However, times have changed – and so should your import methods. Modern camcorders and DSLRs are now recording video files to memory cards rather than tape. With the new workflow, there is no “capturing” of video footage – video clips just get copied from the camera media, such as SD cards, over to the computer hard drive for editing. Simple, right? Not quite.

Many Premiere Pro users are experiencing various issues with new media types like AVCHD, and many of those issues are often resolved by changing the import method. Problems can include missing audio, glitches in spanned clips, and clips that just won’t play or preview smoothly. First, the user must get the video files from the memory card onto their computer hard drive. Preferably, the video drive will be a fast, dedicated hard drive or RAID array, and not the system drive.

Some camera manufacturers provide software utilities for the transfer and/or conversion of video clips, and those are usually not needed or recommended for Premiere Pro users, as Adobe has engineered Premiere Pro to work with most native formats as recorded by the camera. We recommend a direct copy of the entire contents of the media card, without any conversion or tampering, to a new folder on your video hard drive prior to import into Premiere Pro. Create a unique folder for the contents of each SD card that you copy to your drive, such as “Card 1”, “Card 2”, or whatever suits your style of organization.

Many users will try to dig down through the AVCHD folder structure layers to find the actual video files, and then copy only those files. They might even choose to rename those files, but those actions can lead to various issues. It’s important that the original folder structure and filenames be left completely intact for best results. There can be critical information called metadata included in the folder structure, which Premiere Pro needs to correctly interpret and handle the footage for playback and editing.

SD cards are typically formatted in-camera using the FAT 32 file system, which limits file size. For longer recordings, such as wedding ceremonies and stage events that may run 1-2 hours or more, the video clips get recorded as multiple small files, known as spanned clips. For example, a Sony AX-2000 camera recording AVCHD video creates multiple files of 2GB each for uninterrupted recording of long programs.

The original clips look like this on the SD card, representing only two separate recordings made with the camcorder, the first being a few seconds, the second being over two hours worth of spanned 2GB clips –

If the .mts files alone are copied to the hard drive without the supporting AVCHD files and folders from the SD card, when those .mts files alone are imported into Premiere Pro, it can create issues. When the individual spanned .mts clips are placed on the timeline, there is a half-second of audio missing from the end of each clip, creating audio gaps between spanned clip segments as seen in the waveform below.

For best results, import media from your drive using the Media Browser in Premiere Pro, usually found tabbed at the lower left of the Premiere Pro interface, next to the Effects tab. Open it up and browse to the folder where you’ve saved the copied media. There is usually no need to dig down to the video clips themselves – Media Browser will intelligently recognize the folder structures for formats such as AVCHD and will present the available clips to you, with spanned clips showing up as one single, long clip. Once you see your clips listed, simply select the ones you want to work with and drag them to the timeline sequence or the Project Bin, your choice.

By copying the entire SD card contents to the hard drive, maintaining the AVCHD file structure, and using Media Browser for import, many potential issues can be avoided. Proper clip start and end points are also represented in the Project Bin with this workflow.

Besides the elegant handling of spanned clips, Media Browser can also help provide smooth playback of clips that might otherwise be problematic if imported “the old way”. Some clips may be missing their sound when Media Browser is not used. As you can see, there are many good reasons to maintain the file structure of your media and to import using Media Browser for the best experience in Premiere Pro.

When doing a standard file copy from the memory card to the hard drive, there is the rare chance that errors could occur, possibly making a video clip unreadable. Obviously, this would be a big problem with one-of-a-kind footage. Many producers like to use a third-party file copy utility that provides error-checking, verifying that all copied data files are 100% identical to the originals.

Red Giant Software offers Bulletproof, while Sony Creative Software offers Catalyst Prepare, both of which offer video file management and verified file copying for PC and Mac users. Red Giant also offers Offload, which provides basic verified copying of video files to multiple drives on a budget.

Whether you rely on standard file copy methods or use specialty software for that purpose, it’s always a good idea to copy your precious video data to two or more separate hard drives before ever deleting or reformatting the media card. I’ve worked with many users online who’ve copied only the video clips to the hard drive before erasing the card. Without the AVCHD file folder structure, they’ve lost the ability to get the benefits of using Media Browser for import and are stuck with whatever issues they have, such as missing audio or glitchy spanned clips – forever!

Proper file management and workflows with today’s cameras will save you a lot of grief down the road and can provide a more productive and enjoyable editing experience overall.

I rented a newer HD camera for the event to get better low-light performance – and a better image overall – than my older HDV camera could provide. I’d rented that same camera the year before, so I knew how to use it and loved the results I’d gotten last time.

Being middle-aged, the eyes are not what they once were and I now wear bifocals. I find the on-camera LCD screen too small to provide a decent preview, especially for long events. I just can’t focus my eyes that close for long periods without severe eye strain, which in turn blurs my vision and compounds the issue.

My preview solution is to use an Ikan VL7, a 7” LCD mounted to the camera’s accessory shoe and connected via HDMI. This is not only much easier on the eyes, but also provides a better method of checking focus and framing during the shoot. If at some point you’ve moved from using SD cameras up to HD, you’ll understand when I say that focus is far more critical when shooting HD footage – it can be very unforgiving.

