Video Production

AJ Henderson

00:14

@fredsbend the platform supports both

it supports events with up to 3000 attendees

including things like panel discussions and such

with features for moderated questions and such

fredsbend

00:43

@AJHenderson Cool. I'll look into it. Thanks!

AJ Henderson

01:10

@fredsbend gotowebinars is another similar platform

it really comes down to whether you need audience participation or not

if there is no real interaction or document distribution need, then a live stream is fine

but if you need any kind of interaction or document delivery, then having a more web conference oriented solution can be a better option

it really depends on the details of what you are trying to accomplish

user3450548

10:12

I'm pretty confused and sad

This place is in the need of more questions and userbase right ?

Then why when I post a nice question that could be potentially heavy attractor I encour into a closed minded self-user moderated behaviour ?

The question itself is this one: video.stackexchange.com/questions/22956/…

In this question I ask basically how to do a 24->25 audio conversion with Audition and if it's worth.

But I divided it in multiple points to give better readability

User Michael Liebman probably didn't even read it all, he just saw a big block of text and was like: too much questions in one, please split them.

However they are finer details of the same question: "how to do a 24->25 audio conversion with Audition and if it's worth."

So for me isn't possible really split this question in more than one.. it would just create spam of much similar questions all together..

In past I posted various succesful question that are threated like a sort of mini tutorial with various points. Users find them informative and you have all informations in one point rather then going to find them everywhere.

An example is this question:

13

Q: Software to quickly join many JPG images into one PDF without recompressing

I have many documents scanned in past with a printer that did not have a direct "to PDF" option, so I have various folders called "Document1, Document2." Within each of the folders were many jpg like 001.jpg, 002.jpg, 003.jpg, .. I want to join them in a single PDF file. Modern printers just do ...

It's very informative, collaborative also and users find everything here.

For the audition one it's obvious that I want to know how to do that passage, if it's worth and professional and if there are suggested alternatives.

So all fits perfectly one question / topic.

What I would ask here is that a person would not just downvote randomly instead proposing real alternatives.. that question in my opinion is perfectly fine, maybe could be re-edited a bit to be more shorter but is really clear for every kind of reader.

This place already lacks of users, focusing on being too nazi-moderator instead spending 5 minutes replying an answer is pointless and gives me nerves. Next time instead rewrite a question for make the moderator feel good with himself I would directly give up and write elsewere..

and btw I don't care sincerly if they wants to farm reputation on multiple similar questions

AJ Henderson

16:22

@user3450548 ok, I just tossed out all my previous comments since I now have a better handle on what you were asking after re-writing it

it really wasn't easy for a native speaker to follow. It took me 4 or 5 read throughs to catch what you were actually trying to ask with many of the questions and it took some detours that also made it harder to follow what you were getting at

At first it seemed like there were 3 different questions there, but after multiple detailed read throughs I only think there were really two different ones and one of them was just the last minor point about if it would work for 24 to 30

I rewrote it to make the questions more clear and discarded the last question as that really is a different question

do note that the person that responded to you isn't a moderator either

they are just another user

user3450548

17:13

@AJHenderson thanks for your efforts, I'm not a native english speaker :( probably the way it was written before was too much confusing ^^

AJ Henderson

17:31

@user3450548 no problem. I actually learned something from that post too because I didn't realize that Europe just played back 24fps stuff at 25fps. That seems kind of crazy to me

but to answer the question that didn't fit, we don't alter the playback speed here. We do a frame pull down to drop certain frames when converting. It's called a 3:2 pull down

otherwise known as telecine

it's a little more complicated as it actually ends up doing special things with frames on the interlace, but the basic idea is that we discard information rather than playing everything back slightly faster

there is a very, very slight change in audio speed, but it's .1%

user3450548

Oh i see, well we do that in europe because 24 and 25 are very close. So generally a movie is played 25 altering audio tempo preserving pitch ^^

Hope that some pro will help me with that question, I can only access Audition for a matter of licenses, and I think that it's a professional program on a decent level like ProTools

AJ Henderson

@user3450548 yeah, you should be able to get a fine result out of audition. honestly, I even find the pitch adjusted speed change in premiere to be high quality most of the time

it's not a particularly difficult calculation, it's basic math

user3450548

Yes, do you raccomends iZotope Radius or Audition native algorithm ?

