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Hello, apologies if this is the wrong place to ask but Im experimenting with exporting to Premiere and am overwhelmed by the options. Im looking to make a 1920x1080 video at 24fr and was curious if anyone could share their optimal settings to use when creating a new file for tvpaint animations. Thank you! -Nigel

Any lossless format will do. That said, I use Quicktime with PNG codec, Millions+ colours for preserving transparency.

I would suggest staying away from QT (which you have to if working in 64bit in a PC anyway) and using "AVI (Internal) Motion JPEG". BTW I have a question to you: how does Premier deal with editing 1080p clips? Can it keep up with a 24fps frame rate? I ask this because I use Vegas Pro, which is unable to do this with any project longer than just a couple of minutes. For this reason I have to export my AVIs to 720p and after the film is done, (if necessary at all since 720p is still HD) I replace the 720 clips with 1080 clips.

I work only with Premiere as my editing software and I would suggest not to use any video format at all. Export image sequences in PNGs - it's the best and safest way to go. Premiere handles image sequences the same as video files, so there is no difference in terms of performance. PNG also supports Alpha channel (choose this option only if you have transparencies in your export), otherwise just use RGB 24 bit.

Paul Fierlinger wrote:I would suggest staying away from QT (which you have to if working in 64bit in a PC anyway) and using "AVI (Internal) Motion JPEG". BTW I have a question to you: how does Premier deal with editing 1080p clips? Can it keep up with a 24fps frame rate? I ask this because I use Vegas Pro, which is unable to do this with any project longer than just a couple of minutes. For this reason I have to export my AVIs to 720p and after the film is done, (if necessary at all since 720p is still HD) I replace the 720 clips with 1080 clips.

Premiere is an excellent, easy and highly versatile piece of editing software capable of dealing literally with any kind of production and endless formats. I have no idea about Vegas, but it's quite weird to hear that it can only handle couple of minutes of HD clips - sounds unusual for year 2013 - are you sure it's not your computer? CPU, RAM etc?

It might possibly be my video card, which I want to hold onto because it gives me 4 monitors. After all, 720p is still a HD format, particularly when aimed at Internet usage or video projectors. I have no more plans to make films for TV or theatrical release. I have tested 720p and 1080p on a 30 foot screen and saw no difference with the naked eye and neither did the professional theater projectionist. It makes a difference only in the source context and all my clips are now made at 130% to 200% larger than 1080.

What I like about Vegas is the faster workflow than Premiere offers -- just one example: creating dissolves is instant with no need to prerender. But I haven't used Premiere in years and things might have changed and also, I don't want to get into a my toy/your toy war here. To watch that, all I need to do is spend time on a Vegas forum; LOL.

I do agree that importing image sequences has its advantages, namely that you can fix just a couple of frames without re-rendering an entire clip but the disadvantage is that it uses way too much memory and that can make a difference when you are dealing with a 2 hour film.

I have made a few commercials for the internet and the ad agency producer insisted on having me deliver everything in 1080p, which is not a problem to re-export the few files in post. Theatrical release on 35 mm film requires image sequences and if that is your final destination, than that is the best way to go from the beginning and invest a few dollars into an array of external hard drives, but as I said, I have no such plans anymore.

There are so many ways to get to the same end result and all have their advantages and disadvantages, but from my observations, I see no sense in using QT anymore, the way Apple has been handling it for the past 2 or 3 years.
The only time I use QT is to export WIP files for a client who wants to scrub video clips frame by frame, but within a 64bit production pipeline I can't see any advantages, just headaches.

Paul Fierlinger wrote:It might possibly be my video card, which I want to hold onto because it gives me 4 monitors. After all, 720p is still a HD format, particularly when aimed at Internet usage or video projectors. I have no more plans to make films for TV or theatrical release. I have tested 720p and 1080p on a 30 foot screen and saw no difference with the naked eye and neither did the professional theater projectionist. It makes a difference only in the source context and all my clips are now made at 130% to 200% larger than 1080.

I agree - I personally don't make films in 1080p too, don't find it necessary, but when I work in a studio on a feature project, there is no way it will be done in any lower format - our current project is around 1200p

Paul Fierlinger wrote:What I like about Vegas is the faster workflow than Premiere offers -- just one example: creating dissolves is instant with no need to prerender. But I haven't used Premiere in years and things might have changed and also, I don't want to get into a my toy/your toy war here. To watch that, all I need to do is spend time on a Vegas forum; LOL.

Nah - Premiere does the same for years now... unlike Final Cut, it needs no prerenders whatsoever, unless it's a very complex effect and you want to watch it in realtime. I surely don't care what toys people use - I just use Premiere cause I started with it many years ago and I just feel comfortable. I don't know other software - I tried Final Cut once and didn't like it. For me Premiere is good for any editing...

Paul Fierlinger wrote:I do agree that importing image sequences has its advantages, namely that you can fix just a couple of frames without re-rendering an entire clip but the disadvantage is that it uses way too much memory and that can make a difference when you are dealing with a 2 hour film.

I suggested it as a media for final full quality exports. for proxy renders I use often some very low res video format usually, which I will replace later with the final image sequence. Uncompressed video format file will take approximately same space as a PNG image sequence - I don't see any difference here - if you are doing a 2 hours films, you will need lot's of space anyway - can't avoid it. PNG uses a very good compression system and usually takes optimal harddisk space. Besides - it's safer. It's not only for TVPaint. Sometimes you export a long scene with effects, and stuff can happen - program crash, power, etc. So if you export sequences, you will not loose anything, but if you export one file - boom, need to start all over again. Happened a lot in my experience. Especially in 3D where renders take sometimes weeks!

Paul Fierlinger wrote:There are so many ways to get to the same end result and all have their advantages and disadvantages, but from my observations, I see no sense in using QT anymore, the way Apple has been handling it for the past 2 or 3 years.
The only time I use QT is to export WIP files for a client who wants to scrub video clips frame by frame, but within a 64bit production pipeline I can't see any advantages, just headaches.

Hmm - I actually still use QT , but it's because at home I am on a MAC - it's a default format, and works pretty well for most needs. So it's a question to Nigel (HappyAnimator) too - are you on MAC or PC?