PremierePro.Net by Jarle Leirpoll is an awesome resource

 

I was watching a Maxon series on Red Giant Universe, and one of the presenters was Jarle Leirpoll, who I hadn’t heard about. I quickly went and checkout out his web site Premiere Pro.net and it is an awesome resource.

He wrote a book on Advanced Premiere Pro Editing Techniques called The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro.

And he has a Free PDF book on making MOGRTs or Motion Graphics Templates in After Effects for use in Premiere Pro. 

Certainly a resource to check out.

Sofi Marshall’s Ultimate Real Time Remote Editing Workflow and how I am considering adapting it to my workflow

 

Sofi Marshall, Editor, Writer and Workflow Expert has an awesome post on the Ultimate Real Time Remote Editing Worklflow. You can check out her IMDB page to see her experience, which is extensive.

Now I talked a bit about this in my recent post on Work from Home thanks to the Covid-19 Pandemic. And I have been thinking about getting a workflow working because I would like to be able to work from home as much as possible.

And I too loved iChat theater in Final Cut Pro 7. It was amazing technology that worked really well when the entire Internet was so much slower.

As for the Workflow, obviously the BlackMagic Web Presenter has been updated to the Web Presenter HD to include the front panel, but there is another option as well that is either the ATEM Mini or the ATEM Mini Pro which are switchers and include picture in picture abilities.

Now the Mini Pro includes the ability to stream directly to YouTube, FaceBook or Twitch (or I guess you program some others like Vimeo but it isn’t easy, nor is that going to be all that secure) but the Mini for $295 seems like a viable alternative as it has the USB port to act as a web cam and it has multiple sources possible, so if you have a camera with an HDMI port and I have an old GoPro Hero 2 which has mini USB out and a usb for power.

Personally since I have an BlackMagic Ultrastudio 4k, I would hook this up to the ATEM Mini as my main source, and the GoPro as my personal camera, and then I would hook up the ATEM Mini to my Windows Surface and run Zoom on there to save resources on my editing Mac.

The one issue is the single HDMI out on my Ultrastudio 4k, so to get it to my monitor, I would have to take the HDMi out of the switcher which will likely put it on more of a delay from what I am editing, but this would only be necessary when live streaming.

And because of the Ultrastudio I would not be streaming any of my desktop, but the direct output from my editing system, though I would still uncheck disable video output when I background, so the output signal remains as a source.

Now with using my Windows Tablet as the zoom machine, I will have to use it as the audio monitor as well (though that precludes all the setup with Rouge Amoeba’s LOOPBACK which makes things easier) though not sure how great it will sound through the headphone port and have to check audio levels using the ATEM Software Control (which should work fine on Windows).

Best would be to cut off audio to the gopro and use a good mic through the switcher’s microphone ports, but that is of course an extra expense.

And honestly I should probably run the audio out headphone port into my Emotiva-XDA-1 and it’s connected heaphone amp, just so I can control the volume better.

Of course I have to hook it up and try it to see how it works, and if it didn’t I could do it all from my iMac, but that shouldn’t be necessary.

 

EDIT: Awesome, so Sofi Marshall has done a small update to the post to add the ATEM Mini as an option. Basically it works the same, with the ability to do picture in picture form multiple sources, but it has one downside. The ATEM Mini can only accept 1080 inputs, while the web presenter can accept 4K inputs, and the ATEM Mini is a bit larger as well. Good to know.

EDIT: OK so maybe the Web Presenter is the better solution. It has SDI, and I have SDI to spare on my Ultrastudio 4k, and it accepts up to 2160 60p video  and exports up to 1080 60p. The ATEM mini and Mini pro accept up to 1080 60p video, so it wouldn’t accept a UHD sequence direct from Premiere, but I would also lose the ability to have a camera on me via the switcher. Hmmm.

 

 

In Premiere Pro and AVID as well, the most important thing to remember it to save all the time

 

Now some people will go without saying that saving is important in editing, and yes there is an auto-save.


And you do want your auto-save set as it will save your ass some time because of a random crash, but more important is to get yourself saving as much as possible.

It has become such second nature to me that I just hit command-S all the time, in fact when moving to Final Cut Pro X, I kept dinging the computer as there is no save, it is just supposed to save every time you make a change, but I am so ingrained to save that I kept trying to do it anyway (and it isn’t like final cuts lack of a save has always worked for me, as I have crashed and lost quite a bit of work in Final Cut Pro X as well).
And sometimes saves can take a while, especially fi the project is huge, but it is always worth saving as much as possible because otherwise you will crash and lose something, and you never want to do that.