I mean, Adobe for sure paid iZotope a certain amount of money for include iZotope Radius inside Audition software.

So probably is better and worther than their native algorythm

AJ Henderson

the severity of the pitch shift makes a difference

I'd probably try both and see which sounds better

but 4% isn't a huge shift

so I wouldn't expect too much issue either way

especially since the goal is pitch preservation, not pitch changing

pitch changing is much harder because not everything about a sound changes when the pitch changes

that's where something like izotope really shines

when you want everything to stay the same, it is much easier

I didn't put an answer together because I don't have CC though. I'm still on CS6 and Audition 3

I hate the CC subscription model so I've been moving towards migrating off of adobe products

actually, another thing you could try if you wanted would be to try DaVinci Resolve 14. It now includes Fairlight for it's audio processing and that's a very high end audio system as well.

I have not had a chance to mess around much with it yet though as I haven't had any audio work on any projects since I switched to working in Resolve 14 as my NLE

and I'm not 100% sure that the non-studio version of resolve is a good NLE replacement yet given that many of the filters and effects are only included in Studio

and not the free version

(I got studio for free with my camera)

if you aren't familiar with it, Resolve's main purpose is color correction and is used by major motion pictures for that role, but Black Magic has been radically expanding it in recent years and has added a bunch of NLE functionality as well as buying and adding Fairlight audio

user3450548

18:05

I know resolve, I installed the free version but still had not a chance to use and learn it

For now premiere is ok

I have both c6 and cc

And the filter we was talking about aswell iZotope Radius is also inside the CS6

AJ Henderson

@user3450548 yeah, I wasn't sure if they've changed it since CS6 though

ohhh, BMD dropped the price on Fusion studio to $299 now as well. Looks like I have an order to place

now if there was just a decent photoshop alternative

user3450548

I still have to work with Fusion what is that about ?

A sort of alternative for After Effects ?

AJ Henderson

@user3450548 more like After Effects is an alternative to Fusion

generally speaking, nodal systems are considered better than layered systems for compositing

because you can make more complicated interactions

Resolve is a higher end color system, but still lower end NLE than Premiere and Fusion is a much higher end compositor than AE

user3450548

I see, sadly i haven't the time for go deep in learning also because the work I'm doing is paid but not so much to give me the time and the ways to learn more.

You want to have fun ?

This is the memory leaks of After Effects and Premiere during the work of a Full HD series..

AJ Henderson

@user3450548 yeah, I'm actually a full time software developer, but I dual majored in electronic arts and do A/V production professionally on the side

user3450548

18:12

No particular effects, just edits and some text layers from AE

AJ Henderson

mostly conference production and the occasional video production project (I'm DPing an independent TV show at the moment)

user3450548

AE itself was about 45 GB

AJ Henderson

as well as a short film

user3450548

I see, I mostly do works for localization

AJ Henderson

whoa, that's a lot of memory usage

user3450548

18:13

that's why dubbed material have to be converted properly from 24 to 25

dubbing work must be preserved as much as possible

and that's why they use generally ProTools all the time

yeah :\

hopefully the machine was assembled with 128 ram

AJ Henderson

nested timelines with bridge going nuts maybe?

user3450548

i used lot of after effect comps with edited text inside premiere itself with direct link

AJ Henderson

but that still seems crazy. I don't see utilization that high even working with 4k raw files in resolve

and never saw more than 16gb or so working on premiere/ae stuff

even with heavy bridging

user3450548

i think is just a lazy organization of memory for AE

practically during the work it renders and throws on ram tons of stuff

AJ Henderson

yeah, could be. Maybe it caches stuff based on how much memory is available

ram preview I suppose could be responsible for a lot of that

didn't they move to some automated ram preview caching in CC at some point

user3450548

18:16

because i have lots of gigs it says.. well if memory must be freed i would free it but because now it's not necessary i keep

