Adobe Premiere CS3

[Devin Johnston]

I've been using Premiere for about 5 years now and something I've always had problems with is the quality of the .wmv files. I save out my animations as uncompressed TIFF files and to make sure they play back as easily as possible in Power Point I export them using the Premiere media encoder in a windows media format. The problem is that the animation that comes out is always flat; the colors aren't nearly as vibrant as they are in a QuickTime. I'd use QuickTime all the time if I could but they don't work very will with Power Point which is what my office exclusively uses for presentations and that's not going to change any time soon. I guess I'm asking if anyone has figured out a way to get better color vibrancy out of this codec. I know it's a result of the compression being used but I just can't figure it out.

[bully712]

I don't know the answer, but I also wouldn't mind some information on the matter. I currently use Premiere Elements at my office, and the results that I get aren't too impressive. The animations never look crisp. I typically render out each sequence as an Avi from Viz, then I join them together in P-Elements. Before importing the Avi's to Premiere Elements, I play back the avi movies and they look great on their own. Should I be doing it differently? Should I talk my office into upgrading to Premiere CS3?

 

We always had problems with inserting animations into PP also. In order for it to work, I would use the smallest compression resulting in a crappy looking video. The last animation that I did, I suggested that when they got to the point in the PP presentation to show the video, I had them minimize PP and play the video from the desktop. This allowed me to show the movie at a higher resolution. Another Idea was to have 2 laptops and 2 projectors.

[Claudio Branch]

I use Premiere as well....minimizing the PP presentation and playing a Quicktime movie is probably the best solution if the brass doesn't want to pony-up for a rock-solid, long-term solution.

 

But, this topic keeps popping up it seems (right Devin?)...show your principals a side by side comparison of Keynote vs. PowerPoint.

 

KN can do everything that PP does only alot better...

[Jeff Mottle]

Have you tried playing with the video encoding settings? CBR with a high setting usually does pretty well, or if file size is an issue you could use VBR, again with a higher setting.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I have played around a few times with the WMV encoding directly out of Premiere, and from what I have experienced it is bunk, and very limited when compared to WMV encoding with Window Media Encoder. I always write an uncompressed AVI out of premiere, make sure you have the proper settings for progressive scan and such. You should do this anyway for back up purposes. Then launch Windows Media Encoder to write the WMV file. Windows Media Encoder has a lot more options available for compression, and is a free application that can be downlaoded from Micorsofts web site.

[Jeff Mottle]

I have played around a few times with the WMV encoding directly out of Premiere, and from what I have experienced it is bunk, and very limited when compared to WMV encoding with Window Media Encoder.

 

Hmm, that seems odd as it should be accessing WME directly when it does the compression. I know it does in both Camtasia and Sony Vegas. In fact you can create a preset from WME and then access it directly from any app that can render WMV format.

[Jeff Mottle]

Found this book on Amazon just now: http://www.amazon.com/Real-World-Video-Compression/dp/0321514696/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203360476&sr=8-2

 

It's due out in a few months, but I find the "Real World" series to be really good. I think I might pick this one up myself.

[Jeff Mottle]

here are a few resources for WMV encoding:

 

 

WME 9 compression settings

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/AdvancedEncoding.aspx

 

Codec Comparision

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1544886,00.asp

 

 

Microsoft Expression Encoder

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=BA187636-ABB6-4E55-9706-5BD346E39EA9&displaylang=en#Overview

 

http://www.microsoft.com/Expression/products/overview.aspx?key=encoder

 

VC-1 Technical Overview

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/vc1techoverview.aspx

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Hmm, that seems odd as it should be accessing WME directly when it does the compression. I know it does in both Camtasia and Sony Vegas. In fact you can create a preset from WME and then access it directly from any app that can render WMV format.

…for whatever reason Microsoft released a Windows Media plug-in for Premiere. If you use it, they try to force you to use one of their presets, which IMO are poor choices. I have had dramatically better results using Windows Media Encoder standalone. I am not sure if Windows Media Encoding is available directly in Premiere without the plug-in, maybe that is why they released it?

 

Premiere plug-in

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/premiere/default.aspx

 

Stand alone app…

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/AllDownloads.aspx

[JamesTaylor]

i know this will sound like a lame suggestion but have you tried appling an adjustment to the colour values prior to compression as a way to counter act the desaturation that is occuring?? you may find that a general value could be applied each time you compress an animation for use with PP?

 

aplologies for the lameness of the suggestion but sometimes things can be easier done the wrong way around!

[Derek Entesano]

As a crappy qucik solution in PP, I put a hotlink on a jpeg of th first frame of the animation that links to the quicktime file, and get it to open full screen. So it sorta looks like the animation is embedded in the PP.

[upshot]

You'll probably need to get a serious encoder like TMPGenc or Procoder and frameserve it. The Premiere encoder is the absolute basic.

 

I can't stand PP... It was pulling teeth to get everyone on board but I dropped it and headed to DVD. I know it's hard for the old dogs to wrap their head around, but once they see how easy it is to navigate they'll be jumping for joy. Encore is your friend. It's quite easy to use once you get used to it.

 

I need to push blu-ray now!

[Brian Cassil]

I've had the same desaturation issues using premiere and as an attempt to do better I have used movie maker that ships with XP. I'm going to assume that it uses the same media encoder that CHG has suggested but I'm not sure of that.