Premiere Pro unnecessary recompression issue directly, always, import, pretty

andy

In Premiere Pro 1.0 I'm working on an NTSC DV project. I import the first DV video and lay it on the timeline as track Video 1. Then I import the second DV video and lay it on the timeline as Video 2 directly above. Since the opacity for Video 2 is 100%, none of Video 1 shows up in the output. So why is it that when I hit Enter, Premiere insists on re-compressing Video 2? My work area is always marked red (need rendering) regardless of the Video 2 opacity. I'm pretty sure this is not how Premiere 5.x and 6.x worked.

Make sure following things are set accordingly:
Your project settings are for NTSC (32 / 48K)
Your clips match the project settings
Your clips dont differ from each other (even different FourCC will confuse Premiere)

Yep, everything checks out. The two clips are identical in properties.

It should only render your work area. If you have the work area set around your full timeline, then that would be the problem.


Originally Posted by ZarxraxIt should only render your work area. If you have the work area set around your full timeline, then that would be the problem.

Understood, but that's not my issue (although I can understood how my wording might've been ambiguous). I'm saying that laying (with 100% opacity) video #2 over video #1 causes Premiere to re-compress video #2 when rendering the entire area, which is unnecessary because video #2 hasn't changed in any way. I can confirm this by checking the scratch folder and finding newly compressed video in there which is identical to Video #2.

My expectation is that if I put two videos on a timeline and introduce no transitions or effects to the timeline, the output should not need to be rendered  and recompressed because it requires just simple direct stream copying of the input videos. I'm pretty sure this is how things worked in Premiere 5.x and 6.x. Did something change that I'm not aware of?


Originally Posted by zambelliMy expectation is that if I put two videos on a timeline and introduce no transitions or effects to the timeline, the output should not need to be rendered  and recompressed because it requires just simple direct stream copying of the input videos.

I still don't understand what exactly you are trying to do. If you overlay two videos then the entire overlay section needs to be re-rendered, even at 100% opacity.
I don't understand why you are overlaying videos when you just want one to be shown. Remove the portion of the other video from the timeline that will not be shown and your clip will not be compressed again.

If you are trying to join two videos, then trim each one and put them next to each other in one line.

Actually simple cuts shouldn require rendering / recompressing as zambelli said. And yes this is how it worked in earlier and even in the current version of Premiere. Even overlaying clips in the timeline shouldn require any rendering (direct stream copy process).
There must be something going wrong dont know what though.
For all that are still wondering what he is talking about:Thank you, communist, for clarifying that! I'm glad someone out there understands my posts, lol.

To provide even more information.... Most of the cuts are A-B rolls and I do them by creating keyframes in the opacity of Video 2 and then setting the opacity level between two keyframs to either 0% or 100% depending on which video I want to see. This used to work without recompression in Premiere 5.1c, so unless something changed drastically since that version, I expect it to work the same in Pro.

And if anyone has a more efficient way of doing A-B rolls, that'd be awesome too.

I still don't understand what exactly you are trying to do. If you overlay two videos then the entire overlay section needs to be re-rendered, even at 100% opacity.

I don't understand why you are overlaying videos when you just want one to be shown. Remove the portion of the other video from the timeline that will not be shown and your clip will not be compressed again.

When you're working on a project you might want to try and see how another clip works at a certain place - but you don't want to remove the first clip because you're just trying and probably want to return to the original (and then it's very counter productive if you have to render...)

Another very possible scenario is when you have an interview situation: somebody sitting in front of the camera talking. Now if you want to see some pictures of what the person is talking about while he/she is talking, the easiest way to do it is just put the clips above the interview clip, without having to cut the interview clip. It's definitely wrong if Premiere wants to render something like this, because it doesn't need rendering.

What I do a lot is comment my videos while shooting (only my private holiday  videos, of course). I shoot some kind of wide shot without moving the camera and comment the situation live. Afterwards I shoot my inserts - I put this long clip in the timeline and put all the inserts above the quot;talkingquot; clip. Usually no rendering needed!

By the way I just checked Premiere Pro 1.5 and it doesn't want to render anything...


Originally Posted by theRealBy the way I just checked Premiere Pro 1.5 and it doesn't want to render anything...

After laying the videos on the timeline, did you try doing at least one A-B roll or dissolve?

I've verified that the issue also repros with HuffYUV videos (in HuffYUV projects) and isn't isolated to just DV.

Check this out:Note that red line above the timeline extends to the entire Video 2 clip. The expected behavior is that the red line should only appear above the opacity fade because that's the only area that truly needs to be rendered and recompressed.

Ok this make sense after all. You've used opacity keyframes which even if they only effect the first few frames of a clip will cause Premiere do render the whole timeframe from start to end of the clip. Just use cross dissolve at the beginning and it shouldn do that.
Yeah its stupid but thats the solution

Gotcha. But what if I want to do a straight cut from one clip to the other? Is there another way to do that (aside from razor cutting the clips  )?

Just use cross dissolve at the beginning and it shouldn do that.
It's easier anyways to use a cross dissolve (unless you want to create your own creative dissolve-curve with keyframes).

A hard cut doesn't cause Premiere to render anything because there are no opacity keyframes (same as when you insert a cross dissolve). At least my Premiere Pro 1.5 doesn't render in that case.


Originally Posted by theRealA hard cut doesn't cause Premiere to render anything because there are no opacity keyframes (same as when you insert a cross dissolve). At least my Premiere Pro 1.5 doesn't render in that case.

What's your technique for doing a hard cut in Premiere? I've always used opacity keyframes for both hard cuts and dissolves - it just seems that Premiere 5.1 was more intelligent (forgiving?) about knowing what to render.
Say you have two synched cameras, A and B, and you just want to switch from one camera to the other, like in a TV broadcast. What's your method of doing this? (Sorry to derail the thread like this.)

Just use the razor and trim tools. Once you have them synced they should stay synced unless you move clips within the track.


Originally Posted by communistJust use the razor and trim tools. Once you have them synced they should stay synced unless you move clips within the track.

I've considered that, but my main problem with that approach is that it makes it more difficult to apply changes to the entire clip (but not the entire track). Say I find the audio is out of synch and I need to realign the entire clip but not the entire track? Or if I want to apply gamma correction to the clip? I'm not saying it's impossible, but it certainly becomes more difficult when the clip is all chopped up.

you could always put them in a new sequence and apply the effect to the sequence.

that's ony really useful if you're doing a lot of cuts though, and premiere pro for some reason is prone to hanging and/or crashing when you switch between sequences more than a couple of times (god, i hate this program!).