AJ Henderson

because while powerful, AE's render engine isn't the most performant thing on the planet

certainly not compared to the renderer in premiere

user3450548

i think that's because i still have 70 gb of ram he says who cares i still keep

Oh i heard that Adobe plans to remove Quicktime from their products in the next release

I just wonder what will happens then

There are still tons of customers that only asks for ProRes and others that wants Avid DNxHD but in MOV wrapper

AJ Henderson

@user3450548 interesting, did they write their own prores stuff then?

user3450548

Hopefully some big companies are moving towards DNxHD and DNxHR in MXF wrappers

No at all

For example when I have to output prores from windows I still use my tricks

But i think that Adobe is pushing with their partnership of GoPro Cineform

As intermediate codec

AJ Henderson

because dropping prores support seems suicidal, but then again, they have their userbase over the proverbial barrel now since if you stop paying you stop doing business unless you can migrate all your projects and have no need to ever revisit old projects

@user3450548 that last part makes me cry a little inside about wanting DNxHD in a mov

user3450548

18:20

I tought at beginning that they would for example write their own QT32 Server

AJ if i show you some specs of big companies you laugh

AJ Henderson

@user3450548 oh, I realize. It still doesn't mean I don't cry about it at night :)

user3450548

A big broadcaster just asked me to make a DNxHD inside MOV instead MXF

We just wonder why MKV is not supported all over the world yet

It's one of the best wrappers available

make it standard and broadcast wide would be the final goal

AJ Henderson

@user3450548 probably, Adobe is trying to take over Apple's spot as the decider of directions in the video world because they are in full on monopoly mode

they realize they have too many viable competitors now to keep up and are trying to box out competitors by format control

and by anti-competitive licensing models like CC

this is coming from someone who was a die hard adobe fan and had legit commercial copies of Adobe products in high school and dumped thousands upon thousands of dollars in to Adobe licenses over the years

user3450548

CC is the evil

AJ Henderson

but I dropped them the day that CC became the only option. I even understand the idea of a subscription for updates, but if I paid up front for the product let me pay for maintenance and keep whatever the last version I paid for when I'm done

user3450548

18:25

Indeed

Sadly their licenses costs too much

AJ Henderson

I have a lot of projects where I have to go back and revisit an old asset set and make changes for a new version

user3450548

If you know what I mean

AJ Henderson

I'd be a permanent slave to them if I bought in to CC

honestly, cost isn't the problem for me. It could be $100 a month and I'd have paid it if I could stop paying and still have functioning software

also keep in mind I work for a SAAS provider, so it isn't like I have a problem with subscription models either, but we actually provide the compute power for part of the monthly fee and offer ways to get your data off our system if you want to change. Their entire package is built around doing as little as possible for maximum vendor lockin

as further evidenced by their abandoning Lightroom as a stand alone product too

user3450548

Yes i'm still old school and like keeping the pc and softwares working as I leaved them

AJ Henderson

less than 2 versions after saying "it'll be an independent product indefinately"

user3450548

18:28

I just hope that competitors will push them so much to abandon the CC model

AJ Henderson

to which my response was "ok, I'll stop using you indefinately"

at this point, I no longer hope they'll change, I hope they'll ride it right in to the ground

and crash and burn

user3450548

or crack is the way

AJ Henderson

yeah, as a software developer I don't really like cracks, even if I hate the way they are doing things

user3450548

¯_(ツ)_/¯

I buy some softwares

AJ Henderson

not that I haven't been tempted

user3450548

18:30

I don't for others

AJ Henderson

my general rule is if I make money off it, the developer does too

user3450548

I buy the softwares more accessible and the ones I use more

AJ Henderson

or if it is entertainment

user3450548

But software that costs tons of money or that i just want to test well..

