Thanks for the comments, Steve. The file was lossless m4a, so that shouldn't be the cause of any problems. I haven't come across a gravelly voice before, and I've recorded quite a few narrators. So it's in the voice, you think; that the raspiness here and there -- the gravelly sound -- is inherent. That those little valleys near the peaks are supposed to be there. I record two or three takes of narration, and I came across one instance where for exactly the same word in the same sentence, only minutes apart, one was gravelly and the other was smooth. That threw me. But, thinking about it, the gravelly sounds seems to occur when the recording is at a higher level, even though the narrator is standing in the same spot. Maybe when he pushes his voice, it 'cracks'. Very interesting. I had been suspect about my equipment and situation, especially in cases where a narrator has a boomy voice. I thought: room acoustics. For one old fellow I recently recorded, aged 89, I had to remove a bloom in the frequency response at around 400 Hz. I blamed room acoustics, but maybe he has a 400 Hz bloom in his voice, whereas the "Pelion" fellow sometimes has a gravelly sound, but no 400 Hz bloom. I'm beginning to appreciate that what's on my recordings is actually in the voice, and that we normally don't notice these artifacts in real life. Maybe the problem is: I'm doing the equivalent of pixel-peeping. Yes, very interesting. Ques: why might speaking across a microphone, instead of at it, reduce the gravelly sound? ... View more

Thanks for the suggestion of the Appearance option, but it only goes down to a dark grey, not black. I would have thought that for the Program Window, at least when in full screen mode, that black would be a desirable option for the background, to mimic a theatre, and not just a dark grey. ... View more

Thanks for the suggestion, but I tried something similar and it didn't work. I want to change the colour of Premiere's background (the dark grey), not the background of the 1920 x 1080 image. ... View more

Thanks Jim. I've been trying to think of an easier way, and playing around a bit, but I keep coming back to your "duplicate" suggestion. ... View more

Thanks Jim for the suggestion, but I don't think it will work. The AE composition is almost fully used in Premiere, broken into small clips. The clip I would like stabilised is just one of many. So I can't trim the AE composition – unless I misunderstand what you're suggesting. I was hoping there was a way to sort of "Replace with After Effects composition", for just that clip, but when I tried, AE didn't know what was going on. A placeholder came up with colour bars. I suppose that happened because the clip I tried to replace in Premiere, was already an AE comp. So, it looks like I'll have to open the linked AE composition, find the exact same trim points as in Premiere, razor at those points, and apply the stabilisation just to that section. I assume I can do all that in AE. The problem will be: if I change the trim points in Premiere – very likely at this early stage of editing – I'll have to remove the razor points in AE and start again. And if AE's like Premiere, you can't remove razor points. I was hoping there might have been an easier way. ... View more

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I posted in the Audition forum as well, and my summation there seems to cover the matter fairly well: I've never used Convert Sample Type before. Eventually found it under Edit. The defaults are: Mono to Stereo: Left Mix and Right Mix are set at 100% Stereo to Mono:  Left Mix and Right Mix are set at 50% In both cases, all conversions result in the same level. You can do it in a never-ending loop and not lose level. Yet the Favorites that come with the software are set up differently. That's one confusing part. The second confusing part is that when you drag the mono signal into a Multitrack session, the level drops to 71%. It gets even more confusing: Premiere does it differently: a mono signal when dragged to the Timeline is set to 71% for the L/R channel. 100%? 71%? 50%? There may be some justification for the various settings based on what used to happen in the analogue world mixers – incoming signal is sent to the wiper of the pan pots, the two ends of the posts being the L/R outputs – but that justification certainly hasn't been applied consistently by Adobe. ... View more

The levels in my original post for Step 2 should read -9dB (not -6dB). So that's the same as you found. I've never used Convert Sample Type Before. Eventually found it under Edit. The defaults are: Mono to Stereo: Left Mix and Right Mix are set at 100% Stereo to Mono:  Left Mix and Right Mix are set at 50% In both cases, all conversions result in the same level. You can do it in a never-ending loop and not lose level. Yet the Favorites that come with the software are set up differently. That's one confusing part. The second confusing part is that when you drag the mono signal into a Multitrack session, the level drops to 71%. It gets even more confusing: Premiere does it differently (they suggested I come here): a mono signal when dragged to the Timeline is set to 71% for the L/R channel. 100%? 71%? 50%? There may be some justification for the various settings based on what used to happen in the analogue world mixers – incoming signal is sent to the wiper of the pan pots, the two ends of the posts being the L/R outputs – but that justification certainly hasn't been applied consistently by Adobe. ... View more

Background: Why am I concerned about this mono stuff? The recordings are from an external microphone when videoing. I am syncing the external sound to the video using Premiere. The recordings are in a wilderness – with very low background noise – but relatively loud talking and footsteps. What I am concerned about is the loss of dynamic range if Premiere is lowering the level by 3dB. Ques I have a mono recording which when played in the Source window shows 0dB peak in VU meter (mono) in the Timeline. When I put that recording in the Timeline, the VU meter becomes stereo and shows the level has dropped by 3dB. No matter how minor, has that level change caused any degradation at the quiet end of the signal level? ... View more

