timecode.

[Mylo]

(if working in RGB)

I suppose this means for web only use? Are there any correlations between After Effects 32 bit editing with my monitors 32 bit color?

I'm confused by those bits...I've seen people write my camera (Lumix GH2) is 8 bit camera...Im lost

[poisondeathray]

(if working in RGB)

I suppose this means for web only use?

No, there are different color models (commonly called "colorspaces" ) . It's a very big topic, but the short version is AE works in RGB, your camera records AVCHD in Y'CbCr. Converting back and forth is lossy (even if you use a lossless codec) . Once you're in a certain color space, it's a good idea to stay there . The more "trips" you take, the more quality loss you incur

Most delivery formats are 8bit, Y'CbCr, 4:2:0 subsampled. This is the same as your AVCHD. Flash, blu-ray , DVD, ipad/iphone - all of them use 8bit, Y'CbCr, 4:2:0

Are there any correlations between After Effects 32 bit editing with my monitors 32 bit color?

I'm confused by those bits...I've seen people write my camera (Lumix GH2) is 8 bit camera...Im lost

No , you're using the term "bits" in 2 different manners

A "32bit" display is really 8 bits per channel (BPC) , That is 8 Red, 8 Green, 8 Blue. The other 8 is for alpha channel. (8+8+8+8=32) This means each channel can have 2^8 values or range from 0-255 .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth

So 10 BPC would mean 2^10 or 0-1023 values per channel . As you can see there are more "slots" for range of expression. This means less banding and more acccurate representation

Sometimes it's expressed in bits per pixel (BPP), that's what your "32bit" notation for your display comes from

Your original footage isn't RGB, it' Y'CbCr, but subsampled 4:2:0. That is the CbCr channels are 1/2 the resolution . If you have 1920x1080 footage, this means CbCr are only 950x540 - that's why everybody "hates" 4:2:0 footage - the color resolution is so low.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling

Increasing the BPC doesn't magically make it true higher bit depth footage. You can only have as good as what you started with. If you encode it to something like openEXR 32-bit sequence, it's still 8bit data underneath. The main reason why people work at higher bit depths is the intermediate calculations are more precise and you introduce less banding

[budwzr]

That was very informative, as usual.

But wait! There's a solution! If you really want to have the ultimate resolution, nothing beats a 35mm slide. It has unlimited resolution.

If your doing corporate level, or YouTube, work, or your camera is a Lumix, 8-bit is fine. That camera shoots AVCHD, which is only 17 Mbps, and can't shoot over 30p. A Canon T3i shoots regular AVC at 50 Mbps at 60p.

[Cornucopia]

That was very informative, as usual.

But wait! There's a solution! If you really want to have the ultimate resolution, nothing beats a 35mm slide. It has unlimited resolution.

If your doing corporate level, or YouTube, work, or your camera is a Lumix, 8-bit is fine. That camera shoots AVCHD, which is only 17 Mbps, and can't shoot over 30p. A Canon T3i shoots regular AVC at 50 Mbps at 60p.

No it doesn't, when you consider MTF/Lines. That's why 2k & 4k have become popular with pros. You can ultimately scan down to the granularity of the silver halide crystals (B/W) or dye (Color) and that's as fine as you could get. And it is finite.

@OP,
I would say that most video/film pros follow a similar workflow to this:

1. Log & Ingest & inspect
2. Rough cut edit w/rough or no audio, review
3. Fine cut edit, including full audio (but maybe not sweetened yet), review
4. Color correct & Noise reduce (possible review)
5. VFX, Compositing, review
6. Color Grading, review
7. Conform, marry with sweetened audio & rollout, review

Similar things would be happening on the audio side...

Scott

[budwzr]

I guess I meant they're continuous tone, and analog.

I did read in the Filmmaker's Handbook, that if you decompress using the same codec that compressed it, it would be similar to the original.

[Mylo]

@ Cornucopia : what do you mean by "log and ingest" ?

Your guidelines make very much sense, color grading at the end (nobody wants to ruin the footage at the beginning ) but one thing troubles me - review.