AJ Henderson

the times I have cracked software, it has been for stuff that I was experimenting with completely for personal learning

user3450548

18:31

Generally also

I tend to always find free / open source solutions

AJ Henderson

though I may get a crack of an old version of SoftImage since I have a legit license but they turned off the licensing server

so I can no longer use it

on a new computer

but another aspect of being a software dev is I have the money to buy the software. Twice the money for half the time. That's why I went the software dev full time route. I get gear faster than my friends doing A/V production full time

since every dollar I make on A/V production can go to gear

means I have a budget of around $6-$10k a year for gear and software

user3450548

Saldy i'm forced to only invest in gear

Software comes after

I had to spend lot of money for the new workstation

But it's worth of it :)

AJ Henderson

@user3450548 yeah, I pick up the cost of my computer as part of my personal costs as I'm also a gamer and build my workstation to be dual purpose

the fact that so much rendering has gone the GPU accelerated route is just an added bonus

user3450548

I still think that lot of render is done via cpu

AJ Henderson

and then most of my other hardware purchases are based on ROI and I can just front load them if I have a reasonable expectation of profit

user3450548

18:42

adobe media encoder uses both

ffmpeg only cpu

aside some tricks i have to learn for make some codecs go for cuda too

AJ Henderson

@user3450548 it is, but it made having a powerful GPU valuable for both purposes

user3450548

that's true

hmm

AJ Henderson

I needed high end GPUs for the games and CG workloads anyway. The fact that encoding and video can now make use of it too is an added bonus

user3450548

i built my workstation with just a single medium valued gpu

a 1060

not a sli

AJ Henderson

my laptop has a 1060 and my workstation has a water cooled 1080

user3450548

18:44

because if i understood correctly sli are not useful in render

AJ Henderson

yeah, not particularly

well, depends on the workload

user3450548

so one gpu is enough

AJ Henderson

but you have to be able to split the tasks for sli to be helpful

user3450548

i do lot of motion graphics

AJ Henderson

so for something like CGI it could be helpful if properly optimized

user3450548

18:44

i know but i'm sure that sli is used in games

not sure how much by encoders

AJ Henderson

encoders no, renderers yes

user3450548

i render very few

AJ Henderson

though I actually can't make use of SLI on my system due to VR not making use of it

user3450548

but i do really a TONS of transcoding

AJ Henderson

and that's my heaviest GPU load of all

user3450548

18:45

so i'm in huge demand for cpu cores

AJ Henderson

but SLI induces some latency issues that cause weird things to happen in VR

user3450548

i see so better use just one GPU

AJ Henderson

yeah, which is why I have 1 1080 instead of two 1060s

since you can just about get 2 1060s for the price of a 1080, atleast when I bought my 1080

that may have changed now that the TI is out

user3450548

My plan is to upgrade the gpu and the cpu in future

If amd releases upper threadripper cpus will be fun

I think their new socket TR4 will go over the 1950x

AJ Henderson

but yeah, I'm not really sure what the state of actual usage of gpu acceleration is in the various software. I know BMD makes pretty heavy use of it in their stuff, but I mostly understand the workload side as a comp sci and hardware problem since part of my software background is in computer graphics

so I actually understand what they are doing under the hood and what kinds of optimizations are possible much more so than I know what optimizations they actually make

I'm an Intel guy for CPUs. Still don't trust AMD from their "hey we'll call this hot CPU faster than it would be if we actually ran it at Intel's temperatures" days

user3450548

18:49

Would be cool have a 64 core threads processor

On the epyc side is a thing

they still have to bring it out for desktop

AJ Henderson

supplemented by their "hey, lets drop software support for perfectly viable ATI graphics hardware because we want them to buy our new hardware"

which was when I went "how about I just buy NVidia instead?"

I don't dislike AMD as much as Adobe, but before Adobe did the whole CC thing, AMD was my most disliked tech company

AMD atleast has one thing going for them though. Lately Intel has been trying their hardest to also do sleezy things

user3450548

Well the problem resides in all the times where a company have no competitors

Shit happens

Intel has no competitors because AMD was sleeping? Intel sleeps for years putting brakes into innovation

And so on

Adobe had no competitors for some time.. -> CC

heh :\

AJ Henderson

19:06

@user3450548 so very very much this

which is why I am glad that AMD is actually pushing intel again

user3450548

yes i was really in need of powerful processors for transcoding

o_o

AJ Henderson

bus speed is my biggest need most of the time, with using 4k raw footage. That stuff is like 240MB per second

user3450548

bus speed ?