I use manual focus for stage events so that the auto focus doesn’t hunt. I carefully checked and tweaked focus throughout the day of shooting the first three of the six shows, and the focus looked OK to me on both preview displays. Using the manual focus ring, I would turn it back and forth to find the “sweet spot” where the image looked sharpest, and going one way or the other would then go softer.

When I got home late that night, I decided to check the day’s footage on a larger HD monitor before retiring for the night and was very upset to find that it was soft – ALL OF IT. What looked fine in preview was in fact “almost focused – but just not quite”. As I was constantly checking and tweaking focus all day, and the videos were consistently soft and never perfectly focused at any point, I was certain this was not user error – it would have been focused at least some of the time if that were the case.

The next day, I brought a larger 24” HD display to the venue as a preview monitor and had extra time to test the camera with it before the show. I had an assistant stand on stage for testing and found that it was impossible to get a razor focus – there was something internally wrong with the lens of the rental camera. I therefore shot the second day’s shows with the older HDV camera and got nice, sharp video, although somewhat darker for some acts.

However, I was just sick about the first day’s footage – over 7.5 hours of it to edit and deliver! What to do? I tried the Sharpen filter in Adobe Premiere CC and while it did what it was supposed to, it also created very noisy artifacting that I found unacceptable – I was trading one issue for another. The bigger problem is that the HD footage was going to eventually be downconverted to SD for DVD. If the HD source was bad, it was going to look even worse at the much lower resolution of DVD.

One of the suggested focus fixes is to use the Unsharp Mask filter in Premiere. As with any filter, it’s easy to over-apply it. I had to experiment with the settings to get the best result, which was to sharpen the video without adding objectionable noise and artifacts.

I found that the Unsharp Mask does take quite a while to render. A 2.5-hour 1080i AVCHD clip (of which I had three) took about 15 hours to render to an intermediate codec on a beefy new Core i7 system, but the results were well worth it. Not quite as good as the footage shot properly with the HDV camera the second day, but quite acceptable. I’ve now completed the first of the corrected shows and the DVDs look fine – disaster averted! I also got a prompt refund from the rental company for the faulty camera, so it all worked out in the end.

As mentioned, I used the Unsharp Mask filter found within Premiere CC, but other NLEs may have a similar offering built-in. Boris also offers their BCC Blur and Sharpen plug-in that works with several programs including Premiere and After Effects if you need or want to explore more advanced options.

Of course if you have footage that is really obviously out of focus, it may not be salvageable, but in my case an Unsharp Mask was the ideal solution, and maybe someday it will help you as well.

Most newer PCs having decent specs, such as those with Intel Core i7 processors, should have no problem editing AVCHD and similar sources natively, without having to transcode. NLE programs like Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2014, Grass Valley EDIUS Pro 7, and Sony Vegas Pro 13 are optimized to edit practically any format natively. This saves both time and precious hard drive space, as mezzanine files are typically several times larger than the originals.

Since pre-edit transcoding is seldom necessary these days, the focus here will be mezzanine codecs for use during the editing and post-production processes.

Before jumping into the codec options, it’s important to understand the difference between containers and codecs – .avi is not a codec, and neither is .mov – rather, these are containers or wrappers that the codec lives inside of. A codec is a “coder/decoder” – the specific set of instructions that tell the computer exactly how to encode or decode a video clip.

The container might also be referred to as the format, as in Please submit the footage in a QuickTime format. Such a clip might have the .mov extension at the end, but the codec inside of that .mov file could be any number of things, such as uncompressed, Apple ProRes, PNG, or some variety of H.264 for instance.

You’ve probably at one time or another tried to play a video clip, only to get an error message about an “Unsupported Codec”. This means that the codec needed to play that clip type is not installed, and also that you would be unable to export video using that particular codec. Many codecs are pre-installed with Windows and others may come with your NLE software, and more will be available online for free, while some others may be purchased.

When exporting clips from any video application, there are really two kinds of exports to consider – mezzanine and delivery. A delivery codec would be used to create DVD and Blu-rays discs, or digital files for computer, online, or mobile device viewing. Delivery files are going to be highly compressed to keep the size down, and therefore are not good options for further editing or recompression. They can be re-edited as a last resort when no other source exists, but the results may be poor by the time you get done re-compressing them again. Think of a photocopy of a photocopy…the quality gets progressively worse.

In this article, we’ll be looking at several codecs for creating mezzanine files, which are not meant for final delivery – they’re much too large. Rather, a mezzanine codec is used as part of the editing and post-production workflow. These codecs are ideal for compositing work since they will hold up much better than camera codecs through multiple generations of compression.

Perhaps you’ve created a complex multi-layer sequence of video and graphics, and you wish to compile it all into a single video clip that can more easily be used as part of a larger production. Maybe you need to apply some additional video filters or other processing using a third-party application, or you want a master-quality copy of your production, from which any delivery format can later be exported. You may also have a need to share files with another editor for finishing work. Adobe After Effects comes to mind as the most common app that you’d need to export a high-quality mezzanine file from.

In these scenarios, you’ll want to use a codec that minimizes or even eliminates any quality loss, preserving details and color fidelity, and the file size will not matter as much as it might for delivery. The ultimate quality is usually obtained by using uncompressed video, but that creates such huge files that large, multi-drive disk arrays are needed to provide the throughput to play them smoothly. That is where mezzanine codecs come into play, providing high quality video without the uncompressed file size.