So remember to save all the time and often, don’t let it fall to the auto save.

I was accepted to the Adobe Speech to Text Beta for Premiere Pro, can’t wait to give it a real run through!

 So I applied to the Adobe Speech To Text Beta for Early Access, and was accepted, woohoo!

I didn’t realize it is locked to your account and will work in both Premiere Pro 15.0 and Beta based on my Adobe ID, I thought it would only run in the beta, so this is great news.

I am currently cutting commercial and direct response shots, and with testimonial this feature will be invaluable!

I will be reporting on it as I try it out. I have been very excited about this feature for some time.

Some really cool online editing tools at EditiingTools.io

EditingTools.io is a very cool web site with some very useful tools online. You might not need them right now, but when you do it is going to be great to remember they are there.

EditingTools.io is a collection of generators, scripts, converters and machine learning applications made over the last years for various projects & productions. 

They accept donations to keep their free tools online.

There are some very useful tools for converting or combining AVID Log Exchange files or ALE files.

XML to Splitscreen XML to perfectly do split screens.

A very useful Marker Converter to convert timeline markers from Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Frame.io, SubRip Subtitle, CSV, PDF and more.

A subtitle tool & converter.

A tool to generate an Editor’s Codebook from ALE files.

A Music Cut Sheet creator from XML files (woohoo, awesome if you have to make them).

A Edit Shot List / VFX Shot List from XML.

And so much more. These are great tools to know about in case you need them.

A Keyboard based launcher for Adobe Premiere Pro, I have written about it before, but you should check out Knights of the Editing Tables awesome Excalibur

 

So this one I have written about before, but that was before I really started using it. Now I am a big fan of keyboard based launchers and have used LaunchBar from ObDev on my mac for many years and FXConsole from VideoCopilot in after effects since it’s release (and will be writing about both in the future here) but this time it is Excalibur from Knights of the Editing Table for Adobe Premiere Pro.

This once again is a keyboard launcher for Premiere Pro, you hit a keyboard shortcut, I use option-spacebar and then you can add effects, presets or transitions from the keyboard. It works and it works great.

And the most amazing thing is being able to add transitions and then set the length all from the keyboard! WOOHOOOO!! This is from a feature I have long missed from Final Cut Pro 7 where I could different length shortcuts for Dissolve and quickly put them on. Now I can do it without leaving the keyboard!

Here I have the transition selected.

Here I have typed cross then I hit right arrow and typed 8 for 8 frames and enter.

The Cross Dissolve was added, and when I double click on it it is 8 Frames, AMAZING!

Personally this is 100% worth the $75 and I might even buy a second license to bring to work with me, that I can uninstall and bring to new locations once the Pandemic is over.

Knights of the Editing Table Excalibur has been updated to version 1.1.0 with Undo support now added

 

Knights of the Editing Tables awesome Excalibur a keyboard based launcher for Premiere Pro has been updated to version 1.1.0, and it is a free update to registered users. 

The most exciting feature is having added Undo which works with both Excalibur commands (which sometimes didn’t show up in the Premiere Pro history) and normal Premiere Pro commands.

And support for Control surfaces like Stream Deck and Loupedeck which will certainly allow for some new control abilities. I know many settings for the Stream Deck in After Effects use VideoCopilots FX Console, so this will certainly be an exciting addition in the future.

You can also add Adjustment layers, Nest clips as Premiere Does or per Excalibur which allows for multirack audio to nest. You can add a show clip keyframe command.

My next post is another post on Excalibur, so be sure to check that out as well.

I am having some issues with this release in Premiere Pro 2019, which it did work in previously and as the error message shows it has to with world scripting added in later releases.

Apple Quicktime on Mac and it’s awful issue of Gamma Shift in Video from Premiere and DaVinci Resolve

An image from a short film I have been grading, on the left is the image as shown by quicktime, and the right is in VLC matching what you see in DaVinci, you can see that they are quite different. It is the damn Apple Quicktime Gamma shift!

So I have been having issues with the gamma problem with my producers viewing my movies, since I am working from home, and we are running Premiere. I knew about the issue in the past, but have been looking into any solutions, and found some amazing articles on the subject that you should certainly read to know more about this frustrating issue.