AJ Henderson

ability to move data from point a to point b

in particular, getting it from the SSD array to memory and from memory to both CPU and GPU

simply because I'm handling absurdly large amounts of data even if I'm generally doing relatively straight forward calculations on it

user3450548

hmm threadripper architecture should improve that no ?

AJ Henderson

19:12

quad channel ram support in general plus good nvme support but I'm not sure how it compares to what intel is doing

but it's largely having high channel counts

as long as the channel speed stays up

it's the main reason my workstation still is ok on a first gen i7 because those first gen i7s had triple channel memory

user3450548

i see

AJ Henderson

which was then dropped for a long time until recent introduction of quad channel support

user3450548

you could consider an epyc workstation or tr

they has quad chan

AJ Henderson

I've been eyeing what the second gen i9s will look like as well

architecturally the i9 is an interesting chip to me

user3450548

they are but they costs

AJ Henderson

19:14

yeah, but for the next gen it may come down as AMD forces more competition

user3450548

let's hope so

AJ Henderson

I'm not in immediate need of a new build at the moment. I built my tower for a 10 year lifespan and it still has a year left in that plus it's looking like it might be able to go beyond 10 years

user3450548

I just did mine

AJ Henderson

but the latest batch of CPUs do have me starting to think about it finally

user3450548

and i'm very happy of it

but if things go good next year i will swap cpu and gpu

AJ Henderson

19:16

my laptop is able to handle the few workloads that make use of newer instructions in more recent i7 designs that the desktop can't handle until I get to updating

user3450548

i'm curious about the laptop you are using

AJ Henderson

MSI

user3450548

I see, what do you think about HP Zbooks ?

I have the 14 and I love it :)

For develop / VMs

AJ Henderson

I like HP servers pretty well, but had some quality and support issues with their laptops

had a hinge break repeatedly and they wiped the hard drive when I sent it in for the hinge to be repaired

without telling us

so I've stayed away from them more recently

user3450548

I think is a company policy wipe hd in that cases

I would not send a machine in repair without having made a backup of hd image and cleaned it

AJ Henderson

19:20

@user3450548 yeah, but it was literally not a problem they even had to boot the computer for

user3450548

I see

AJ Henderson

granted, I also do my own repairs as often as possible

because I hate dealing with support

user3450548

me2

It seems that keeping AF open during the rendering process made media encoder crash lol

AJ Henderson

nothing like someone with substantially less understanding of computers trying to talk me through basic trouble shooting before letting me send it in someplace to have someone else with less understanding of computers replace it. What I really want is for them to just send me the part and let me do it myself. It isn't that hard to user service a laptop

user3450548

Keeping finger crossed for the next render

AJ Henderson

19:22

when I bought my MSI laptop, I literally cracked it open and replaced several components the first day I had it

(memory upgrade and replaced HDD with SSD)

user3450548

Same thing i did with Zbooks

they are built to be open in a slide

very nice

almost toolless

AJ Henderson

Thinkpad was my brand of choice, but they've gone down hill since being sold to lenovo

but the hardware maintenance manuals for those things combined with the ease of ordering parts was amazing back in the day

user3450548

only thing that notebooks are not good for me now is that.. processors are too weaks

AJ Henderson

you can get good cpus in a laptop, but you pay a lot for it

the MSI laptop handles 4k raw video editing using a thunderbolt 3 based striped array for storage and can do 4k h264 encodings in better than real time

even working directly from raw 4k footage

err, wait, no, I take that back

4k h264 was a bit slower than real time, it was 1080p DNxHD transcodes that ran above real time

user3450548

heh because DNxHD is less cpu intensive

a question

0

Q: H265 interlaced support in Adobe Premiere

Today I tried to export some content in h265 from my interlaced timeline. However I can't find an option to preserve the interlaced material. I have to assume that Premiere make a lossless conversion to progressive when exporting in h265 ? Why this happens? thanks

premiere adobe-media-encoder h265

AJ Henderson

19:27

but the editor on that TV show that I was doing the transcodes for (for his proxies) is on an old macbook that took days to do the proxy transcodes

vs 2 hours on my laptop

he edits in 1080p DNxHD LQ in Premiere CC and sends me a Final Cut XML file that I import in to Resolve to do final color grade and export