For Mac users, Apple ProRes is an excellent codec and also provides a great way to share material with other editors in the production workflow, Mac or PC. However, while PCs can play and edit ProRes, Apple does not supply the means to encode to ProRes on the PC platform (a couple of third-party software vendors are offering PC ProRes encoding now, but are apparently not sanctioned by Apple).

PC video apps will offer the option to export as “Uncompressed AVI”, but as mentioned earlier, this is not practical for many users due to massive file sizes and special hardware requirements. QuickTime Animation is another old stand-by, but again the files are just far too large to be practical (or necessary) for most users’ needs, beyond doing short segments. Fortunately, there are many free codecs that can be installed on PC computers to suit a variety of needs.

Consider your source material when thinking about how much data needs to be included in the mezzanine file. Keep in mind that a good mezzanine codec will act to preserve the quality of your original source video, but can never increase the quality – it can’t create something that was not there to begin with.

Many camera codecs like HDV and AVCHD use 4:2:0 color sampling and Inter-frame encoding, meaning that a lot of color info is discarded and only a few complete video frames are recorded each second – the rest of the frames have only partial data and get reconstructed by borrowing data from surrounding frames. This is what requires additional horsepower for playback – the decoder needs to look at several frames in order to recreate each single video frame before displaying it.

Mezzanine codecs are going to use more robust 4:2:2 color and Intra-frame encoding, intra meaning that each frame has all its data self-contained, with no need to borrow from its neighbors. This makes it easier to decode (play), and is why mezzanine codecs create larger files than the compressed camera codecs. A mezzanine might need a 100Mbps data rate or more to recreate a 25Mbps camera source clip.

That said, there is a point of overkill – a lossy HDV clip converted to a certain mezzanine at 220Mbps may look no better than encoding at 100 or 150Mbps. Higher-quality sources may benefit from higher-quality mezzanines to faithfully reproduce the source video, and that is something that each editor will need to determine based on their own needs and experience.

Here’s an overview of just some of the popular codecs available for PC editors.

Avid DNxHD is free and is similar to Apple ProRes in quality and file size. If you need to deliver to another editor using a Mac, this might be a good choice. Note that any QuickTime file played on a PC, including DNxHD, uses the “QT 32 Server”, a 32-bit app, creating a performance bottleneck when used with 64-bit PC editing software.

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/download/en423319

Avid DNxHD MXF is included with newer versions of Adobe Media Encoder and is not a QT codec, so avoids the performance issues of DNxHD (Mac editors may need to install an MXF-plugin to play .MXF files). I should note that all the listed codecs took roughly the same amount of time to export, except MXF – which was roughly twice as fast!

Lagarith is a free “mathematically lossless” codec for PC, providing quality nearly identical to uncompressed, but at more economical file sizes.  Lagarith files will be larger than the other codecs listed, but still much smaller than uncompressed. This is a good choice for workflows where multi-generational compression is used.

http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

Cineform has been popular for many years, and is now owned by GoPro. The Cineform Studio software can be downloaded for free, and that package installs the codecs. Studio offers batch-conversion of GoPro camera clips to either .avi or .mov files using the Cineform codec. Some editors experience poor playback of native GoPro clips, and in that case may transcode prior to editing. Other apps can export to Cineform for use as a mezzanine codec as well.

http://gopro.com/software-app/gopro-studio-edit-software

Grass Valley HQ codecs are included with EDIUS Pro software installations, and can also be downloaded for free; however, you will be required to create an online account prior to downloading.

Once logged in – http://www.grassvalley.com/support/downloads/products?product=&download=704

Newtek SpeedHQ codecs are included with the SpeedEdit 2.5 NLE software, free download for others.

Look under “Codecs and Utilities” at this link – http://newtek.com/support/documentation.html

Matrox MPEG-2 I-Frame HD codecs are part of the driver installation for Matrox MXO2 and VS4 hardware, and can also be downloaded free as VfW (Video for Windows) codecs.

http://www.matrox.com/video/en/support/windows/vfw_software_codecs/downloads/softwares/version2.0/

If you have Avid, Grass Valley, Newtek or Matrox hardware or software already installed, then you should have the associated codec on your PC already – don’t attempt to install again!

For export examples, I’ll be referencing Adobe Media Encoder CC, but most video apps will offer similar export options. In the AME Export Settings panel, first comes the FORMAT, which will offer common container options such as QuickTime and AVI. Lagarith, Matrox, Grass Valley, Cineform and Newtek are all .avi codecs, while Avid DNxHD will fall under the QuickTime heading. If we then look under the VIDEO tab, we can choose a specific codec to work with inside that wrapper.

Unlike delivery codecs which may often have a different frame size, such as HD to DVD, mezzanine exports will match the source video specs regarding Frame Size, Frame Rate, Field Order, and Pixel Aspect Ratio – only the codec and data rate will be different. It’s important that you verify all these settings are correct, or you may get unexpected results.

Note that the Source and Output specs match the video codec settings in the Export settings above.

If you’re not sure what the settings ought to be, please reference the source clip. In Premiere, you can open the Sequence menu to see the current settings, assuming you’d set up the Sequence properly to match your clips in the first place. After Effects and Premiere have New Composition and New Sequence buttons respectively that you can drag a clip onto in order to set up the correct parameters to match the video source from the start, see following image.

