http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1396

No word on a compressor for Windows, however.

UPDATE: These codecs still require an Apple Pro app installed to work. Cheapest option is still to get Compressor or Motion from the App Store for about $50. If the codecs are installed, Adobe apps can output ProRes.

http://premierepro.net/editing/color-grading-and-finishing-in-premiere-pro-cs5-5/

His presets provide simple drag-and-drop effects for common grading and finishing needs for your video. Well worth a download! And, since they use the GPU-accelerated effects, they are REAL-TIME on a system with a supported GPU. No waiting to render.

Highly recommended. Get them today.

‎”People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians.”
–George Lucas, 1988, Address to Congress on preserving classic films–

“No. NO. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
–Darth Vader, 2011, new dialogue near the end of Return of the Jedi, new Blu-Ray edition–

That’s all I have to say on the matter.

Question: What about using an AJA or BMD card with these ProRes Presets? I thought I had to use manufacturer-specific presets to get a reference video output.

Answer: Not so! To make a preset that take advantage of your monitoring hardware, you need to click on the Playback Settings button in the Sequence Settings panel:

Inside the Playback settings, you can choose your display device under Realtime Playback here:

(I’d love to show you a screen grab of this, but since my desktop computer is in a cargo container halfway across the Pacific Ocean, you’ll have to trust me.)

This setting is saved as part of the timeline preset, and can also be turned on later by selecting a sequence, going to Sequence – Sequence Settings, and clicking the Playback Settings button found there.

Question: I’ve heard that Premiere Pro only uses 8-bpc color. How does this affect my 10-bit ProRes files?

Answer: Premiere Pro can actually work in 32-bpc floating point color, which would be the preferred mode for anyone working with 10-bit source media. In order to use this higher color bit depth when rendering preview files, you need to turn it on here in the Sequence Settings:

This setting can also be changed on any existing timeline sequence by selecting the sequence, and going to Sequence – Sequence Settings.

If you are doing precise color work, you also may want to limit yourself to the effects that have the “32″ icon next to them. These are the effects that are full 32-bpc, floating-point color effects.

Question: Okay, now that you’ve explained what Maximum Bit Depth does, what about Maximum Render Quality?

Answer: That affects how sharply Premiere Pro scales clips. For example, if you work with 1080p media, but put it into a 720p timeline, and resize/reframe, then you are scaling the clips in size, and would definitely see better quality with this turned on. The only downside is that it increases the render time. It’s also a setting that you can turn off and on later.

What do I mean by an “end-to-end ProRes workflow”? This means ingesting ProRes clips, dropping them right to the timeline, rendering previews when necessary to a new ProRes file, and outputting back to a ProRes master. While Premiere Pro works great with a wide variety of native camera formats, there are times when this workflow is a good idea. For example, using an AJA KiPro for capture, shooting with the ARRI Alexa, or working with ProRes media from an FCP timeline.

This particular workflow does only work on a Mac system that has the ProRes encoder installed. There are a couple of ways to get this component, but unfortunately, they are not free. For most people using this workflow, you probably already have Final Cut Pro 6 or 7 installed, so you won’t have to worry. If you’re equipping a new Mac, you can also buy Motion 5 for under US$50 from the App Store. This will also get you the necessary codecs.

For Windows users, unfortunately, there is not a ProRes encoder component available. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use ProRes files. QuickTime for Windows does include the decoder. It just means that, if you render preview files in the timeline, you’ll need to use another codec. So, technically, it won’t be a “full” ProRes workflow, but you’ll still get great results. On the bright side, Windows users have more options for Nvidia cards, which is a worthwhile investment, since it ELIMINATES the need to render previews in most cases anyway. Also you won’t be able to output back to ProRes. Until a ProRes encoder is released for Windows, that’s sadly going to be the case.

What makes this possible is the flexibility of Premiere Pro to input and output in pretty much any format that the system has access to. Unfortunately, since Premiere doesn’t ship with ProRes encoding components, this’ll take a bit of time setting up. But, once it’s set up, using it is really easy.

Setting Up Timeline Presets:

You’ll need to first set up some timelines that use ProRes as the Preview File format. It’s a good idea to create as many as necessary for the different resolutions and frame rates you’ll be working with. For this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to make a 1080p/24 timeline preset.