Im working with Premiere and the only review I can make (as far as I know) is to export (render) the footage to some sort of file, I choose h264 mp4 most of the time.

Is there a quicker way to output a preview footage that Im not aware of?

I see people on some board talking about proxy placeholders - yet I dont know how to "make" those myself...I suppose those are the lower quality previews?


Also, are there any "better" export/convert tools than Premiere? Ive seen people comment on the difference when same files are being rendered out from Premiere and After Effects - how is that possible, dont they both use same engine?


@ poison
So whats the process of conversion from YCbCr? You taught me that Premiere handles AVCHD file by assigning it a YUV space. Does this footage ever become RGB, for example when I encode the video to H.264 mp4?

I understand why camera shoots YCbCr, they presume people would be using the footage on DVD players, TV screens etc. But, at this moment I dont think I will be doing any TV projects, I would say 95% of my work will be web based, Vimeo YouTube based.

In practice, what would be the result of rolling a web video file on a TV? Would it cause some kind of color anomaly, like pale colors, or over saturation?

[poisondeathray]

I see people on some board talking about proxy placeholders - yet I dont know how to "make" those myself...I suppose those are the lower quality previews?

There are many workflows that use this. Use search terms such as "offline edit", "proxy workflow" . There are many tutorials out there . Essentially they are lower quality, lower resolution, less compressed versions . Usually proxies are used for ease of editing

For example you can make batch proxies in AME. Many free options to batch convert in ffmpeg/ffmbc . Even 5D2RGB

Also, are there any "better" export/convert tools than Premiere? Ive seen people comment on the difference when same files are being rendered out from Premiere and After Effects - how is that possible, dont they both use same engine?

AE uses a different engine, unless you use Adobe Media Encoder . Typically you "add to render queue" in AE (if not using dynamic link), but it's limited in render options - no multipass for example . That's why lossless intermediates, tiff sequences, png sequences etc.. are commonly used . Final distribution renders are usually done in other software

@ poison
So whats the process of conversion from YCbCr? You taught me that Premiere handles AVCHD file by assigning it a YUV space. Does this footage ever become RGB, for example when I encode the video to H.264 mp4?

In CS5/6 It has a complete Y'CbCr workflow. It's possible to completely avoid RGB conversion by using the "YUV" labelled filters . However, RGB effects, transitions will require conversion to RGB in those segments (you can see this as yellow or red render bar on the timeline) - the whole timeline isn't converted unlike old version of premiere. Don't worry - it's not a big deal - you won't be able to see the quality loss unless convert a few times back and forth and you zoom in .

I understand why camera shoots YCbCr, they presume people would be using the footage on DVD players, TV screens etc. But, at this moment I dont think I will be doing any TV projects, I would say 95% of my work will be web based, Vimeo YouTube based.

In almost all models - camera sensor data is debayered to RGB . It's the recording module that causes conversion to YCbCr (with subsampling) . It's not only because of usage/compatibility, it's also for bandwith reasons - that's why you subsample in the first place . Most prosumer/higher end models record more color data (at least 4:2:2 which is usually required for broadcast submissions)

In practice, what would be the result of rolling a web video file on a TV? Would it cause some kind of color anomaly, like pale colors, or over saturation?

Not sure what you mean by "rolling" ? Do you mean just playing ?

If so - it works fine - It's more dependent on end user configuration of how it's being played (hardware settings, calibration , software settings, graphics card/drivers if being played by computer)

[budwzr]

You can easily create a proxy with AviDemux, unless...dare I say...you're on a Mac.

[smrpix]

The tutorial I linked to earlier says to export from Premiere as a Final Cut Pro xml (even if you aren't using FCP.) The xml links to the original footage. It works. No proxies or duplicates necessary.

The issues you may run in to are:
Be sure Resolve knows where to find the original footage
If there is no timecode you may link to the wrong part of the original file

Worth a try.