Note that some of the codecs have additional settings available in a custom pop-up menu. In Adobe Media Encoder, it is the Codec Settings button that brings up the menu. For other apps, push buttons and explore – it doesn’t hurt to look around, as long as you’re not changing settings all willy-nilly. One additional setting you might encounter will be color space, such as RGB, Rec. 709, or YV12. It’s beyond the scope of this article to explain all of that – let’s just say that using the default is typically just fine, but you may want to research and learn more about colorspace for future needs.

How do these codecs compare to the source video, and to one another? I put together a one-minute sample timeline sequence using various 1080i source clips, and then exported that same segment once to each different codec. First, this allowed me to compare file sizes between the codecs by just comparing the exports in Windows Explorer.

While hard drives keep getting bigger and cheaper, let’s face it – you can never have enough storage, so file size does still matter. Big files might be fine for short sequences, but I just shot 6 dance recitals at nearly 3 hours each, using two cameras each, so that all really adds up through the production process when adding mezzanines and final export versions as well.

If you’d like to examine any video file to find the data rate, download and install the free MediaInfo software. Just be sure to uncheck the toolbar add-on during the install process! Once installed, you can right-click any video clip on your drive and select “MediaInfo” in the drop-down menu to see the specs of the clip, including the data rate and codec used.

http://mediaarea.net/us/MediaInfo/Download/Windows

For a quality comparison, I stacked the exported test clips above one another in Premiere, with the original source video at the bottom of the stack. In the Program monitor window, I recommend setting the view to 200% or 400% to blow-up the image to where you can actually see the pixels and compression artifacts clearly. Looking at a normal-size image, you’ll likely never see any difference at all between codecs.

By toggling tracks or “layers” on and off using the eyeball to the left of each video track, I was able to clearly compare the details between each codec and the original source, as well as comparing any codec to another. One thing to look for is whether areas of similar color retain individually colored pixels, or does the color get lumped together in “blocks” of the same color? Do details and fine shading get better or worse when switching back and forth? You’ll find that if you focus your eyes on one particular area of the preview, it’s easier to see these things than if you try to look at the entire preview window at once.

I’m not going to try and rate all the codecs on quality, as that is very subjective and results can vary depending on source footage, exact settings used, testing methods, and many other factors. I will say that as expected, Uncompressed matches the source exactly, and Lagarith lossless is almost pixel-perfect as well – as expected with the larger file sizes.

I should note that just because you may see a large number of pixels changing when toggling between clips, doesn’t mean that the resulting video won’t look good. Different codecs use different compression schemes, or different ways of representing the same data – but you won’t see the individual pixels when watching the finished video at normal size. That overall look may be all that matters for most users, in addition to how the codec handles multiple generations of encoding – does it stand up or fall apart?

If doing chroma-keying or other advanced compositing, then the more pixel-accurate reproductions may be more important to you, especially if you need to recompress a few times or more in the compositing workflow, since quality loss and changes to the image are cumulative.

Human nature will be to automatically go for “the best” codec, which short of uncompressed, would be Lagarith or a similar lossless option. But remember, the camera codec was likely VERY lossy to start with, and depending on the price level of your camera and the glass on it, your source video may not be as great as you think. Are you making a movie or network TV show, or a wedding video or stage event? These considerations will play a part.

I’ve been using different models of Matrox capture hardware for many years, so have just arbitrarily used the Matrox codec most of the time for my mezzanines and for creating “archive masters” and have been happy with the results. This is coming from HDV and AVCHD sources and not going to broadcast, mind you! For high-end applications, Matrox offers 8-bit and 10-bit uncompressed codecs, as do some of the other listed codecs. But again, we’re not here to discuss uncompressed – it’s a given that they will look good!

Besides Matrox, the other codec that I use often is Lagarith. I work with the “HD2SD” process using the VirtualDub and AviSynth utilities, and they like a codec with YV12 color. Lagarith can provide that, as well as lossless quality, so it’s a perfect fit for that situation.

An online search for codecs might turn up things such as “K-Lite codec pack” or other codec bundles – avoid them, as they can cause system issues and can’t always be uninstalled. The professional, brand-name codecs mentioned in this text are all safe to install and use with no known side effects from my years of experience.

Back to the codec options, some will offer different variations of the codec, such as 4:2:2, 4:4:4, 4:2:2:4, etc. with 4:2:2 being the most common option. These numbers represent the color info for the codec (web search “chroma subsampling” for more detailed explanations). The first number represents the brightness or luminance part of the signal, with “4” meaning all data is there, none is discarded.

The next two numbers refer to the chroma, or color, and any value less than 4 is said to be subsampled – some of the original color data being discarded to further compress the video. Human vision doesn’t notice the missing color much, but would definitely miss the brightness, which is why the first number is always 4. The luminance part of the signal has all the data to produce a complete black and white image, which includes all the detail, so none of that info can be discarded without being obvious to the viewer.

Most camcorders and DSLRs are recording 4:2:0 color these days, though some units offer 4:2:2, which is a higher quality. Assuming you are starting with a 4:2:0 source, converting to a 4:2:2 codec will allow for more precise color grading of your footage and will also better preserve the color of any graphics and titles added during editing, since those assets are starting with full color fidelity in the video software and were never at 4:2:0.

