need help creating workflow: timelapse RAWs to multiple final movies

[cgtway]

Hi All,

I need a bit of guidance, I hope someone can help. I'm a timelapse photographer who shoots RAW still images and processes them into final movies for stock and social media, and I need a bit of help with the After Effects and Premiere Pro parts of my workflow.

I'm afraid I'm no expert when it comes to AfterEffects and PremierePro, and I need to use both to do what I want to do, which is to create 3 files from my RAW sequences:

1) a lossless full resolution (5K to 8K) high quality video file to use as a base for further processing (e.g. stabilisation or deflickering). This because I understand that using it for a base will be faster than rendering the RAW sequence every time

2) a 4K file for stock sites (with effects applied)

3) a watermarked HD for uploading to Instagram and Vimeo

I'm an experienced timelapse photographer (https://vimeo.com/bothhemispheres), and entirely comfortable with Lightroom and LRTimelapse aka LRT (this is assembly and ramping software for timelapses created from RAW still files), it's just the steps afterwards that I need help with.

Here's what I'm attempting to do now, and the problems I'm having (I'd be very grateful for any insights you more experienced post-production people might be able to offer):

1) edit in LR and LRT, save XMP with raw files (my cameras produce anywhere from 5K to 8K files)

2) open sequence in AfterEffects, create comp from sequence

3) render sequence as quicktime 16-bit 100% quality photo-jpeg  (I'm on a PC, so no ProRes for me).

-a recent 2000 shot 8K TL took just over 3 hours to render

4) re-import that .mov file into AE, create 4K comp and apply effects (usually Flicker Free plugin, and sometimes Warp Stabiliser), render again with 16-bit 100% quality photo-jpeg (this one for stock sites).

-this can take a _really_ long time, depending, I'm guessing, on the effects. But...last night I set a render going and I came back this morning to find that it'd been rendering for 10 hours, with 54 more hours estimated to go (umm... I must've made some horrendous mistake somewhere).

5) create a watermarked HD file in Premiere (I have a good workflow set up for watermarks there). This is where things fall down, and I don't know how to solve them. What I thought was the right thing to do was:

  a) create HD comp in AE using 4K .mov file (resize .mov file to comp size)

  b) Dynamic Link in PP to that HD AE comp

  c) edit that HD comp in PP

Here's the problem: using that linked AE HD comp in PP, it takes minutes to render any frame (no quick scrubbing possible), so I can't practically make any edits (Mostly all I want to do is simple fade in and outs with watermark text, plus fade from and to black, all of my Vimeo clips do this).

I've tried creating really small proxies in AE, but that doesn't really speed things up in PP at all, much to my surprise.

So my problems are twofold:

1) That's a lot of rendering, any tips on streamlining the processes? It'd be nice to set something up so that it could run overnight (vs running one render, and then another built on that file, and then another render for HD).

2) I can't seem to work with any speed in PP with the AE comps as dynamic links (I have a very good PC: fast processor, plenty of RAM, m.2 scratch disk, decent graphics card). I must be doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what.

Many thanks for any insights (which I hope are useful for any future readers of this thread).

Chas

[Mylenium]

Well, let's begin with the first obvious flaw: There is no such thing as a 16bit Photo-JPEG CoDec. That totally makes no sense. There's only a handful of 16bit clip CoDecs at all, but in light of your plight you might just as well use 16bit TIFFs in the first place to avoid long frame lookup times and decoding to temporary files with clip formats, which only burdens your file I/O. That's essentialyl your second flaw. The rest wouldn't have required such a longwinded explanation, because the third obvious flaw is that you seem to be completely unaware of project settings vs. CoDecs vs. GPU acceleration options in Premiere Pro. You simply cannot expect any arbitrary format to be fully accelerated and essentially you have to rely on the project presets to have GPU support, meaning you would probably work in generic 4k or 8k project settings rather than forcing a crooked resolution down Premiere's throat. I would suggest you actually read the Premiere help on that. Conversely it might be useful to read up on how DynamicLink works and what its requirements and limitations are. In your case I honestly wouldn't bother. You can just as well use the image sequences/ clips directly, which also takes care of your fourth misunderstanding: What proxies are and how they work. That, too, is sufficiently explained in teh help and you can find tutorials on it.

Mylenium

[cgtway]

Hi Mylenium, I very much appreciate your reply.

Re: my first flaw, 16-bit photo-jpeg, that's good info to know. My only issue is that I can setup the AE Render Queue this way, which is why I described it the way I did in my OP (I'm a stills photographer originally, and a 16-bit TIFF is a desired archive/base format, so when I found a 16-bit choice, I ticked it):

Re the rest of what you've written, I need to parse it carefully, thanks. What you're saying is: learn the programs (RTFM), fair enough, TANSTAAFL.

Cheers!

Chas

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Chas,

Are you still facing this problem? If not, let us know how you solved it. If so, please let us know so we can assist you further.

Thanks,

Kevin