Premiere Pro and After Effect Workflow Question
by Chris Shumway
on
Apr 24, 2009 at 1:11:14 pm
Up to this date I've been doing most of my color correction, dissolves, effects and titling in Premiere Pro- what I've recently been reading about is that you should actually do your onlining in after effects to avoid compression and artifacts the NLE introduces.
I try to maintain the highest quality for whatever finished format I use- but am I actually shooting myself in the foot by exporting in premiere? Should all dissolves/color correction and effects be done in AE while the rough cut is assembled in Premiere?
Re: Premiere Pro and After Effect Workflow Question by Dave LaRonde on Apr 24, 2009 at 3:44:24 pm
Sorry to have to say this, but that HDV mpeg video is REALLY lossy, so of course you're going to get artifacting if you constantly re-render.
I'm a Final Cut Pro guy, but I bet Premiere isn't all that different, so here's a suggestion: get a capture card. Forget about firewire capture. Capture in a high-quality codec, and life will get better.
To sustain the necessarily-higher bitrate of a better codec, you may alswo need a RAID.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
Re: Premiere Pro and After Effect Workflow Question by Chris Shumway on Apr 24, 2009 at 6:01:18 pm
I've been wondering about capture cards- I have a high end Nvidia card for games/modeling but I assume I would need a specific video capture card. Any suggestions?
When you say re-render are you talking about exporting a completed project then reimporting that master to render out to a different format? I can see that losing quality- But am I loseing quality when I do color correction, render out a single shot to see it in real time (in the NLE), change it slighlty and render to see it again? Is that quality loss persistent even if I delete the effect and not use it? I've always thought quality was lost on the final export, not in the testing ground of the NLE's timeline.
My current system is set up with a Raid 0- HDV doesn't seem to slow it down to much.
Re: Premiere Pro and After Effect Workflow Question by Dave LaRonde on Apr 24, 2009 at 6:45:24 pm
[Chris Shumway]"am I loseing quality when I do color correction, render out a single shot to see it in real time (in the NLE), change it slighlty and render to see it again?"
Yes to all the above.
[Chris Shumway]"Is that quality loss persistent even if I delete the effect and not use it?"
Nope. It's unrendered again.
[Chris Shumway]"I've always thought quality was lost on the final export, not in the testing ground of the NLE's timeline."
Every NLE I know about renders to the codec being used in the edit timeline. If it's set to DV, it'll render in DV, for example. Oftentimes your computer's processors can keep up with the effects and transitions you add. When they can't, you have to render. You see the damage in your edit timeline. When you export the timeline, as long as nothing needs rendering, it simply copies the video to a new file.
[Chris Shumway]"My current system is set up with a Raid 0- HDV doesn't seem to slow it down to much."
It shouldn't, either.
[Chris Shumway]"I've been wondering about capture cards... Any suggestions?"
I like AJA cards. Yeah, I'm a Mac guy, but a lot of them work on both Mac and Windows platforms. Customer support is great, too.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
Re: Premiere Pro and After Effect Workflow Question by Chris Shumway on Apr 24, 2009 at 7:14:23 pm
Okay- just wanted to make sure I wasn't continuously degrading my work because of tweaking.
What codec would the capture card record my HDV footage in, if not mpeg? Premiere (cs3 at least) converts old .avi files to mpeg automatically (when put into a timeline a red render bar is over the clips)-hopefully it would avoid that if the source video is superior to mpeg.
Currently it looks like I should keep the edit down to timing in the NLE, and then load up into AE for dissolves/CC/effect's work since the math seems to be better. Exporting my final master through AE to preserve as much as the quality as possible, while knowing that the more digital work that is done, the more lossy the end quality. Does that sound like a good workflow to preserve quality from start to finish? Ideally beginning with the highest quality source footage from a capture card. Unless these cards also help with the export/render?
Re: Premiere Pro and After Effect Workflow Question by Dave LaRonde on Apr 24, 2009 at 8:00:13 pm
Y'know, you might want to ask about these kind of particulars on the COW's Premiere forum. I'm a Mac/Final Cut Pro guy, and I'm simply extrapolating my FCP, Media 100 & Grass Valley NLE experience to Premiere.
You might want to be assured you're getting it from the horse's mouth.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
Re: Premiere Pro and After Effect Workflow Question by Chris Wright on Apr 24, 2009 at 8:38:16 pm
I know exactly what you mean. The only way that 32bpc color correction will work in Premiere is if you use and only use color finesse inside, then use dynamic link or copy paste sequence while both AE and Premiere are open.
One other option is rendering out full 4:4:4 16bit codecs such as Tiff(lzw off), avi 10 bit uncompressed, or some other huge hard drive hogging codec.
Other people may say, oh rendering out 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 is good enough, but after 5 renders, let's compare chroma loss. AE seems to do a better job with rasterized Fonts, color, and more effects are 16bpc or higher.