The fourth number, when present, means the codec includes an alpha channel, making parts of the video transparent. If such a clip is placed over another video clip in your NLE, the transparent parts will show though to the background clip. This can be useful for creating animated overlays, such as lower thirds or wipes or keys, and is available with some of the codecs discussed.

If you have a video of a person in front of a green screen, you can use the chroma key filter in your NLE to remove the green background, then export the resulting clip with alpha channel. The new clip can then be placed above any other clip in the NLE timeline as an overlay and the background will show through, without any need to add a keying effect – the transparency is built right into the clip.

Playing an alpha channel clip by itself, the transparent areas simply show up as black. Only when you place the alpha clip over another clip in the NLE can you see a new background. Matrox, Newtek, and Lagarith all offer alpha channel encoding options. If you use Digital Juice overlays, you can render direct to an alpha channel codec from the Juicer utility to create ready-to-use overlay clips that won’t need rendering in the NLE.

1 – Original Source Clip
2 –  Clip exported with alpha (after key and crop applied – black area is transparent)
3 –  What the alpha channel looks like (white opaque, black transparent)
4 –  Alpha channel clip #2 superimposed over another video clip

Note that some of the codecs listed have different data rates, or quality settings, available to the user. The Matrox codec is user adjustable between 100-300Mbps. Avid offers several flavors such as 145, 175, or 220Mbps, while others may offer “Fine” or “Standard” modes – push buttons to find these options.

If you take away anything from reading this, let it be that you don’t necessarily need a fully “lossless” quality for most projects. Remember that codecs with high data rates can quickly fill your hard drive with massive files, so storage space is always a consideration when choosing a codec. Mezzanine codecs provide the right combination of quality, file size, and low-overhead playback, and I’m confident that one of the codecs covered will suit your particular needs.

Whether you need a completely new system, or just a few minor tune-ups, here are the top 5 reasons to upgrade your workstation.

1)      Slow Boot Drive. Many older computers are still booting up with SATA or even IDE hard drives. A workstation equipped with an SSD will likely boot in seconds and not minutes. SATA hard drives require time to speed up and will continue to be slower than a solid state drive during regular operation. SSD drives will not only boot faster but also launch applications faster. The extra time saved with the performance boost might be worth the extra cost of a SSD.

2)      Outdated Operating System. If a workstation is still running a 32-bit operating system there are serious limitations to consider. For these older machines, the maximum size of the physical memory (max 4GB) is usually less than the amount needed for all running programs. Applications running on a 64-bit edition of Windows should experience an increase in performance because of the larger amount of memory available. Some newer chipsets allow for up to 128GB of memory.

3)      Lack of Current Peripheral Interfaces. There have been a lot of recent changes to computer interfaces. If your computer is a just few years old the fastest interface type might be FireWire 800. Since then, many new interface types have been introduced like USB3, eSATA 600, and Thunderbolt 2 which can offer speeds more than 20 times faster than FireWire 800. Loads of new hardware is now being introduced to take advantage of these new technologies.

4)      Software Requires Updated Hardware. It is important for a designer or editor to keep up with the latest software available. With every new software update come a new set of system requirements. Memory, OS, processor and graphics card requirements are constantly being raised. Exceeding the minimum requirements will ensure seamless operation and ultimately save time and headaches.

5)      Expandability Maxed Out. If you have an older workstation it is likely that your memory and PCIe slots are maxed out or limited. Newer motherboard chipsets feature extra slots for memory and PCIe expansion cards. Further, these chipsets might also allow for faster memory types such as DDR3 1866. PCIe standards have also recently been updated with the introduction of PCIe Gen 3.

If you’d like to discuss your options, please free to give us a call at (800) 544-6599. You may also visit our workstation configurator page here: http://www.sharbor.com/build-yours/

click to enlarge

When making a DVD in Adobe Encore CS6 on your PC, you may find that the video playback looks very low res and jagged in the Monitor window, but will snap back to a sharp image whenever playback is paused.

There is a quick solution in the Edit > Preferences panel. Simply change the Playback Quality to High, and Display Mode to Accelerated GPU Effects, as shown in the comparison images.

You will see in the top example that any diagonal lines are quite “steppy”. It’s even more noticeable during playback than the still example shows, as any camera movement causes the lines to dance and shimmer. The bottom image is clear and sharp after changing the settings.

If you have a system without an Nvidia display card, take a second to see if this option still works and let us know in the comments below.

Digital video cameras all use some sort of compression on the video file before saving, or the data files would be enormous. Even though the source video may have been compressed, in an uncompressed workflow, further image degradation is kept to a minimum and graphics and compositing will remain cleaner.

AJA and Black Magic Design offer capture and playback cards for uncompressed workflows. For Mac users, the ProRes 422 codec offers an alternative to uncompressed video, which lowers overhead while maintaining the quality.

Note that some HD camcorders will output an uncompressed signal via HDMI or HD-SDI during a live shoot, passing the video direct from the imaging chip before any compression is added. In a studio setting, you could get true uncompressed video into your edit system this way. Once the video has been recorded to tape or flash card though, it has been compressed and you can’t get all the quality back.

For hobby, event and corporate work being delivered on DVD, Blu-ray or the internet, compressed HD formats can look great and the end user might see no benefit to an uncompressed workflow, since the delivery format is highly compressed and the content may also be downsized.

