Premiere Pro CS3 & Quicktime

[Devin Johnston]

The only program I've ever used for encoding has been Premiere, I'm not oposed to using something else though.

[F J]

The only program I've ever used for encoding has been Premiere, I'm not oposed to using something else though.

 

lol dont do that.. i've not done extensive tests yet, but from what i could experience Premiere is either sucky or just takes too long to encode..

use Premiere just for organizing ur sequence (or if it doesnt have too complex transistions try VirtualDub and enable Direct Stream Copy under Video).. then tryout some of the encoders with WinAVI..

[Koper]

just seeing the exact same problem here. But, when I re-load the exported quality/color loss video back into premier and compare it to the raw timeline video they look the same, thus i'm inclined to think that its not the compression that's faulty but the player.

 

I have now installed the vlc player but haven't had any luck with seeing the same quality between the premier timeline vid and the vid being played through a player. I think its just a matter of calibrating the player, is it not?

[Ernest Burden III]

I also am dealing with the desaturation issue with QT. And I'm not sure if my client can play the H264 files I've written, so it's a pain to bias the whole project if the issue is specific to that codec. He may be able to play Sorrenson3 QTs, so I wonder if his QT Player is current. That's the problem with writing something to play on someone else's equipment, especially when they don't have tech staff to help.

 

What I have been doing is completing my Premiere edits and saving the project, then opening a new project and importing the first one. That way I can do a single gamma adjustment before writing out the QT file. I found that changing the default RGBgamma value from 100 to 72 (or 1.00 to .72, forget) get the result to look like the original renders did.

 

With Premiere CS3 and XP64 I have never been able to author to Windows Movie format--Premiere crashes every time. I can write AVIs, MPEGs...

 

Perhaps the suggestion of using QT Pro is a good one. I should also try to import the Premiere project into AfterEffects and write from there.

 

Where does all of our productivity go? Testing.

[Koper]

I hear you. Have you imported the exported video back into premier and compared it with the raw video in the timeline? that is whats confusing me the most now.

[William Alexander]

Quicktime h.264 has a gamma tag embedded that can't be altered... thus the percieved wash in the brightness.

 

FXPhd and Chris Meyer (AE & Compositing guru type person) are recomending using x.264.

 

See article below for background info

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/cmg_blogs/story/brightness_issues_with_h264_quicktime_movies/P0/

 

x.264 is Mac centric. About 2/3's the way down on page one is a link to PC oriented x.264. I have no idea how well they work on PC, so this is a reference only.

[Koper]

Funny thing, I'm having the same results with .mov and .wmv

 

I'll see what I can make of the x.264 just now, thanx

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Quicktime h.264 has a gamma tag embedded that can't be altered... thus the percieved wash in the brightness.

 

FXPhd and Chris Meyer (AE & Compositing guru type person) are recomending using x.264.

 

See article below for background info

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/cmg_blogs/story/brightness_issues_with_h264_quicktime_movies/P0/

 

x.264 is Mac centric. About 2/3's the way down on page one is a link to PC oriented x.264. I have no idea how well they work on PC, so this is a reference only.

 

Great find. Have you tested the 264 alternative for gamma correct"iveness"?

[Ernest Burden III]

This is a mess. Perhaps its best to 'upgrade to the previous position'...something like that...and use Sorrenson3 until Apple fixes the forced gamma issue. Who knows what someone will be playing your animation on?

 

Did I get that quote right, from the 'I'm a [smug hipster] Mac' commercial, the one where PC was going back to XP from Vista?

[Koper]

just seeing the exact same problem here. But, when I re-load the exported quality/color loss video back into premier and compare it to the raw timeline video they look the same, thus i'm inclined to think that its not the compression that's faulty but the player.

 

I have now installed the vlc player but haven't had any luck with seeing the same quality between the premier timeline vid and the vid being played through a player. I think its just a matter of calibrating the player, is it not?

 

Yes, I am quoting myself

 

seeing that I'm thinking its the player showing the wrong gamma,contrast, I found this player that you can easily manipulate how the video looks from brightness/contrast through to hue&saturation. its very very user friendly (even for clients) and most importantly, plays all formats that i know (and don't know)

 

its zoom player v6 - http://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_download.shtml

 

once you play a video hit shit+O to unhide/hide the color controls.

 

it also loads .mov files 10x faster and can actually list them in a play list

 

ok ok, I'll stop now

[Tim Nelson]

Have you guys tried the trick found in this link? http://www.videocopilot.net/blog/2008/06/fix-quicktime-gamma-shift/

 

I tried it and seems to work.

 

When I export from Premiere, I usually try to do something un-compressed, or very little compression, and then I use Mpeg Streamclip to make a nice sized Mp4.

[William Alexander]

Great find. Have you tested the 264 alternative for gamma correct"iveness"?

 

 

No not yet. WHen I found it was mac based I initially blew it off, then found out about that article. Don't deal that often with highly critical display issues and when they do occur, doesn't take all that much to correct. This issue has been present with quick time since h.264 was introduced I believe so it has become "it is what it is".

 

Trying to contact a vfx friend who plays with fxPhd and may has some insight as to how well it really works.

 

 

Ernest

"Dammit Jim I'm a PC" ... VistaXP - "220, 221 what ever it takes"

 

Cheers!

[Ernest Burden III]

I got back to my encoding with QT and H264 yesterday. I wanted to make an iphone version of my animation since my client loves his iphone.

 

First try--looked washed out, despite my gamma correction. That's frustrating, because with a gamma of 100>77 in place I had the overall light/dark look as a great match to the original rendered frames. Still felt off.

 

I paused the QT player on the desktop and then opened the original matching frame to about the same size. I did a screen-capture and opened this in Photoshop to compare and see what mods would make a better match. When I isolated each image on a layer I could use the histogram display to observe them, and what I noticed was that the black/white range of the QT image was compressed. Using 'levels' I was able to pull in the darks and the lights and get a close to perfect match of the images.

 

Going back to Premiere, I used the 'levels' effect again and brought the (RGB) Black Input Level and the White Level from 0 > 10 and 255 > 245 respectively--based on the changes I did in PS, they use the same scale. Re-writing the QT and the result is really, really close. I also added a minor increase in saturation in Premiere, but more than +2 (out of 100) over-did it, and a final gamma correction of 100 > 80 seemed right.

 

I do not know if that deviation of 10/256 from the black/white points I obderved are universal to the 'washed-out H264' issue or were specific to my file, but I would guess the first. I'll have to try this test on other files to know for sure.

 

In the end, I got a fantastic version of the animation running on my iphone. iTunes is a royal pain-in-the-butt, by the way.

 

One more thing--I think my client was having a problem playing my H264 files on his laptop (probably old QTplayer) so I have output the animation in Sorrenson3. I played them both at the same time, synched up, and was surprised to find that the H264 had bad aliasing at the same quality settings. I was able to get a better playing Sorrenson3 file at quality of 58 that H264 at quality 66. The S3 file is 201MB to the H264 at 158MB.

[Devin Johnston]

This problem has been around for quite a while and I find it hard to believe that Apple couldn't fix it by now.

[Ernest Burden III]

This problem has been around for quite a while and I find it hard to believe that Apple couldn't fix it by now.

 

Well I fixed it for them. Sorta.

[Dave Buchhofer]

Have you guys tried the trick found in this link? http://www.videocopilot.net/blog/2008/06/fix-quicktime-gamma-shift/

 

I tried it and seems to work.

 

this is what I've been doing also, though it doesn't play very nicely with the basic export for web (Saving the straight alpha into the mp4 causes the mov to not load it dynamically anymore!!!)