Need Help, Rough Cut Due TONIGHT!

[Nick Norton]

Shot a music video with a Sony HVR-Z1N at HDV 1080i 60i.

 

Not familiar with the camera (nor HD in general) and am having trouble capturing and exporting with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0

 

I captured everything in 16:9 aspect ratio, full quality i suppose, HDV. Adobe saved everything as mpeg's, which i thought strage becuase i am used to having .avi files.

 

When trying to edit, everything is zoomed in... guessing because of the 1080i.

 

I can Scale the footage down to 45% and it looks like the right size, but when i go to export the footage as a Microsoft DV avi, the footage ends up losing quite a lot of quality.

 

 

 

Please, anyone that could help me out would be doing me a huge favor. I need something to show my producer tonight, and i'd like it to look good!

 

Thanks-

 

Nicholas

[Adrian Sierkowski]

YOur export is converting from HD to DV quality resizing it all to 720x480 and applying the DV Codec on it. You'd probably want to export uncompressed or something of the like. I'm not sure about the Premier Workflow anymore (i havn't used it since version 6.0) but I know in FCP you can export just with the current settings and it should apply the sequence preset to it; Premier should have something very similar.

[Nick Norton]

If i export at Uncompressed Microsoft AVI, nothing shows up when i play the file in Windows Media Player.

 

 

...god damnit i have PC's.

 

 

Thanks-

 

nicholas

[Adrian Sierkowski]

YOu might not have the right codec installed for windows media player. I have this same issue on my g/f's macbook pro playing back HD files.

I think PP can still go right to DVD, maybe export to that?

[Phil Rhodes]

I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve here.

 

Premiere captured the MPEG data off the camera and saved it as MPEG because that's what it is. HDV cameras shoot MPEG. It is their blessing and their curse.

 

Your footage isn't fitting the project becuase you've created a standard-def project and tried to put high-def material in it. You need to create a new project with an appropriate preset for your material, or create one manually. Then you should be able to timeline all your material and cut as normal.

 

But you're not giving us all the information - are you aiming for an HD finish or SD?

 

P

[Nick Norton]

Since i did not shoot on HD tapes, nor have HD capturing hardware... i think i'll be forced to end up with SD.

 

 

But i really don't know (like i said, i am a complete novice when it comes to HD)

 

I'd like to finish with the highest quality possible, so if that is HD and i am capable of an HD finish i'd go with that. (however i have no idea how to accomplish this)

 

 

Thanks again-

 

Nicholas

[Hal Smith]

Since i did not shoot on HD tapes........... Nicholas

The camera will record HDV to any miniDV tape. HD tapes are just a slightly better version of a regular miniDV tape.

[Phil Rhodes]

> Sony HVR-Z1N at HDV 1080i 60i.

 

Then you shot it in HD, didn't you?!

 

If you want to end up with SD (and it will be very nice SD, since you shot it HD) you can do it one of two ways:

 

- Cut the HD and downres the result. This may be faster, especially if you're not doing a lot of picture manipulation which will take a lot of rendering

 

or

 

- Downres everything to SD and cut that.

 

P

[Nick Norton]

If you want to end up with SD (and it will be very nice SD, since you shot it HD) you can do it one of two ways:

 

- Cut the HD and downres the result. This may be faster, especially if you're not doing a lot of picture manipulation which will take a lot of rendering

 

or

 

- Downres everything to SD and cut that.

 

P

 

 

With Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0, how do i downres to sd?

[Michael Collier]

I think you already downressed the picture when you imported HD material into an SD project and then reduced the scale by 45%. When you export to DV you have created a downressed file.

 

You do have the hardware to capture HD. HDV goes over firewire just like DV did. It doesn't take any special hardware, just a computer fast enough to handle it. sounds like you already captured the footage in HD

 

If you would like to finish in HD, like was said earlier, you must first change the project settings to a 1080i project, and edit there. You will find you don't need to resize any shot, and it will show up in full HD quality. Once your done you can print back to tape (again in HDV over firewire, maintaining the resolution) and play directly from camera to a plasma screen or something similar.

 

If you decide SD is the way to go, but are unhappy with the compression artifacts that DV gives you once you downres, then change your render setting so you export to an uncompressed SD file, then send that for MPEG compression for DVD. If you compressed to DV, then the MPEG compression will pick up the artifacts and excentuate them.