If producing content for broadcast, always check with the broadcaster to get their official requirements regarding workflow and delivery formats that are acceptable to their standards.

Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles all come to the theater to view the performances, and it’s a big deal. Younger performers might only be in one dance, with the 3 year-olds dressed in little bumblebee or kitten costumes, but those few minutes on stage are precious and will be cherished for years to come, provided they are captured on video. Older, more experienced students might take part in several dance numbers, with the best students getting their own solo performances to “show their stuff”.

Parents often bring their own camcorders and attempt to capture the event, but the auto-exposure of consumer camcorders will typically ruin stage shots by overexposing the performers so their faces become unrecognizable white blobs. The hapless parents don’t know how to override the auto controls to correct this issue and end up with junk footage. Having to run a camcorder also keeps the parents from “being in the moment” and truly enjoying the performance.

Most dance studios will offer DVDs of the recital, though the videos vary greatly in quality and coverage, with many being very amateurish. This provides an opportunity for professional videographers to step in and offer a superior product.

When I was first asked to videotape a dance recital back in 1994, I had just started taping weddings and was fairly new to the business. I accepted the job and it actually went pretty well. I used a single Hi8 camera, and would start each act on a wide shot, then would smoothly zoom in for a head to toe shot and slowly pan across the performers so their faces could be made out, then I’d return to the wide shot to show everyone again.

This worked well enough for a couple of years, and as my business grew, I added a second camera so that one camera was always wide showing all the performers, and the other camera would do close-ups and I could switch in post between the two.

While I was doing nice work, with good exposure and framing and smooth motion, some parents were complaining that during the close-ups they were then missing their own child who might be out of the frame for several seconds. They didn’t want to miss a single second of their child’s performance, but if I used only a wide shot the entire time, it would be impossible to even tell who was who from a distance.

By the late 1990s, I had picked up a second dance school and had switched to miniDV cameras and nonlinear editing and developed a new technique for shooting and editing my dance shows. I still used the two-camera close-up and wide shooting style, but rather than switching between the two, I combined both images using picture-in-picture and split-screen techniques.

While this did require more work in post, I immediately started getting great feedback from the parents – they loved it! Sales really took off after using the new editing style. If there are kids lined up across the entire stage, by the time I pull back far enough to get everyone in the frame, individual faces become unidentifiable. Meanwhile, there is a LOT of empty space in the frame, showing just background.

Rather than centering the talent, I frame them in the lower third of the screen, leaving the entire top two-thirds of the frame wide open for a PIP or split view from the close-up camera. By combining both images, parents can see their child at all times on the lower portion of the screen, and are also guaranteed some great close-ups as well. It’s a win-win situation for the viewers, and everyone is happy!

When using this method, proper framing while shooting becomes more critical to minimize or eliminate repositioning during editing. If shot properly, I can simply do a split-screen effect and not have to reposition either video source in post – they line right up! I use Adobe Premiere with the Matrox RT.X2 hardware, which eliminates rendering, so I can do PIP and split-screen effects along with titling and color correction, with no waiting.

One of my dance studios now has 4 shows, each almost 3 hours long, so you can imagine how much rendering time is saved when considering that almost every act uses some sort of PIP or split-screen view. Solos are of course a single close-up view, and some acts are so dynamic with everyone constantly moving about that it’s impossible to do any close-ups, otherwise I use the dual-view religiously and have never had a single complaint. In fact, parents go out of their way to tell me how much they love the DVDs because they never miss a thing!

Before each show, I also get access to the dressing rooms/staging areas to get some fun shots of kids getting their makeup and hair done, waving to the camera, warming up, etc., and this is also well-received and asked for. For the guys reading this, just be sure to have a “stage mom” verify that everyone is dressed and announce your entry to avoid any surprises!

Camera Setup
I’ve found it best to keep both cameras centered to the stage – panning from the side is difficult since the perspective changes as the camera pans. You may need a wide-angle lens adapter for the wide camera in order to see the entire stage, depending on the auditorium. I position the cameras side by side within a foot or so of each other, so the tripod legs are sharing some space together. While I run the close-up camera myself to insure that I get the desired results, an assistant runs the wide camera, which is easier work. Being in close proximity enables me to see the LCD screen of the wide camera to monitor both the framing and exposure, and I can even reach over and tweak the other camera settings if I don’t like what I see. I have on occasion ran both cameras myself, but it goes much better with help.

I set the white balance to the indoor, or incandescent, preset since lighting will be constantly changing during the performance. By using the indoor setting on both cameras, they will match and I can always color correct in post if necessary. (See my April 21st article,“Consistent White Balance for Live Events” for information on color correcting in post.)

It’s mandatory to manually control the exposure settings, since the spotlights on the dancers against a darker background will usually cause the faces and lighter costumes to completely blow out when using auto exposure. Use the zebra stripes function on your camera so you can identify hotspots and stop down the iris as necessary. If you get back to the studio and find that all the faces are overexposed, it is too late.

The recitals I cover have loud, high-quality sound systems in the front of the auditorium, and I’ve gotten good audio by simply using on-camera microphones. Some videographers like to place a flat PZM mic on the stage to better pick up tap shoe sounds, but this would be just part of the overall mix and not the main mic. If using camera mics, make sure there isn’t a fidgety kid squeaking his chair or digging into a candy bag near you, as these sounds will be part of the production!

