Using digital still camera pictures

[R***@adobeforums.com]

I am trying to combine my video footage with digital still camera pictures. It produces a kind of slide show within a movie.

When I attempt the joinder of these two sources on my timeline Premiere Pro 1.5 (with Matrox RTX 100) crashes.

This does not seem to be a "brain surgery" procedure.

Does anybody have any tips?

Dick Ziegler

***@aol.com

[P***@adobeforums.com]

Richard,

Without more detail about the project and your system, it may be difficult to suggest a fix on the first try.

1) Be sure the file type of the digital pictures are compatible with PPro and Matrox.

2) Check the size of the pictures. If taken with one of the newer 5 or 6 megapixel cameras, they may be huge. You should resize the pictures closer to the project specs (720 x 480) before importing them. You should have no trouble going to double that size if you need to pan and zoom on the stills.

3) It is important that the still photos and video reside on a separate drive from your O/S. If your system is set to use the "C" drive for the O/S and a different internal drive (let's call it "D") for AV files, be sure to place you digital pictures on the "D" drive along with the video footage.

If this doesn't work, tell us a bit more about the project and how you are trying to join the types of media. Some basic detail about your system would also help.

Best wishes.

[j***@adobeforums.com]

An added benefit to resizing your stills to 720x480 (NTSC) before importing is that there will be NO RENDERING involved. For pictures doing Pan/Zoom, use the original. It really can overload the timeline when you drop 30 or 40 pictures in the 5MP or larger size range. The preview monitor makes a valiant attempt to display your timeline, but can't handle the data rate.

I love to use IrfanView (v 3.97) and its Batch Convert process. It can resize hundreds of pictures down to 720x480, rename them, put the new copies in another folder if desired, and be done in minutes. It has an excellent Resample routine, much better than most. The price is right, too. Free! <http://www.irfanview.com>

[Q***@adobeforums.com]

I’d like to tune in if I may on pictures and slide shows as I've been having a great deal of confusion on the matter. According to Jacob Rosenberg's book "Premiere Pro 1.5" the preferred method in dealing with images is to check the "scale clips to project dimensions when adding to sequence" button. (Under Project Settings, general tab) Resizing images before hand is apparently no longer necessary. Further, premiere pro is supposed to reference the original file when performing zoom and pans, so that image quality doesn’t suffer.

The problem I have found is that the image quality is slightly rasterized. I’ve tried importing the full size image, deselecting “scale clips to project…” and manually adjusting the images scale in the effects setting, but even this does not seem to prevent the image degradation. I’ve read that you can sometimes add a slight amount of camera blur, which did seem to help, but do I really want a soft focus on everything?

I made a family slide show last year with over 1,000 images with a program called Pro Show Gold. It’s terribly buggy, but premiere has yet to provide results that can compare. The images where silky smooth. Granted the program might be adding some default effect to accomplish this, but I’ve been really disappointed with Premiere. I’m hoping this is a simple case of ignorance.

I did notice too that yeah, drop in a bunch of those full size images and watch the system crash. Render? Get lost.

Does anybody have

[Q***@adobeforums.com]

Whoops I forgot my question...

Does anybody have experience working strictly with images. What is the trick to getting the best results?

[P***@adobeforums.com]

It's entirely possible for software to automatically resample and intelligently adjust images for optimum display with only minimum input from a user. Microsoft Publisher, believe it or not, is one such program. It handles auto-scaling of even very poor images like a champ. Imaginate from Canopus (same purpose as Pro Show Gold) is another program that comes immediately to mind. But PPro is not very good at auto-anything, including scaling. Like most Adobe products, the user must work very, very hard to achieve a desired result. The upside is, Adobe programs assume very little, giving you maximum flexibility with whatever adjustments you care to make.

My experience has been that it's usually best to ignore the "auto rescale" feature in PPro and to spend a bit of time prepping your images with Photoshop or some such...before bringing them into your project. It's really the best way to minimize the overhead that large graphics impose on PPro and to assure that you're getting the exact "look" you're after.

[c***@adobeforums.com]

Large pixel pix are trouble for Ppro. Although it's max size is 4000 by 4000, more than 15 or son on the timeline is trouble. Even 2000 by 2000, if to many, can bog pPro down.

Use an external program to reduce the pix to project dimensions. Do this for any pix you do not intend to pan, tilt, rotate, or zoom. For those that you do desire to use motion on, try to optimize the size for the motion intended (i.e. a very slight zoom, means a slightly larger than project size, more zoom-larger pic).

Memory problems (possibly corrected in 1.5.1) cause green and black spots where rendered images should appear (both on the timeline and the export/transcode). The more the larger pix, the more the possibility of this. If there's no way around it, then at least render in smaller chunks.

Imaginate 2.0 will process huge images, creating an AVI file you can import into PPro, and quickly.

More info in Pro-Wiki.

Keep Smiling

[Q***@adobeforums.com]

That helps a great deal, thank you. Knowing that I'm not in the wrong ballpark makes a big difference. I'm use ASeeDC, it batch processes images very well. Not sure about AVI files thought, will check it out. Is there an advantage to AVI? What's been your experience with the PPro anti-alias feature?

Thanks again, I'm smiling. Gonna pull a Premiere Pro marathon this weekend.