Todd Dominey has an awesome article on the issue from Janurary 24th, 2021, that is a must read.

And Dan Swierenga has another great read on DaVinci and the issue at his blog The Post Process.

For those who don’t know is that basically Apple and Quicktime have a Gamma shift issue with Video Footage that has to do with Apple Colorsync and how it tags video. So if you play your videos on a Mac in Quicktime or in any Colorsync application (life Safari) a video from Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve they will be brighter and less contrasty than they actually are. It can be a huge issue when sending to clients.

The issue does not occur with Final Cut Pro X because it uses ColorSync (not having to be cross platform).

The solution is to use a non-colorsync application to play the video back and it will look correct (or at least more as it was intended). This can be done with Mozilla Firefox or VLC.

You could add a LUT to try and fix it (and Adobe actually has one) but for people on windows or using a non-color sync app the image will be too dark, and the the fix is never going to be perfect.

So the problem become getting people to use VLC as Apple is never going to fix it’s messed up Gamma settings.

Adobe Creative Suite Video feature request, easily copy and paste a Lumetri color from Premiere Pro to After Effects without exporting a LUT

 

As someone who works extensively between After Effects and Premiere Pro, I do love Adobe Dynamic Link (though it could use an update for sure), there is one thing that I wish could come easily between the two programs, and that is Lumetri Color Effects.

Yes you can pass the Lumetri Effect them through via Dynamic Link, but that is better for sequences, than individual shots. And yes you can export a .cube effect from your Lumetri Color, which is a LUT. The LUT can then be added in Lumtri, but it isn’t just repeating the Lumetri Effect, it is a Lumtri with a LUT added to it (and since After Effects and Premiere Pro use different Color spaces since After Effects uses RGB vs YUV), it is easier to tweak a bit if it is the Lumetri Color effect.

Now the easiest for the user would be if you could copy and paste the effect.

The Lumetri Color panel is one thing, but it is also an effect.

And the Lumetri effect shows up in After Effects as an effect as well.

Now I am assuming copy and paste would be difficult as some program would need to be running to catch the copy and move it over (something in creative cloud), but this would be absolutely ideal.

Now the solution is to make all your selects in Premiere and send it over via Adobe Dynamic Link then use the lumetri off those. And this does work, but it isn’t as easy as copy and pasting from one to the other for sure.

Or you can send out individual LUTS from the Lumetri Color Tab.

And select Export Cube to export a LUT that you can then add onto a Lumetri basic correction or a look you can use in the Creative section of Lumetri (and this is good because you can control the strength of the effect).

Now they could put in a Creative Cloud sync like you can do with Essential Graphics templates, but most of the time I am using my own Adobe login so the sync is useless, and I have always thought it needed some more job specific settings, like they only show up if you select the job you are on, and would download the templates to the job folder so that when you back it up they are there for anyone using the job especially in the future.

Things to try when Premiere Pro has issues exporting a sequence

If you use Premiere Pro enough, you will run into issues, and the most frustrating issue of all can be when you have problems exporting a sequence, especially when you are on a deadline. This can be absolutely terrifying, and you need to get your sequence exported ASAP!

So I thought I would give you some things that have been known to work for me.

The first thing to try is to trash the current render of your timeline and re-render. If you have a rendered timeline and you go to export a sequence you can save time and sometimes export easier by selecting use renders.

You can see this select above in blue, USE PREVIEWS. When your sequence is rendered and things are going well, it will use your Previews to render and should greatly speed things up.

Still sometimes the renders can get screwed up so clean fresh renders are a first step.

A second thing to try is is if you are compressing to a different format than you are editing in, is to try to match the sequence settings.

Especially if you are using the Previews this can speed things up and with no cross compression make the video easier to export. You can then recompress using Media Encoder, which should go quickly. Sure it is an extra step, but if it gets a working sequence out, it is worth it.

Next if things are really bad and you can’t get the sequence to export at all, you should move the sequence to a new clean project. 

You should make a new project and drag the Sequence over, which will bring just it and the associated media files.

Most of the files are even brought over organized as they previously were, though unfortunately the organization of the sequences has not come over. Still save this Project and export from this project. This might mean that there is corruption in your project file.

Sometimes I move all the files in a project into a new fresh project and it can solve some issues.

Earlier of my posts talked about trashing the preferences and that is another thing I would try.

Hopefully when you run into the problems of exporting a sequence these things can help, and hopefully they can help you.