A

Anonymous

Answered

iPhone 6s 4k Footage in Premiere Pro CS6

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
April 10, 2017
4 replies
6599 views

Hi there,

I filmed a bunch of footage on my iPhone 6s using Filmic Pro and have no imported all the footage into Premiere. The problem is the quality of the footage is nowhere near what it should be, the footage is basically foggy and not at all high quality. My sequence settings were set for 1080p DSLR footage. Perhaps that is where I went wrong? Im not sure if I should be transcoding footage beforehand or not?

Thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer jasontcox

One thing you weren't clear on was WHEN you saw the poor quality video...? Was this playback in the Source Monitor? Program Monitor? Or after export? If after export, what were your export settings? And I'm assuming the footage looked good (to your eyes) prior to bringing it into PPro?

W

Warren Heaton10841144

Community Expert

If you opt to convert your iPhone footage, use Adobe Media Encoder and not Handbrake. Handbrake is specifically designed to convert video to formats for playback (not for editing). I know, you might ask "what's the difference?" The difference can be huge.

My screenshot show iPhone 6S footage shot with the Apple Camera app at both 30fps and 240fps inside or Premiere Pro CS6. Frame rate is constant and picture quality is as expected (home video of the dogs and a nature hike).

The Sequence was created by dragging and dropping a 30fps clip to the New Item icon at the bottom left of the Project tab.

The Clip Speed of the 240fps footage was set to 12.5% to best match the 30fps Sequence and to allow the clip to play its intended (in slow motion) rather than real time.

This leads me to a question about the original post and quality of the footage: How are the mobile phone video clips being transferred to the computer for editing? Are they being copied directly from the phone (via Apple Image Capture)? Backup via a camera backup app like Dropbox? It's possible that whatever is handling the file transfer is introducing a recompressed file. Direct copy and Dropbox should preserve the original.

jasontcox

Inspiring

Warren, the reason why Handbrake may work better (oddly enough) is that since Premiere has an issue with interpreting variable frame rate video, so does AME. So Ive found that with those problematic clips, AME maintains the variable frame rate issue whereas a different program fixes it. Crazy, I know. But different scenarios may have different fixes!

J

jayreiter13

Participating Frequently

Jason -

Agreed. The research I've done aside from this forum states the same. Handbrake is the app to use for this first re-encoding/constant frame rate step.

jasontcox

Inspiring

Ok, I mean this in the nicest possible way, but there were about 4,000 questions in your post and it'd take me an hour to answer everything. And there were also some incorrect statements/thought processes. Ill try to summarize a few things shortly but please don't take offense if some seem terse and to the point! Just trying to get through it quickly!

- Your computer seems to have decent hardware, but very out of date software

- Your producer's computer (a MacBook) has modern software but woefully underpowered hardware

I mention this because you can't really compare/equate playback performance between the two.

- You likely need to take your iPhone video and run it through a program to convert it to a constant frame rate. While Premiere is a very powerful and deep program, one of its few weaknesses is that it doesn't love variable frame rate videos (which most smart phones shoot. I'd try running them through a program like Handbrake (make sure you turn on the constant frame rate setting.

- The issue probably has nothing to do with the 48KHz of your files, but the variable frame rate is stressing out the sequence playback, thus the need for a CFR (constant frame rate). It's constantly trying to conform a morphing frame rate to a solid one which is very processor intensive. It can also cause sync issues. Again, converting the video to a CFR should help. Unfortunately, smartphones just aren't professional cameras.

- Premiere CAN work with 4K footage, even in CS6, but performance can vary greatly between version number of software and what hardware you have.

- CS6 is many years old now (5 years and 4 major releases) and wasn't as optimized for 4K so even though your hardware is decent, sometimes older software doesn't always hack it.

- Installing a "4k codec" in VLC doesn't mean anything actually. 4K isn't a codec. And whatever may have been installed wouldn't affect this situation at all. Your iPhone shot a file in the H.264 codec and FilmicPro probably dropped it into either an MP4 container or m4v container.

- You REALLY should get Premiere CC. The workflow between Premiere and After Effects has increased DRAMATICALLY over the last few versions. In fact, coincidental timing, the BIGGEST leap in the workflow between the two apps actually came in yesterday's latest software update.

-You simply can send the clips you need to add VFX to from Premiere to After Effects by right clicking on a clip in the sequence itself and selecting Replace with After Effects Composition, which creates a dynamic link files. The performance of this kinda stinks in CS6 but has been MUCH enhanced in later versions. Your workflow will suffer using CS6. You probably don't need to do the exporting of image sequences unless you were working with VERY high end cameras (Red, Arri, etc) and VERY high end VFX software (Nuke, Fusion, etc).