Open up Premiere Pro, and set up a “dummy” project. We just need to have a blank project open to access some of the settings in Premiere. In this picture, I’m using a project called “Untitled” that I use for stuff like this.

My universal "Untitled" New Project.

Find the Settings Tab

Custom Sequence Settings panel - where the magic happens...

What you’ll want to do here is to start by making a Timeline preset for ProRes 422 at a resolution of 1920×1080, 23.976fps. There are a lot of setting in here, so let me list them:

Editing Mode: Custom

Timebase: 23.976 frames/second

Frame Size: 1920 horizontal, 1080 vertical (should show 16:9 aspect)

Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0 (square pixels)

Fields: No Fields (Progressive Scan)

Display Format: 24fps Timecode

Audio: 48000 Hz

Now, up until this point, you’ll notice that nothing is format-specific. All we are doing is setting up the size and frame rate all our media will conform to in the timeline. That’s how Premiere operates – in general, it is format-agnostic, meaning that you can mix and match ANY format on ANY timeline. The main settings for any timeline are just resolution/frame rate settings, period.

The bottom half of the panel is where formats start to play a role:

Video Previews

Set the Preview File Format to QuickTime (Desktop) and set the Codec to Apple ProRes 422. Also, make sure the Width and Height match the other timeline settings.  Now, STOP! BEFORE you hit the OK button, locate the Save Preset button:

Save your new Preset!

To make this easy, you’ll want to be as descriptive as possible in saving your preset. I recommend using a naming convention, and WRITE IT DOWN as you make these. That way, all of your ProRes timeline presets will have easy-to-understand, logical names. I’m going to call this one “ProRes 422 1080p24.”  If you need some additional descriptive help, make whatever notes you like in the Description field. This information will be visible each time you select the preset.

Once you have saved your preset, Premiere Pro will take you back to the Sequence Presets panel, and you should see your shiny new preset appear at the bottom, in the Custom folder:

Your shiny new ProRes 422 1080p24 preset!

Now that you understand the steps to create your first ProRes preset, you’ll want to repeat these steps again for each type of ProRes format, size and resolution you typically work with. Go back to the Settings tab at the top, and modify the settings again to make another preset. Then save and name the second new ProRes preset.

Back to the Settings Tab. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

Just a sample of potential ProRes presets you can create.

Setting Up Output Presets:

Just like the Timeline Presets, we will need to set up some Export Setting Presets for ProRes as well. To do this, we need a timeline with at least one clip in it so that we can access the Export Settings panel.

Go ahead and choose one of your ProRes Timeline presets so that the full Premiere Pro interface opens up. Import a clip, any clip, and drop it onto the timeline. If you have no clips on this system, you can just create a Countdown Leader file by choosing File-New-Universal Counting Leader. Drop it onto the timeline.

Now, with the timeline selected, go to File-Export-Media.

Export Settings Dialogue Box

In the upper right of the panel, Choose Format: QuickTime. Then, click on the Preset button, and look at the puny list of QuickTime presets that Premiere Pro ships with. I’ve had several people assume from this list that Premiere Pro can only export DV format QuickTime files! NOT SO!!

Is this all QuickTime can do? OF COURSE NOT.

To get started, head down to this part of the Output Settings screen, and click on the Video tab:

Where the Output Magic happens...

Change the Video Codec to Apple ProRes 422.

Change the Width to 1920.

Change the height to 1080.

Change the Frame Rate to 23.976

Change the Field Type to Progressive.

Change the Aspect to Square Pixels (1.0)

Now switch to the Audio Tab:

Audio Settings Tab

Double-check your settings in the Video Tab one more time, and if everything looks good, save your preset by clicking here:

Click to save your Output Preset

Now, when it’s time to output, I can output a ProRes master that matches my source footage, my preview files, and my Timeline Settings.

Oh, one last tip for longtime FCP users – I’ve heard from FCP users that they are used to ProRes outputs taking less time. That’s probably because, by default, FCP uses the preview files, and just copies the frames into the output file. To make Premiere Pro mimic this behavior, you need to check this box:

Check this box to use your ProRes Preview files.