However, wiring your camera directly to the sound board, recording only the CD tracks played for the dances, might seem like an ideal solution, but it is not. There will be no applause, no tap sounds or ambience of any kind recorded and it will do nothing to enhance the video.

Editing
After capturing both the wide and close-up clips into Premiere, I sync them on the timeline by simply looking at the audio waveforms and matching them up. I start with a roug
h match, then zoom in to the frame level and check the alignment. Since both audio tracks are the same for me, I will mute one track, then adjust the audio on the other for a good level.

Once the clips are synched and the audio level set, I then go through and set In and Out points and use the Extract function to remove the dead space between acts when the curtain is closed. I also color correct if necessary, then add my PIP and split effects and titling.

The end of an act will fade to black and silence, then I fade up a simple white on black title screen, and fade into the next act as it begins. The result is that when creating chapters for each dance act on the DVD, the chapter mark is right before the title fades up. No matter which chapter the viewer jumps to from the menu, there is no abrupt sound or picture coming in, it always starts on black then moves right into the title followed by the dance number. If the viewer skips through the disc with the “Next” button, it works very smoothly and cleanly.

DVD duplication and printing is handled in-house for quick turn-around and quality control, as well as cost savings. If you do just a few events a year that require a lot of DVDs, a duplicator-printer setup can pay for itself very quickly. I use the standard black Amaray-style DVD cases just like the Hollywood DVDs and print my own inserts, normally scanning the recital program and using that existing artwork as the basis of my insert design, quick and easy.

Sales and Marketing
So how should you price and market your recital videos? That will vary between producers. For my dance recitals, musicals and other stage events, I have assumed the risk when working with new clients. I give them a flat rate per DVD and handle the marketing and order fulfillment myself, so nothing is required of the dance studio.

I come in as an independent contractor and handle the whole job. I take care of making the order forms available, and parents can mail me the form with their check, or they can just phone in a credit card order, which a large number do take advantage of. The studio in turn gets a certain number of free DVDs for their staff and families as a thank you for the opportunity to cover the event.

Some producers will determine what they need to make as a minimum on the job, and will prepare a proposal that may require the studio to guarantee a minimum number of DVD sales, after which there may be a reduced rate for additional copies that allows the dance studio to make some money. When getting a studio to guarantee minimum sales, they will normally handle the sales and pay you for the DVDs themselves. In any case, get it all in writing with the studio to avoid issues later on in case there are any issues or disagreements as to who owes what.

I’ve been getting $30 per DVD in the Midwest, while I’ve heard of producers in other markets getting as much as $45 per DVD. It may help to put up a table or booth in the lobby at the recital where people can view your work and place orders. I’ve been with my dance studios for so long that everyone knows me and I just make sure that plenty of order forms are available both at rehearsals and at the show. You might wish to offer a discount when customers order two or more different shows to spur additional sales.

I do have a lot of post-production time setting up the multiple views and titling the acts. If you have the experience, equipment and crew to properly handle live-switching the event, this could definitely increase the profitability of the job.

One method would be to record the live switch, as well as having tape in the individual cameras, and then in post you can just do clean-up up editing as necessary before duplicating. Another more aggressive tactic would be to live switch directly to a DVD recorder, and as soon as the program ends, start running copies on a DVD tower using pre-labeled blanks and make them available immediately to get the impulse buys. If you choose the latter route, make sure you’ve got the procedure down pat, as many things could go wrong.

I believe I can always deliver a more polished product by editing in post, but that’s just my personal preference. Many successful event videographers offer live-switched productions and do very well with them.

In these hard economic times, it makes sense to diversify your offerings. Maybe you’ve always done just corporate video or weddings, but if business is slow, call those dance studios. In larger metro areas, see if the city park district runs a dance program in addition to the privately-owned studios. I’ve gotten some nice corporate jobs from parents who’ve seen my recital work, so don’t discount the idea. There could be a gold mine in your own backyard, and it repeats (and should grow) every year!

With the CS4 drivers for MXO2, a Matrox NTSC project was 720×480, but starting with CS5, Matrox changed this to 720×486. Since DVD uses 720×480 resolution, the 6 extra lines need to be cropped at export to get the proper 720×480 size for DVD. If you don’t crop these lines, the entire image will be scaled down, resulting in a quality loss. Also, it’s very important to crop a specific number of lines from the top and bottom, as choosing the wrong top and bottom numbers will soften the output quality.

With CS5, you need to crop 5 Top, 1 Bottom. With CS5.5, there are two cropping options to consider. If using the “Export” button to begin the encoding, choose 4,2. If using the “Queue” button that sends the job to Adobe Media Encoder, you must use 3,3. If you are working with a Matrox 486p sequence, use 6,0 for CS5, and 4,2 for CS5.5 (using either export method).

To set cropping, first set up all the parameters for the DVD export as you normally would. Next, at the top left of the Export window, select the SOURCE tab and click the cropping icon at the top left to make the crop settings active. Click on the “0” to the right of “Top” and then enter a number from the keyboard. Next, click the “0” to the right of “Bottom” and enter the other number. Do NOT hit the “Enter” key – this will launch the export immediately! Just click in another area of the export window to deselect the crop settings.