J

jayreiter13

Participating Frequently

Jason, this was a great response. No offense taken at all. You really helped me to understand what I'm dealing with here and what advantages doing the upgrade would be. My producer and I have been discussing the pros and cons of just doing the upgrade and going the CC route. It sounds like as long as we convert our footage to an Adobe compatible CFR, the CC would be the best workflow for us. And your explanation for why my computer works a certain way vs my producers' computer makes sense. One of the techs from Filmic got back to me and confirmed your frame rate explanation. That absolutely has to be the problem. Thank you very much for your time. If you get a chance, could you please tell me if there's a way to ensure the best possible quality transfer using Handbrake? I'm not super familiar with that program.

J

jayreiter13

Participating Frequently

Another thing the tech rep from Filmic had mentioned is they were planning to contact Adobe to see if some sort of update could be released so Premiere and such could be more natively compatible with this type of filming. I understand using cell phones to film a feature length movie may not be the best way to do something, but think of it this way - we spent less than $4,000 to buy two 4K cameras with the software to run them @ 24 fps. I can tell you from experience that the footage we've captured looks fantastic. It's going to be a real treat to edit and polish this film I'm working on once I get the workflow up and running.

kulpreet singh

Inspiring

Hi alfiofoti,

If you are checking the playback in the Source or in the Program monitor, check the playback resolution.

Thanks,

Kulpreet Singh

J

jayreiter13

Participating Frequently

Hi, I'm running into a problem getting my footage to work properly in Premiere CS6. I captured the footage using Filmic Pro on an iPhone 6S+. I have imported the files (footage) into Premiere and placed a couple files into the sequence. The file will play fine for about a second or two and then the picture will get choppy and not playback properly. The audio works just fine throughout. The further down the timeline playback goes, the worse the problem gets. I've done quite a bit of research on using Filmic Pro in Premiere and it looks like this workflow is problematic. I've read posts and watched videos with possible solutions being the audio files are recorded at 48 khz and Premiere has a hard time with that (an odd problem since Premiere natively set the sequence up to playback @ 48 khz when I imported the files into the sequence); the codec of the files aren't compatible with Premiere and I need to re-encode the files with a 3rd party program (an impossible task for a feature length movie); Premiere can't work with 4K footage (a silly idea to me - Adobe isn't prepared for 4K?? I doubt that); my computer isn't beefy enough to handle the task (my computer is beefier than my producer's Macbook and his computer can play 4K footage just fine) and on and on. So, rather than bang my head against a monitor for several more hours (days) I figured I'd just post here. I need the audio and video to sync perfectly during playback. The problem occurs in both windows (Source and Program).

I'll list the facts here:

My producer's Macbook has iMovie on it. The files play back just fine using iMovie. No sync issues that he could detect. He downloaded a trial of Premiere Pro CC on his Macbook and is running into the exact same problem I am, therefore I know the problem isn't obsolete software (CS6 vs CC).

According to Premiere the files are -

Type: QuickTime Movie

File Size: 1.9 GB

Image Size: 3840 x 2160

Frame Rate: 24.02

Source Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 16 bit - Stereo

Project Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 32 bit floating point - Stereo

Total Duration: 00;02;45;22

Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0

QuickTime Details:

Movie contains 1 video track(s), 1 audio track(s) and 0 timecode track(s).

Video:

There are 3978 frames with a duration of 1/24th.

Video track 1:

Duration is 0;02;45;26

Average frame rate is 24.01 fps

Video track 1 contains 1 type(s) of video data:

Video data block #1:

Frame Size = 3840 x 2160

Compressor = H.264

Quality = Normal (3.00)

Temporal = Normal (3.00)

Audio:

Audio track 1 contains 1 type(s) of audio data:

Audio data block #1:

Format = 16 bit - Stereo

Rate = 48000 Hz

Compressor = Apple Lossless

My computer has 16 gigs of ram, an Nvidea GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, and an i7 3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz. The CUDAs are set up and recognized properly by CS6.

When I play the files back using Windows Media Player the files are played back with a similar choppiness, but nowhere near as exaggerated as they are in CS6. When I play the files back using VLC, they work much better. I have a 4K codec in VLC that I downloaded last year. I don't recall which one it was.

Lastly, once this problem is (hopefully) solved, will I run into any issues with these files playing properly in After Effects CS6 or later? There are some vis fx that I need to do in the movie. What is the best way to export the edited footage into After Effects? Someone once recommended that when I export footage FROM After Effects I should export the footage as individual frame pictures (TIFFs I believe). Then import these individual pictures into the sequence of Premiere and on I go. Does this sound correct? Is there a way for me to export sections of the edited footage from the sequence in the form of individual frame pictures into AE in a similar manner? I guess I just want the best workflow to get edited footage from PP into AE, do what I need to do in AE and get that footage back into PP with as little loss as possible (none is of course preferred).

Thanks in advance!!!

jasontcoxCorrect answer

Inspiring

One thing you weren't clear on was WHEN you saw the poor quality video...? Was this playback in the Source Monitor? Program Monitor? Or after export? If after export, what were your export settings? And I'm assuming the footage looked good (to your eyes) prior to bringing it into PPro?

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