CompuServe Thread

#Tga files with Premiere

13 messages in this thread
#12386From: Art JonesMay 20, 1995 12:21 PM
For those of you who use Premiere with your trueSpace animations (Ian?) heres a quick question…(or better said; the problem I'm having!) If I output a series of tga files from tS and then pull them into Premiere the resulting .avi movie (from premiere) is really slow,jerky, etc… This happens using the cinepak codec set to 75% with keyframing every 1 frame. Different codecs may help the motion but the picture is terrible. Any suggestions?
#12400From: Ian FirthMay 20, 1995 5:57 PM
Arthur, I've seen that Premiere sets a duration for sequential images, between 1-30 seconds. I haven't found a way to import sequentials into it without each frame being at least 1 second long. This causes a problem since you want 15-30 of those frames per second. I only output AVI's and my needs don't require tga or bmp output, if you aren't doing any frame by frame work on your output, I would suggest the same… Regards, Ian
#12447From: Art JonesMay 21, 1995 10:27 PM
Thanks… I did'nt realize that about Premiere. Arthur
#12482From: Thomas SeverinMay 22, 1995 2:08 PM
Hi Arthur, you should go to the preferences menu and set the _still image duration_ down to 1 frame. So you'll need as many tga's for a second of avi-output as you declare in the _frames per second_ field in the output format entry. Hope this helps, Thomas -Thomas Severin
#12495From: Maximilian StieglerMay 22, 1995 9:55 PM
Arthur – we do almost all our TS-post-production in Premiere. Best results to us come with microsoft video 1 at 100%. 75% speeds up things but with very poor quality. Sometimes we use the 256-colours options to decrease data rates. I'm almost interested in reults of experimenting with video codecs. Let me know. Jurgen
#12522From: Ian FirthMay 23, 1995 12:19 PM
Jurgen, >we do almost all our TS-post-production in Premiere. Best results to us come with microsoft video 1 at 100%. 75% >speeds up things but with very poor quality. >Sometimes we use the 256-colours options to decrease data rates. PMJI, but if you are outputting 24 bit Video 1 avi's, you would do a lot better with CinePak or Indeo CODECs. They are designed for high color output, whereas Video 1 is optimized for 256 colors. Indeo 4 will also support 640×480 at 15fps this summer… Regards, Ian Diversions Software
#12538From: Maximilian StieglerMay 23, 1995 2:50 PM
Ian, thank you very much. Maybe this can help solve some quality problems. I can't remember exactly why we decided for Video 1 but I'll try and let you know asap. BTW: What would you suggest is best material for mjpg compression? Thanks again Jurgen
#12559From: Ian FirthMay 23, 1995 8:56 PM
Jurgen, >thank you very much. Maybe this can help solve some quality problems. I can't remember exactly why we decided for >Video 1 but I'll try and let you know asap. I use Indeo 3.2 at 270k per second. The quality is nice, and it works well from 2X CD. I don't compress with Premiere tho'… too limited on data rate, and very unprecise. I compress with VidEdit at 270k, 100% Quality, Custom setting. RAZOR also gives good control over output settings. >BTW: What would you suggest is best material for mjpg compression? I don't deal with MPEG due to limited installed base, and releasing an MPEG game means bankruptcy for a small company like myself. Sorry. Regards, Ian
#12667From: Maximilian StieglerMay 25, 1995 4:20 PM
>>>I use Indeo 3.2 at 270k per second. The quality is nice, and it works well from 2X CD. I don't compress with Premiere tho'… too limited on data rate, and very unprecise. I compress with VidEdit at 270k, 100% Quality, Custom setting. RAZOR also gives good control over output settings.<<< Ian, yes, Premiere sometimes shows strange behaviour. We'll get 4.0 these days and I hope it's better. Anyway I did lots of experiments these days. With my ts animations I had great results with Cinepak. Very low data rates and best of all results in colours. With Indeo 3.2 I got extreme low data rates but poorer colours. Same thing on an animation with Vista Pro (lots of pixels changing from frame to frame) showed Cinepak as the winner. I got a 320 x 240, 25 fps, 100% animation with 450 kB/s which means it runs on my machine without skipping frames. The last test for today has been on WIN95 with Cinepak [32]. Funny thing is, that the result was jerky in WIN95 but in WfW with all 32 bit acesses enabled it turned out as a 593 kB/s running without skipping. I'm interested which data rates you (and the others, of course) can run without skipping frames and what configuration is needed therefore. I myself use a P90 with 32 MB, Matrox Imp+, 2 GB SCSI and 4096 smartdrv. In the future I'll always try with Indeo 3.2 and Cinepak. Seems Video 1 is beyond discussion. Ian, thank you again, yours was the clue of the week. Jurgen
#12680From: Ian FirthMay 25, 1995 6:08 PM
>I'm interested which data rates you (and the others, of course) can run without skipping frames and what configuration >is needed therefore. I myself use a P90 with 32 MB, Matrox Imp+, 2 GB SCSI and 4096 smartdrv. Since I develop CD ROM games, my limit is 270k per second (2x speed CD ROM drive recomended max). From disk, I can pull about 1.4 meg per second without dropping frames ( P90, 64MB, Stealth VRAM PCI, 2 1Gig WD EIDE drives). EIDE drives in 32 bit mode out run SCSI, but that will be moot when Win95 ships… CinePak does offer very good quality, but since I am mapping palette's to still images, the Indeo colors worked better for my application. BTW, Go WINMM and download the new CinePak driver (now from Radius), there are quite a few bug fixes. -Ian
#12754From: George KunzMay 27, 1995 12:46 PM
Ian / Jurgan, Regarding choice of CODECS… Both Indeo and CinePak, to a lesser degree dither their frames to achieve a more natural video look. This is a big help with natural video but plays havoc with the hard edges from graphics….this is why many people stay away from these when compressing animations. We also use VIDEO 1 when doing chroma mattes for the same reason (darn those nasty dithered edges) Video 1 is an outdated far inferior CODEC, but seems to do less of this type of dithering. We are about to embark on a large animation to avi project and will no doubt be spending alot of time talking to Intel about how to avoid this problem.
#12764From: Ian FirthMay 28, 1995 2:07 AM
>We are about to embark on a large animation to avi project and will no doubt be spending >alot of time talking to Intel about how to avoid this problem. And they will say, run it in 24 bit mode 🙂 Ian
#12833From: George KunzMay 30, 1995 9:01 AM
Regarding converting animations to AVI and Indeo "And they will say, run it in 24 bit mode :-)" I hope they will have a bit more to say on the topic….but last I checked you've little choice with Indeo…its is a 24 bit CODEC irrespective of the depth you display the stuff….but those fuzzy edges simply are more colorful in 24 bit…but no less apparent. I do think I know the Intel response…..something like Sheesh we've optimized this thing for video and now they want it for graphics too?? Demanding types we consumers George Kunz