[Mylo]

I've looked into some explanations on proxy editing...seems to me it's suitable for either slow systems or extremely high def, heavy footage. As far as I'm aware of my PC handles GH2 footage fine, and me being the one man band, I really dont indulge into heavy AE effects, I can't do it all myself
I'll try edit some mts files in proxy method, though

As for rendering, me being a web-only guy at this moment, I never felt the need for anything more than Adobe Media Encoder, in the past 2 years I don't think I've exported nothing but mp4...the only trouble is testing what kind of quality vs. size is best for these Tubes and Vimeos...the distribution-friendly encoders are Sorenson and the like, right?

Also, I never really found a solid explanation on those 3.1 4.0 5.1 profiles in Media Encoder...

How can I create a proxy with AviDemux, can the program be paired with Premiere?

The XML export in Premiere doesn't work in Resolve for me, the Resolve won't play with mts files

[poisondeathray]

I've looked into some explanations on proxy editing...seems to me it's suitable for either slow systems or extremely high def, heavy footage. As far as I'm aware of my PC handles GH2 footage fine, and me being the one man band, I really dont indulge into heavy AE effects, I can't do it all myself
I'll try edit some mts files in proxy method, though

If there is no reason to use proxies , then you why waste time ?

As for rendering, me being a web-only guy at this moment, I never felt the need for anything more than Adobe Media Encoder, in the past 2 years I don't think I've exported nothing but mp4...the only trouble is testing what kind of quality vs. size is best for these Tubes and Vimeos...the distribution-friendly encoders are Sorenson and the like, right?

It's not really a big issue, because youtube/vimeo re-encode for their streaming versions. Just upload a fairly high quality version. There are small things you can do to optimize for youtube/vimeo, but in the grand scheme they make little difference. The main problem or "quality killer" is the lowish bitrates used by those sites when re-encoding

If you were using your own website and hosting, then it's a different story. You have more control , then the options become more important . (You're also paying for bandwidth, so you definitely want to optimize)

Also, I never really found a solid explanation on those 3.1 4.0 5.1 profiles in Media Encoder...

Levels and Profiles place restrictions on encoding settings such as certain bitrates, resolutions, frametypes (e.g. use of b-frames). They are meant to ensure compatiblity with devices. For example blu-ray is limited to High@L4.1 . 1st ipod was limited to baseline@L1.3 IIRC . Usually, if a device is compatible with a certain level/profile it can play lower ones as well (there are exceptions) . Usually, the higher the profile and level, the fewer the restrictions, thus the potential for higher quality, if everything else is equal . (But there are other differences that can account for differences in end quality like encoder used, preprocessing - different but big topics)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Levels
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Profiles

How can I create a proxy with AviDemux, can the program be paired with Premiere?

It's difficult to batch with it, there are more suitable tools that can do the jobs better, like AME . I would say no benefit , only negatives, except being free (in terms of generating proxies; it's certainly useful for other things)

[Mylo]

Top!

Speaking of subsampling, now that I have some more knowledge about it.......is there a place online where I can see, download the untouched, raw 4:4:4 footage...I would love to see how it looks, grades, etc, for the fun of it

never mind, found it

[poisondeathray]

Top!

Speaking of subsampling, now that I have some more knowledge about it.......is there a place online where I can see, download the untouched, raw 4:4:4 footage...I would love to see how it looks, grades, etc, for the fun of it

Note "raw" and "4:4:4" are 2 different things .

In the video camera word, "raw" usually denotes undebayered sensor data, unprocessed (this is before in-camera DSP and processing)

Not only that, marketing departments usually use "raw" very loosely, so if you get "raw" footage from somewhere it probably isn't really "raw"

4:4:4 can mean RGB or Y'CbCr 4:4:4 . Very few cameras actually resolve true 1920x1080 4:4:4 (as measured by test charts) - ie. even though they might be recording that format. You need massive oversampling (by higher resolutions) to actually get that high .

Some places you can look are Red forums for some red footage , look at the black magic cinema forum for some cinemaDNG's . These are a complete joy to grade compared to 8bit AVCHD