Premiere Pro output/export is blurry

[wonmanfactory]

Hello, I have never got much luck editing desktop videos with premiere pro. It seems it can only deal with Video Camera shot footage but not computer generated videos

I have captured my computer screen using FFMPEG and imported my footage to premiere pro. Look at the left hand side source monitor, how clear is the image and right hand side program monitor, image is blurry and color is poor. Not only does it happen in playback, in the export, there is no difference.

And by my previous experience, premiere titles tend to get blurry. It doesn't render properly its own elements. When I select "Match Sequence Settings" when I export, the blur seem to have gone away.

My sequence setting is as shown: Editing Mode is Desktop

When i edit it in After Effects, it seems no problem. Have I done anything wrong?

[John T Smith]

>captured my computer screen using FFMPEG

Screen capture software often/usually creates video that is hard to edit... below are some saved links discussing other software... some of the ideas may help you

Some of these are for Premiere Elements, but may help with PPro

Fraps & Elements http://forums.adobe.com/thread/871095

-and more Elements http://forums.adobe.com/thread/943772

-and yet more Elements http://forums.adobe.com/thread/967201

Camtasia http://forums.adobe.com/thread/836800

-and http://forums.adobe.com/thread/775288

-and http://forums.adobe.com/thread/453044

-and http://forums.adobe.com/message/3202148

Techsmith codec http://forums.adobe.com/message/3692768

-and http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1046914?tstart=0

BB Flashback http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1074014

XSplit recorder http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1160940

Elgato http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1163126 w/picture

Dxtory http://forums.adobe.com/message/5172056

Bandicam read #10 http://forums.adobe.com/thread/954394

[Jim_Simon]

It seems it can only deal with Video Camera shot footage but not computer generated

It is designed around standardized camera formats.  Unfortunately, few if any screen capture programs will allow you to record to those formats, so issues do crop up.

[wonmanfactory]

Any Adobe Editor will also allow my to edit screen captures?

[nw42]

It seems it can only deal with Video Camera shot footage but not computer generated

Definitely NOT!

Premiere can handle 4:4:4 uncompressed footage pixel by pixel in 10Bit Colors or more if you need.

Something goes completely wrong with your setup...

1. You have a PAL sequence with 720x576 pixels - I don't think that is the resolution of your computer monitor? --> Set the sequence to the native res. of your screen grabs.

2. I see al lot of MPG Video in your bin - I assume that it's 4:2:0 colr smaples MPEG video - bad idea to encode sharp red computer typeo this way... export to DPX files and see the difference

3. Set your sequence to Maximum Render Quality to get better pixel sampling (use GPU mode to speed up things)

If you take the right settings you won't see any difference to your source footage. More challanging would be to find good export settings for H.264 video - because there you have to deal with the 4:2:0 color smapling again... a dedicated screencast codec could help here...

[Steven L. Gotz]

To add to what mw42 told you, it looks like you captured at 29.97fps (NTSC) and are exporting at 25fps (PAL).

I don't know anything about FFMPEG. However, I capture using a free program called Camstudio-Recorder. I capture to the Lagarith Lossless Codec and it comes out extremely sharp. (With large files - you have been warned)

Remember to size your window before you capture it, that way Premiere Pro will not have to do that. Then, create your sequence carefully. In my case, my captures are very seldom exactly 1920X1080 because that is the maximum size it could be on my monitor and most windows have a border I do not want.

So I set up a 1920X1080 sequence manually. Just be careful to match the frames per second as well. Then do not scale the video. Just allow the black bars when you use the Vimeo or YouTube presets for your export. Or, with a little practice you can scale your windows to exactly 1280X720 and capture that.

There is no need to edit in desktop mode anymore. Not in CS6 anyway.

Sorry this is so big a screen capture, but I wanted you to see how clear the text is. I capture the video as described above.

[wonmanfactory]

Thank Steven

I don't know about you guys. I have tried so many different configurations which didn't happen to work, but until I changed the Editing Mode to HDV. I used to use Desktop, because I thought my video was targeted to Desktop audience rather any TV screen.

Now the text is crispy clean. I am so happy.

I have another question though. Is it possible to set markers to a video file like AE and SB?

[wonmanfactory]

Hi Jim

It's not included in my Master Collection though. Is it a professional video editing piece?