Because a lot of native file formats are extremely lossy, Premiere, by default, doesn’t use the previews for final output. It prefers to re-render the effects in the timeline from scratch to get the maximum quality. But, with an end-to-end ProRes workflow, that’s not really necessary. So, using the preview files will speed up the output when going back to the same ProRes format.

You’ll want to make a number of different Output Presets following these steps – one for each format of source material. Again, I’ve created output presets that match the same timeline presets:

My ProRes output Presets

Whew! Okay, now the hard part is done! In actual use, now you can open up Premiere Pro any time, choose a ProRes timeline, and start editing. Previews will automatically be in ProRes format, and when you choose to output your timeline, you can output to the same ProRes format by choosing QuickTime, and then choosing the appropriate preset from your list of ProRes presets. End-to-End Workflow!

Why Singapore? Well, to answer that, I have to first answer the question, “Why Asia in general?” The truth is that I’ve always found Asia to be one of the most energetic and dynamic parts of the world. This region is growing so rapidly, and the Adobe video business is really riding that wave over here. We are seeing a big growth in areas like broadcast worldwide, but the potential for growth in the next couple of years here in Asia-Pacific (or APAC) is huge, and I want to help it however I can. Earlier this year, I got the opportunity to come back to the region on a video tour, and it reminded me how much I’ve missed the area. Last year was a domestic-only travel year, and while I loved the Hollywood visits, my heart missed the world traveling; the world exposure to different production worlds, different challenges, etc.

Out of all of Asia, Singapore is the most cosmopolitan city. There’s a little bit of everything here. One thing my world travels has taught me is that America is the biggest exporter of chain branding, especially for restaurants. You name it, and we have it here. (It’s also a place for American chains that can’t survive in the USA – read this article to see more.) Still, the culinary adventures are numerous. 2 highlights so far – getting the kids to try Century Eggs one night (which I love) and to try the King of Fruit, Durian, the next. (not as well received.) The culture here is definitely the most “western” of the large Asian cities, but there’s still a wonderful blending of cultures. It does remind me a lot of San Francisco without the hills – a big city with a lot of diversity, but with a unified branding and identity.

It’s all still so new here – my furniture hasn’t even arrived, and I’m meeting with clients and planning travel in the region. The family is still getting used to it all. Most of my family had never left the USA before, so this was quite the adventure for them. I still have to get my daughter to remember to look right when crossing the street (instead of left like back home.) The humidity is really foreign to me, having grown up in the arid Sacramento valley. My body is still adjusting to that.

People keep asking me how long I will be here – although this is a 2-year contract, I’m treating it for the time being as a permanent relocation. I can’t predict the market in 2 years, but I love the location, the people, the culture, and well, everything about Singapore so far. Some of the other expats that live here came over on even shorter contracts, and just never left. So, we will see what the future holds.

HELLO SINGAPORE!!

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/adobe/story/scaling_in_adobe_premiere_pro_cs5/

Great technical read on what algorithms are used by Premiere Pro depending on which mode (software or hardware) the Mercury Playback engine is run in.

Check it out.

You see, in the engineering world, when discussing YUV color channels properly, there are two separate terms for analog color signals and digital colored signals. The term Y,Pb,Pr is referring to an analog signal, and I used it in a couple of my posts to describe a digital signal. The correct term for the digital signal is Y,Cb,Cr. Graeme Nattress from RED pointed out the mistake in the repost of this blog on Pro Video Coalition.

(BTW – if you don’t read PVC right now, you should. Excellent resource!)

I’ve been switching these two terms in my head for years now. Can’t explain why. Somehow, I associate the “C” for analog color and the “P” for printed on a screen. Makes no sense. At least I’m consistent about it. :-/

Discussing color is an alphabet soup of letters, numbers, variables, and more. I’m trying to break down some of the terms and make it easier for a beginner to understand. Making mistakes like this don’t help. That’s why we call Y,Cb,Cr “YUV” all the time!

Before you read on, make sure you’ve read my earlier articles on 32-bit floating point and on YUV color, and look at the picture from the Wikimedia Commons site of the barn in YUV breakdown.

In the picture of the barn, try to look at the fine detail in the U and V channels.Typically, without any brightness information, it’s hard to see any detail in the color channels. The naked eye just does a much better job distinguishing brightness than color. This fact holds true for moving pictures. If the video uses YUV color space, the most important data is in the Y channel. You can throw away a lot of the color information, and the average viewer can’t tell that it’s gone.

