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JulianGPublicInfo
JulianGPublicInfo
Known Participant
June 4, 2021
Question

Footage is blurry after downscaling from 4K despite Playback Resolution being on full

  • June 4, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 6645 views

Just shot an interview in 4K UHD on a Ninja V with the DNxHR HQX codec. Ingested into Premiere at that resolution and played back with no problems. However, I want to downscale to 1080p since that resolution is not necessary for delivery (just for the edit). Whenever I do though, the footage plays back and exports blurrily, despite the playback resolution being set to full.

 

The sequence is set to 1080p and I select "Set to frame size" for each clip. The renderer is set to Mercury Playback Enginge GPU Acceleration (CUDA). The crispness and clarity I want is there whenever I pause, and yet whenever I play the footage back, large swaths of the image blur (not enormously, but just enough to notice and to look off when playing back and upon export). 

 

Editing on the latest version of Premiere Pro 2021 (V15.2). 

HP Z8 G4 Workstation

Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8180

32 GB RAM

NVIDIA Quadro P6000

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1 reply

Richard TOULON
Richard TOULON
Legend
June 4, 2021

Hi,

For playback in Premiere , look what is your playback resolution in the Source and Program Monitor. By default it's 1/2 meaning that you will play half resolution.When you stop playback it gets back to full res ( you can set this up easily )

For export, it always use the full res independently of your playback settings with your monitors...so, it probably come from your exports settings.

Give us more infos with screenshots.

JulianGPublicInfo
JulianGPublicInfoAuthor
Known Participant
June 4, 2021

Hi Richard,

 

Thanks for your response. Unfortunately, I've already checked playback resolution, it plainly states "Full" whether it's in playback or pause on both. Upon export, the files seem to match the discrepancy between the paused, unaffected image, vs. the played back, blurrier image.

 

I've attached photos of what they essentially look like when it's downscaled (played back in a 1080p sequence with "set to frame size" checked) vs when it is played back at full resolution in a 4K UHD sequence. There looks, to my eye, a noticeable drop in quality in both the exports and in the playbacks. In the 1080 interview image, that was exported with a bitrate of 20mbps and with Use Maximum Render Quality checked, settings which haven't facilitated such a drastic drop in quality when I've shot in 4K and exported to 1080p before (I've never downscaled to 1080p while working on a project, just edited in 4K and exported straight to 1080p depending on client needs). In the second image, the 4K one, it was exported with the YouTube 2160 settings, nothing else checked.

 

Is the drop in quality supposed to be that noticeable when downscaling? Am I approaching it incorrectly?

Richard TOULON
Richard TOULON
Legend
June 5, 2021

Can you give us the codec used for your export try ?

H264 ? H265 ? Other ?

Do you have a 4K monitor ?

I've never experienced such problems with blurry export from 4k to 1080p. This is pretty difficult to judge but my first thought was that the original footage was a little bit out of focus. The characteristic of this is the light reflection in the eyes, a little bit soft. Have you the ability to monitor your edit in full screen ?

I'm trying some exports from 4k UHD files to 1080p with different scenarios and I'll get back to you.

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