Now, you can toggle between the SOURCE and OUTPUT tabs to see the “before and after” results of the cropping. The image shown under the OUTPUT tab should fill the screen with no black borders. After double-checking that you entered the correct cropping numbers and that the output image looks correct, you can proceed with the encoding.

For more information, CS5 and CS5.5 users can reference pages 82 and 88 of their respective Matrox user guides. The above instructions are only for export to DVD; when exporting to a Matrox .avi file, CS5 and CS5.5 users should refer to pages 79 and 84 of their respective user guides for cropping charts.

MXO2 user guide for CS5 drivers

MXO2 user guide for CS5.5 drivers

]]> http://blog.sharbor.com/blog/2011/10/updates-to-dvd-export-settings-for-mxo2-cs5-5-users-2/feed/ 0 http://blog.sharbor.com/blog/2011/10/newtek-tricaster-live-web-streaming-push-or-pull/ http://blog.sharbor.com/blog/2011/10/newtek-tricaster-live-web-streaming-push-or-pull/#comments Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:12:58 +0000 http://blog.sharbor.com/blog/2011/10/19/newtek-tricaster-live-web-streaming-push-or-pull/ The NewTek TriCaster, available in several models, offers live web streaming of the video content you are producing with the unit. Live streaming allows viewers to see your production across the local in-house network, or around the world via the internet. There are two available streaming options with TriCaster, known as Push and Pull.

Pull is the simplest option for small audiences – users on the local network or the internet can “Pull” the stream right from the TriCaster itself. This works ok for just a few viewers, since your internet connection must support an individual stream to each viewer requesting it. Multiple streams will quickly overwhelm the capacity of the average broadband connection.

Push is the preferred option, requiring the services of a CDN (Content Delivery Network) Provider. CDNs have the infrastructure and bandwidth to redistribute your stream to a worldwide audience of unlimited numbers, live! You will set up an account with the CDN, choosing a plan to meet your needs and budget. When you need to stream an event, it will go from your TriCaster direct to the CDN, which will relay it live to the internet for large audiences.The CDN will provide you with the address and password to enter into the TriCaster interface to set up the streaming connection, and you will also be given an address where your viewers can see the stream. Your IT person should be able to work with the CDN to set it up so the stream is integrated into your own website as well.

Whether moving to HD shooting by choice, or by necessity of replacing aging SD gear, more and more videographers are shooting HD video today. With the slow adoption of Blu-ray by the public, DVD is still the delivery format of choice for most productions.

Exporting a standard-definition MPEG-2 file for DVD from an HD project requires that the video be downscaled from HD resolution to SD resolution, and Premiere Pro just doesn’t handle the conversion very well at all. The resulting DVD video will look jaggedy, almost like it has a reversed field order, with horizontal lines flickering and an overall look of low-resolution. The viewer may not be able to say exactly what’s wrong with the image, other than “it just doesn’t look right.”

There are workarounds for Premiere Pro users involving 3rd-party applications and scripting, but Matrox provides an easier solution for RT.X2 users by doing realtime downconversion from HD to SD in hardware. In the CS4 Sequence Settings (or CS3 Project Settings), users can change the Master Output from 1080i to NTSC and the analog output from the RT.X2 breakout box can then be displayed on an SD display. 1080i video downscaled to NTSC looks very clean on a standard CRT display, meaning the Matrox hardware conversion works well.

RT.X2 users can benefit from this realtime downconversion to bypass the inherent scaling issues in Premiere when creating DVDs from Matrox HD projects. When you’ve completed the editing of a Matrox 1080i project and you are ready to export to DVD, follow these steps for good results.First, Export the HD timeline as a Matrox standard-definition .avi file. The Matrox MPEG-2 I-Frame HD codec is the default codec and needs to be changed. In the Export Settings dialog, change the compressor to “NTSC Matrox MPEG-2 I-Frame”, then change the Pixel Aspect Ratio from “1.333” to “D1/DV NTSC Widescreen 16:9 (1.2).”

Optionally, you can bump up the data rate for your .avi file using the “Configure” button. The default setting of 25Mbps looks good, but I often just use 30Mbps to give it a little extra boost.

This Export process uses the Matrox hardware to downscale the HD video to SD, using the high-quality Matrox codec which has a 4:2:2 colorspace. HDV video uses 4:2:0 color, so be sure to choose the Matrox MPEG-2 codec and NOT Matrox DV, which is 4:1:1. The 4:2:2 codec will maintain more of the color fidelity when converting from HD to SD, and ultimately to DVD.

Exporting the HD timeline to the SD avi should be a faster-than-realtime process, so not much of a delay in the workflow. Once the file is exported, open a NEW Matrox DV widescreen project, Import the new video file and place it on the timeline. You can preview it and should find the quality to be very good.

From the timeline, you can then use the Matrox Media Encoder (CS3) or the Adobe Media Encoder (CS4) to create an MPEG-2 for DVD file with good results. Be sure to check the 16:9 aspect box in the encoder to match the aspect of the original footage. Since Matrox did the actual conversion from HD to SD, the new file can be rendered to MPEG-2 as you normally would for SD files without quality issues since Premiere is not doing any scaling on the video.

I’m confident that you’ll find this workflow to be a quick and easy way to achieve good results on your next HD to DVD project using the RT.X2.