I don't think h265 supports interlacing

user3450548

ngcodec.com/news/2014/1/15/does-hevch265-support-interlaced

They says yes

AJ Henderson

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlaced_video says no

but I suppose that could be wrong

or maybe its certain implementations that don't

even if the standard says it can

user3450548

so weird

well so i will continue exporting h264 demos to my customers :\

i wanted to go for h25

h265

given the half of size

I will go for today, thanks for the talk and the edit of my question :)

AJ Henderson

mulveya or lordneckbeard should be able to give a more definitive answer

as they both work directly on ffmpeg

so they would know what is or isn't generally supported with the HEVC

user3450548

22:14

oh they are developer @ ffmpeg ?

AJ Henderson

23:18

@user3450548 yeah, I forget exactly what they do, but I believe lordneckbeard is one of the main authors and mulveya I believe does a lot of custom integration stuff with it

that's a big part of why we get so many ffmpeg related questions. We have two of the top people for answering them as regulars here

I'm all excited about my fusion studio dongle now. I really want to mess around with trying the camera position tracker with my phantom 3 pro

user3450548

This is very cool, it's sad that this place is still in beta.. Maybe more broadcast targeted questions could help..

AJ Henderson

@user3450548 yeah, but it's a healthy beta with no real chance of being closed

user3450548

I'm just running around checking for AE plugins, there are some of them very nice to use..

AJ Henderson

it does slowish but steady questions with a pretty solid group of experts

user3450548

This one is cool: aescripts.com/geolayers

AJ Henderson

23:22

I do somewhat think we get too many highly technical questions that may scare off more production oriented people though

since we do pull some users from SO and such and they tend to have completely different goals than anyone that actually does stuff in the industry

and I'm something of an oddball myself since I'm a software developer who did come from the SO side of things but I'm also a true professional within the A/V space as well

so I find myself playing middle man a lot

@user3450548 yeah, that's a pretty cool visualizer

makes things like what I had to do by hand for the distance education intro for RPI back in the day much easier

I had to do matched motion with different resolutions of satellite imagery and cross fading between them to emulate a zoom out from the location

it took a week just to get the zoom out right on an overall 3d animation that took me about a month and a half to make

user3450548

Wow time consuming

Did you tried that script ?

AJ Henderson

@user3450548 nah, but I looked at what it's features were

and yes, it was time consuming, but it was also 2004 or so

so it was a while ago. I wish I could find one of my archive copies of that animation, cause it was a really great animation. It zoomed out from the campus to space, had film strips animated coming out around the globe with different clips from the classes and campus on them, then smoothly transitioned in to the college logo and the distance education department logo

and I made the whole thing in a combination of Photoshop, AE and SoftImage:XSI

user3450548

What do you think about Magic Bullet / Trapcode suite ?

AJ Henderson

@user3450548 I've used a little bit of it once during my 6 months free of Redcode subscription from the free copy of what was at the time Sony's video editing package (the name is escaping me) but didn't really make that much usage of it

user3450548

23:37

Sony Vegas

AJ Henderson

yeah, that one

user3450548

now Magix Vegas

it's not a so bad NLE you know?

I think more questions inside this place should go for it

AJ Henderson

I got the top version for free and hated it

absolutely could not stand the thing

I can't think of a reason I would ever recommend it as Resolve is already a better option

no nested timelines was a non-starter for me

user3450548

Well yeah nowadays resolve is free

AJ Henderson

when I'm working in layer based systems I absolutely must have smooth nesting

I make super heavy usage of it in how I organize assets

and how I set things up for modification

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