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Best Export Settings for Super 8


Aaron Razi

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Hey all.

 

Just got my new roll of E-6 Ekta back and I am really happy with it. It looks pretty great on the projector, but of course, it looks a little bit less great on the scan. I did some color work on Adobe Premiere Pro and was wondering what the best export settings would be. In the future, I'd like to share the footage on some social media, but I fear the quaint grain of Super 8 will become gross and bitty once compressed on these platforms. What are the best settings to prevent that from happening?

 

Right now, I'm working with a 1080p scan, at 50 CBR and Rendering at the Maximum Depth, and a frame rate of 15fps.

 

Thanks so much.

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Premiere doesn't like 18fps. If your import file was 18fps, the only way to keep the sequence 18fps is to drag your clip onto the "create new sequence" button. You can't just create a new sequence with that framerate. It's annoying. If your film was shot at 18 but transferred at 24, then you need to "interpret" the clip to read as 18 then do the above steps. THEN exporting.... only uncompressed MOV's with ProRes or animation codec can do custom framerates (I could be wrong here and there could be others) whereas most "consumer" media containers like mp4 with h.264 compression don't support custom framerates like 18fps. SO you should either export as ProRes or export at 24fps knowing that there will be some slight interpretation to your file which honestly, isn't noticeable but to the very trained eye. If you do 15fps, then you're actually losing what little frames you do have at 18fps. So better to add too many frames at 24 then remove some at 15. When you export at 24, the playback will still be at the correct rate also.

 

Hope that all makes sense.

 

Personally I do either ProRes HQ files or for smaller files I do mp4 files with h.264 compression at 50mps 2-pass VBR, 24fps, and "Use maximum render quality" checked and I get solid results.

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Thanks Nick! That makes much more sense. I'm gonna use Pro-Res for bigger files, but I'll stick to H.624 for lighter exports. (I couldn't figure out how to do custom framerates, so 24 will have to do). Why do you recommend VBR 2 pass over CBR??

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Which part of the custom framerate part were you having trouble with? Within Premiere or exporting? Exporting to h264, you cannot do custom framerates. Only industry standard framerates like 23.98, 24, 29.97 etc. So I choose 24. Like I said, the Premiere workaround is a little janky and I can try to give a better explanation if that's where you're stumbling.

 

I chose VBR 2-pass because it's slightly better on compression than 1-pass VBR and is better on size than CBR since it gives more or less data to frames depending on their complexity. BUT you sacrifice rendering time as it's double length. Not a huge deal to me as I'm normally exporting out 3-5 min films. I still use the other two settings depending on time/quality needs. If it's a quick thing or I just want to preview it or pass to a client for approval, I might do CBR because it's faster.

 

Also not sure where you'll be uploading but I'd actually recommend always exporting out a ProRes master edit file THEN from that creating your small versions as your needs require. Sites like Facebook (I think), Vimeo and YouTube all will accept ProRes files for upload so I figure why not give them the best you can before they smash it with their own flavor of compression. Also this depends on your membership level at Vimeo and how much space you can upload per week.

 

Then if you want a small version for putting on a flash drive or something, you can convert that master ProRes file in Adobe Media Encoder and it will be much much quicker than re-exporting from Premiere with your color edits.

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It was shot at 18fps. But for some reason Premiere won't let me export at 18. So it defaulted to 15. Would you recommend 23.97?

 

Use Resolve. It's free, and it supports legacy frame rates including 18fps.

 

And it's a million times better than Premiere. You only have to pay for it if you want to *export* at resolutions higher than UHD. You can bring in 4k files and work with them, but there are some limits on file output sizes unless you spend $300 for a license (which is roughly the same as a year of Premiere but it's a permanent license)

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • Premium Member

 

Use Resolve. It's free, and it supports legacy frame rates including 18fps.

 

And it's a million times better than Premiere. You only have to pay for it if you want to *export* at resolutions higher than UHD. You can bring in 4k files and work with them, but there are some limits on file output sizes unless you spend $300 for a license (which is roughly the same as a year of Premiere but it's a permanent license)

 

Not to mention the real reason to use Resolve...color. Still can't believe they made it available for free.

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