May 2015 – From FCP 7 to Premiere

The World of Tomorrow

December 6, 2015May 31, 2015 by Mike

From the TechCon Agenda, March 26, 2015

As a leader, producer or executive producer it’s important to know what it means to “work digitally.” You don’t necessarily have to send Facebook updates or tweets every second, but it’s good to try to learn about new cameras and editing software, and to revitalize your computer skills. Staying current with technology is easier than ever, from instructional YouTube videos, to courses on Lynda.com, the resources are endless. Be proactive, so you’re not just promising that you are willing to keep learning, but demonstrating that you do so all the time. Why ask the intern how to copy and paste text from a web page into a Word document if you can do it yourself. Learn how to screen raw footage and edits-in-progress from your desk.

IT and cloud computing will soon be handling the production and distribution tasks currently done in our machine rooms with television-specific hardware. You need to learn about the next generation of broadcast infrastructure with a hybrid environment of SDI, files, and video over IP, and about emerging formats like H265 and resolutions like 4K (UHDTV).

As file-based production workflows become more prevalent and delivery requirements continue to be refined, you need to know as much as possible about the files that are delivered. What is the methodology behind creating a good metadata schema? How do you produce compliant CC files? How long does it take to produce those? With recent FCC regulations regarding both the quality and accessibility (CVAA) of closed captioning (CC), you have to understand solutions to ensure CC quality, presence and compliance for broadcast and web (IP) delivered content.

As the post production systems get upgraded, you’ll have access to more than one piece of software. Legacy software like FCP 7 will still be around, specialized tasks will get done on Blender, Fusion, Resolve, & FCPX Our documentarians and multi-cam productions are going to use AVID and Premiere. Designers will use Adobe MAC and WIN. Freelancers can use Affinity. Most units will be using Premiere WIN. Each system meets a certain need, and in broadcast operations we add DAM and other digital broadcast systems to the mix to allow us to provide material to producers, editors, news, MC, traffic, external clients and others.

This website is meant to help you open up this new world with links to lynda.com for professional development and other helpful articles.

Leading the Four Generations at Work
Communicating how to do what you do
Good Computer Habits
Computer Skills Mac
Computer Literacy Mac
Computer Literacy Windows
Meeting the Challenge of Digital Transformation
The American Archive of Public Broadcasting
WebM is the HTML-5 standard video format created by Google.

Welcome to the new normal: The FCP7 to Premiere shift.

March 27, 2016May 29, 2015 by Mike

For a quick start, read up on UNC paths, Sequence settings & Preferences.
Tips, tricks and workflows are on the Editors page.
Troubleshooting tips here.

FCP7 was based on Quicktime 32 bit, Premiere is based on the Mercury playback engine 64bit. In the last decade operating systems went to 64bit, ram went from 8 to 128 GB and GPU’s are now accelerating tasks like rendering and encoding. If you don’t watch out when you switch to Premiere, you’ll become a beta tester for big corporations like Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, AVID, HP, Dell, and all the camera manufacturers. In postproduction, there are so many moving parts, so many “improvements” around the corner almost every month, that it’s hard for these poor corporations and their hardware and software engineers to keep up.
So there you are, sitting in a room trying to edit with Quicktime movies that were working fine in the last decade, but instead of working on your edit, you’re Googling glitches, system crashes and audio drop outs.

Adobe sells the creative cloud suite as if it is one interconnecting piece of software. But if you have Pr and Ae open at the same time you experience lots of conflicts, stalls and crashes because the apps fight over the same GPU, CPU, RAM, output card, media, metadata, media cache data base, preview files etc. Adobe keeps adding on “features”, keeps stacking code on code which creates tons of bugs. So how do you actually get work done?
Simple; don’t use direct linking the way it’s designed. Use it to move metadata between apps, then close the other app, render or export out a file and import that back into Pr. If you have to make a change, simply overwrite with same name on your media drive and it will update on the Pr timeline.
This is how editors worked in the past decade. The Adobe programmers agree:
-With Speedgrade & Premiere it is either-or (using direct link), you share the same project, media and metadata and can only have the Pr project open in one app at the same time.
-When you send a sequence to Audition CC2015, it creates a separate set of WAV files in a folder called “Adobe Audition Interchange”. The picture now links using “dynamic link”.
PS2015-GPU-warning -Photoshop CC2015 programmers where given this language by marketers. Why doesn’t the message say: “The computer is too busy, please close some apps”?
-In Speedgrade and Ae the available VRAM is sometimes reported lower than what you have installed because the software correctly shares the GPU cores with the other open apps.

Today as editors we wear more hats than ever: editing, sound mixing, graphic design, rotoscoping, stabilizing, color correcting, closed captioning, subtitling, encoding for the web, and collaborating with clients and team members inside and outside the edit room in real time.

I finally started to understand that it’s possible to weed through all the marketing bullshit and get back to work. Testing camera’s, camera settings, I/O hardware and software settings is the key to finding a stable workflow.
To get up to speed in Premiere read this book’s 600 pages.
This website functions as a collection of links to pages and PDFs that helped me learn Premiere.

Updating and backing up project files: best practices
How do I speed up rendering, exporting and encoding?

Manually copy keyboard shortcuts between computers

April 7, 2016May 28, 2015 by Mike

You can copy your customized keyboard shortcuts from one computer to another computer, or to another location on your computer, but not between WIN & MAC.

