This IS the Avid L2: Re: [Avid-L2] avid editors' opinion of adobe premiere?

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Re: [Avid-L2] avid editors' opinion of adobe premiere?

That indeed appears to be true in my limited trials. I hesitate only because I have not tested this as thoroughly as would like. I only just discovered this about a month ago. At the risk of offending the Avid faithful, let me elaborate.

My offline HD Sequence is sourced with full quality original, scaled to compose inside a 5.33:1 letterbox mask. For projection tests, I nested this sequence into 3 HD sequences, then scaled the nested sequences to fill the new frames. The result is three HD masters, each one third of my final three projector image. Judging by eye on my HD output monitors the resulting image quality appears to be the same as I would get if I had originally composed at that size.

This was not a total surprise when I tried it. In my limited experience, it makes no difference how and when you scale something in Premiere. The resulting renders always looks the same. I suspect, but have not yet tested, that if I were to cut 4k original in an HD sequence and then export this at 4K, the result would be a 4K render. If you change the resolution settings of a sequence, Premiere may get confused about scale settings, but if you scale the entire sequence, you do not appear to lose quality.

And then there is the on-the-fly performance. Most of my sequence is two to four layers of video (not including the alpha channel mask) all scaled; HD, SD, some very large stills, and some 4K all unconverted master quality. I'm cutting on a 2009 quad-core with 16GB of RAM and a modern nVidia card (graphic acceleration is key for Premiere). I generally set the canvas to 1/2 or 1/4 resolution with the AJA Kona output off (a drag on performance). I rarely have to render to get reasonable playback.

I did pretty much the same thing in Avid v7 last year, on the same machine. I could not play three scaled streams successfully without rendering with any settings. In Avid, hitting render after setting each clip became habitual.

I feel the need to repeat that I am not dumping on Avid. I've been cutting on Avid's since 1992. I love the company and I understand the product well. This is simply not Avid's strength.

Cheers,

tod

On Mar 19, 2016, at 3:23 PM, Michael Brockington <mbrock321@gmail.com> wrote:

Very interesting, Tod, thanks.

I was wondering about what happened to resolution when you start nesting Adobe sequences. So it sounds like you can scale a 4K source into an HD frame, then nest that HD frame into another sequence, blow up the part you're interested in, and preserve the underlying 4K quality without worrying about intermediate downscaling. Is that right?

Thanks,
--Michael

On 2016-03-19 9:59 AM, hoplist@hillmanncarr.com wrote:

On Mar 16, 2016, at 11:58 PM, Michael Brockington mbrock321@gmail.com [Avid-L2] <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

This upcoming project will use a custom raster - probably something like
5276x1920, so about 5xHD frames stacked sideways, which would be about
25% more pixels than a 4K frame.

At the risk of oversimplifying, this is a no-brainer for me. Nothing can touch the Adobe Creative suite for this type of production. There's a lot to love about Avid, but multi-image production is definitely not one of them. Resolution independence is THE thing that Adobe does better than everyone else.

I've been cutting multi-image productions for 25 years using both Avid and Final Cut. Last year I finished three screen and six screen productions using Avid v7. About 45% of these shows had to round trip with AE. At the same time, two of my "junior" editors finished two seamless three-screen productions, and a three-stream "Mosaic" production using Premiere and After Effects. This was a direct, side-by-side test in real world production over a year's time.

The Adobe workflow is wildly superior for multi-screen. Resolution flexibility and round-tripping between Premiere and After Effects is a killer combo.

I am now cutting a 5760x1080, three-projector, mixed format production using Premiere on an eight year old quad-core with Kona3. I am off-lining in an HD sequence using full resolution sources including 4K. No conversion of footage. I can take this low-res sequence and drop it into three master resolution sequences and output at master quality for projection tests. One frame adjustment. Shockingly easy.

I am not an Adobe fan and I am a long-time Avid fan. I've only been editing seriously with Premiere for a year. I would be very, very unhappy if you took Premiere away from me right now.

Cheers,

tod