One trick that video engineers have used for years is to toss away a lot of the color information. Basically, they can toss away the color values on every other pixel, and it’s not very noticeable. In some cases, they throw away even more color information. This is called Color Subsampling, and it’s a big part of a lot of modern HD formats for video.

When looking at color subsampling, you use a ratio to express what the color subsampling is. Most of us are familiar with these numbers: 4:4:4, or 4:2:2, or 4:1:1, and most of us are aware that bigger numbers are better. Fewer people understand what the numbers actually mean. It’s actually pretty easy.

Let’s pretend that we are looking at a small part of a frame – just a 4×4 matrix of pixels in an image:

In this example, every pixel has a Y value, a Cb value, and a Cr value. If you look at a line of pixels, and count how many Y, U, and V values, you’d say that there are 4 values of Y, 4 values for U, and 4 values of V. In color shorthand, we’d say that this is a 4:4:4 image.

4:4:4 color is a platinum standard for color, and it’s extremely rare to see a recording device or camera that outputs 4:4:4 color. Since the human eye doesn’t really notice when color is removed, most of the higher-end devices output something called 4:2:2. Here’s what that 4×4 matrix would look like for 4:2:2:

As you can see, half of the pixels are missing the color data. Looking at that 4×4 grid, 4:2:2 color may not look that good, but 4:2:2 color is actually considered a very good color standard. Most computer software can use the neighboring color values and average in the values of the missing color values.

Let’s look at 4:1:1 color, which is used for NTSC DV video:

Bleaccch. 75% of the color for each pixel is tossed away! With bigger “gaps” between color information, it’s even harder for software to “rebuild” the missing values, but it happens. This is one of the reasons that re-compressing DV can cause color smearing from generation to generation.

Let’s look at one other color subsampling, which is called 4:2:0, and is used very frequently in MPEG encoding schemes:

This diagram shows one of many ways that 4:2:0 color subsampling can be accomplished, but the general idea is the same – Luma samples for each pixel, one line has Cb samples for every other pixel, and the next line has Cr samples for every other pixel.

With a color subsampled image, it’s up to the program decoding the picture to estimate the missing pixel values, using the surrounding intact color values, and providing smoothing between the averaged values.

Okay – we’ve defined what color subsampling is. Now, how does that relate to my friend’s earlier argument?

Well, in my DSLR camera, the color information is subsampled to 4:2:0 color space in the camera. In other words, the camera is throwing away the color information. It’s the weakest link in the chain! Converting from 4:2:0 to 4:4:4 at this stage doesn’t “magically” bring back the thrown-away data – the data was lost prior to hitting the memory card. It’s just taking the data that’s already there, and “upsampling” the missing color values by averaging between the adjoining values.

Inside Premiere Pro, the images will stay exactly as they were recorded in-camera for cuts-only edits. If there’s no color work going on, the 4:2:0 values remain untouched. If I need to do some color grading, Premiere Pro will, on-the-fly, upsample the footage to 4:4:4, and it does this very well, and in a lot of cases, in real-time.

Going to a 4:4:4 intermediate codec does have some benefits – in the transcode process, upsampling every frame to 4:4:4 means that your CPU doesn’t have as much work to do, and may give you better performance on older systems, but there’s a huge time penalty in transcoding. And, it doesn’t get you any “better color” than going native. Whether you upsample prior to editing or do it on-the-fly in Premiere Pro, the color info was already lost in the camera.

In fact, I could argue that Premiere Pro is the better solution for certain types of editing because we leave the color samples alone when possible. If the edit is re-encoded to a 4:2:0 format, Premiere Pro can use the original color samples and pass those along to the encoder in certain circumstances. Upsampling and downsampling can cause errors, since the encoder can’t tell the difference between the original color samples and the rebuilt, averaged ones.

I’m not trying to knock intermediate codecs – there are some very valid reasons why certain people need them in their pipeline. But, for people just editing in the Adobe Production Premium suite, they won’t magically add more color data, and may waste you a lot of time. Take advantage of the native editing in Premiere Pro CS5, and you’ll like what you see.