1. Save keyboard settings As.
2. Locate the keyboard shortcuts file (.kys) that you want to copy to another computer.

Signed into Creative Cloud Sync Settings
Win: Users\[user name]\Documents\Adobe\Premiere Pro\[version]\Profile-CreativeCloud-\Win\
Mac: Users/[user name]/Documents/Adobe/Premiere Pro/[version]/Profile-CreativeCloud-/Mac/

Signed out of Creative Cloud Sync Settings
Win: Users\[user name]\Documents\Adobe\Premiere Pro\[version]\Profile-username\Win\
Mac: Users/[user name]/Documents/Adobe/Premiere Pro/[version]/Profile-username/Mac/
[version] can be 7.0 , 8.0 or 9.0

At WNET signed in as regular user
\\thirteen.org\users\YourName\mydocuments\Adobe\Premiere Pro\9.0\Profile-yourname\Win\keyboard.kys
Or
Click on documents in side panel and search for “kys”

To copy the keyboard shortcuts file to a location on a different computer, copy the .kys file to a removable drive. Then, copy the .kys file from the removable drive to the same folder on the new computer.

Communicating how to do what you do

May 29, 2015May 28, 2015 by Mike

What would happen if you or one of you production team members got hit by a bus on the way to work tomorrow? Would your job be easily covered? How would anyone else know what to do? How do you know what to teach them? Is everyone in Development, Promotions, Production, Traffic, Post, Audio and Master Control on the same page and ready to act? Do you have a production bible?

Communicating how to do what you do is very important for reasons ranging from:

Getting disparate departments working together more effectively.
Identifying better ways of doing things.
Convincing management why you need additional resources, gear, or personnel.
Delegating more effectively.
Being better prepared for organizational change and restructuring.
Discover how some of your peers are grappling with documenting their daily tasks and procedures.
Staying on schedule and budget, undeterred by people being late, sick or stuck in traffic…
Communicating clearly with clients inside and outside the organization.

For example, as an editor, I want the whole team to know where the project files are, both the outputs and the backups. I try to establish a folder structure that everybody on the team knows and understands. All team members should know how to access different versions of the edits, Word and Excel documents, pictures, GFX files, etc. etc.

Optimizing media in Premiere

August 5, 2016May 15, 2015 by Mike

Premiere’s “Editing modes” are the same as FCP7’s “Easy setups.” The Sequence Settings show in one window how the application will behave. Understanding them can make the difference between struggling through your days or having a smooth experience. Related to this is the connection speed to your media drives, the performance of those drives and correct media locations.

Go to File>New>Sequence
Click Tracks>choose Multichannel.

Never work in default stereo, because you can’t change output channels from the sequence afterwards.
You also loose your renders when you copy and paste between sequences.
Uncheck “Composite in Linear Color” for better dissolve performance.

PR-yellow If you can match your mediafile’s settings in part 1 & 2 of the sequence settings, you’ll have no yellow render line on your timeline. (save as preset for later)
Adobe calls this: “use the media file as the preview file.”

multi14-2
Like in FCP7, a sequence can change “Editing Mode” the first time you drag footage into it when empty and like FCP7 it doesn’t always recognize the incoming clip correct. So when do you choose change or keep?
Nine times out of ten, start with File>New>Sequence, choose an editing mode, make it multi-channel or re-use an old sequence. “Change sequence settings” is unreliable!
WNET-p2setting
–With DVCPRO-HD60i choose Editing Mode: P2 1080i-1080p 60Hz DVCPROHD
–With C100, MTS, AVCHD, DSLR H264 files and MP4 clips, choose either:
P2 1080i-1080p 60Hz DVCPROHD .MOV
or
AVC-Intra 50 1080i .MXF
With these formats you edit with yellow real-time line, then render and get the green line, for screening without stutters.
-Avoid losing your render files by clicking AWAY from your rendered sequence, BEFORE closing Premiere!
Premiere immediately checks to see if the render files are available. If it doesn’t “see” them in those first milliseconds, they are ignored and you get a red bar.
–NEVER use “I-Frame Only MPEG” in part 2 of the sequence settings.
–On a MAC always work in QuickTime ProRes.

For final exports, export straight out of Premiere. Export matching sequence settings, using previews.
Remove all disabled clips from the timeline before export! Premiere has a bug that exponentially inflates export times with even one disabled audio clip on the TL!
Export speed should be 1/4 realtime or better. Don’t use Queue because when you send a timeline with hundreds of edits with adjustment layers and filters. Dynamic linking has to pass all that information from Premiere to AME in the background applied to the footage in order to render all the frames correct. It causes glitches and is too slow.
The correct way of using AME is letting it crank out screeners from flattened files in the background while you work. H264 from flattened file should take 1/2 realtime.

NOTES: In Premiere on WIN> PRORES Quicktime can’t be used at all, because it is a Mac-only format. (Apple will not license it to Adobe)
With DSLR’s try to shoot with KiPro or Samurai to avoid transcoding altogether.

This is the list of preferred I-Frame codecs that play without generating cache files:
DVCPRO-HD in MXF wrapper (the file structure on P2 cards)
DVCPRO-HD in Quicktime wrapper
PRORES (Mac only)
AVID DNxHD & DNxHR MXF (Adobe licensed for both Mac & PC)
AVID DNxHD & DNxHR in Quicktime wrapper
AVC-intra MXF (Mac & PC)
C300 & C500 MXF files
AVI (windows only)
Any other file will generate Cache files on import for both Video & Audio

Resources
FAQ: How do I speed up rendering, exporting, or encoding?
Test disk speed WIN MAC
All about Pr Media Cache Files

7 Scratch Disk settings for a shared Premiere project:
File> Project Settings

Edit > Preferences > Media
Both should be local, preferably on a 3rd drive. Unfortunately that means that in a shared project setup the Cache files will get regenerated when you open the project in another room. Check the “Write XMP ID” box for a better database experience.