Looks like I've got a stereo sequence – must be the default when I set up a new AVCHD 1080p24 sequence. I couldn't find any setting to set up a mono sequence, but I don't want that anyway. I'm intrigued why the 3dB loss of signal happens. It must be designed that way, but why? Here's what happens: I have a mono signal that just hits 0dB. In Audition, the signal just hits 0dB In Premiere's Source window, the signal just hits 0dB (no numbers are shown, but the signal hits the top) In Premiere's Timeline, the audio graph appears to show the signal just hitting 0dB – but the VU meters on the right show a L-R signal peak at -3dB When I export as mono, and reimport into Premiere, the Source window shows the peak at -3dB When I open that exported mono file in Audition, the peak is at -3dB When I export the original from Premiere as stereo, and reimport into Premiere, the Source window shows the peak at -3dB When I open that exported stereo file in Audition, the peak is at -3dB There's something here I don't understand. How does Premiere treat mono? Does it think of mono as coming from a SINGLE speaker, so to match the sound level when played in stereo, each speaker should receive only half the signal (-3dB)? Audition though, seems to treat sound as if it always comes from TWO speakers (let's neglect 5.1). When I use Audition to convert Premiere's stereo export to mono, I end up with the same peak level. Premiere's mono exports: -3dB Auditions stereo to mono: same peak level Help! I don't get it. ... View more

I'm running CS6. Thanks for the solutions. Silly me! I should have realised the answer, as I regularly use stills larger than 1920 x 1080 and have to scale them down, but only rarely do I some across videos larger than HD. The scan was larger than the timeline so Premiere was showing just the central 1920 x 1080 portion. What threw me was the when I changed the Fit scale in the Program window, the initial crop persisted. So when I went down to 10%, Premiere was still cropping the image. I see now, that that is what should happen. Thanks for correcting my misunderstanding. ... View more

Thanks, MtD, for the reply. My scans will be done on a high-end machine like a MWA FlashTransfer Choice, or the Lasergraphics Scanstation, both of which can output directly at 2K to various flavours of ProRes (and other formats). Obvious answers? I was hoping that there might have been an obvious answer to this question – that someone would say: Well, if you're going to be boosting grayscale shadows significantly, 4444 is definitely the way to go because… Or alternatively, something like: Because you're dealing with amateur B&W films, you're not going to see any difference between 422 HQ and 4444 no matter how much shadow boosting you do (within limits). Original Scan File Regarding the original file from the scanner, I doubt whether I'd see any difference on screen between a h.264, 720P scan at 5 Mbps, and a 2K ProRes 4444 XQ scan at 300Mbps – given the quality of the films. But I am interested to find out whether 4444 holds extra information in a form that would give obviously better results than 422 HQ when grayscale shadows are boosted significantly – assuming the shadow detail is actually on the film. Personally, I doubt that 4444 is worth the extra file size in my case.  But I thought I'd ask, just in case. ... View more

Thanks MVP. Others may well see it differently, but you've made some very good points and turned me away from investigating the iBooks format any further. I think I'll stick with PDF and do some tests on various platforms. ... View more

Thanks for the replies, and the suggestion of tutorials, but I'm a reasonably capable user of the RGB Parade. I use it in conjunction with RGB curves to accomplish colour correction, similar to what I do in Photoshop – but it's not as easy in Premiere. Certain features available in PS are lacking. I've never needed to know how the horizontal axis is calibrated, but today I thought I should look into it. And none of the dozen or so web sites that I visited told me what's along the horizontal axis. Photoshop's Histogram Let me go to a similar graph that I understand – Photoshop's histogram. The horizontal axis is the level (0-255), while the vertical axis is the number of pixels at each level. So for a dark image, you get a hump at the left, for example. Or you might get a bell curve for a well-exposed image with a good spread in the tonal range. Premiere's RGB Parade The vertical axis on the RGB Parade is the level. I used to think it was 0-255, but for certain clips that go right to the bottom (black), I am able to raise them and see a jagged bottom edge, which says to me the RGB Parade is not showing down to 0 on the vertical axis, but to a higher level, say 16. So the graph is being clipped at 16, which means when I brighten the clip, the levels below 16 become visible. At least that's what appears to happen. So… the vertical axis shows the level (black at the bottom, white at the top) – but what is the horizontal axis showing? What is the variable along the horizontal axis? ... View more

Thanks, Neil, for the detailed response. See my comments below. I do have a few questions about Blu-ray replication. Is it best to ask them in a new thread or contact you privately? https://forums.adobe.com/people/neil+wilkes  wrote Blu-ray is complicated, and you will need to forget everything you know about DVD as it is no longer relevant. Luckily for me, I don't know much about DVD. I purposely skipped that era of digital video and waited for Blu-ray. I never liked the idea that DVD was stuck in the past, clinging to the roots of 1940s TV. https://forums.adobe.com/people/neil+wilkes  wrote 4 - …Encore cannot output Blu-ray replication masters without a plugin and I am not sure this is even still available any longer. That'd be BluStreak Tracer from RiverGate Software. It looks like it's still available. https://forums.adobe.com/people/neil+wilkes  wrote 2 - Your clients will need an AACS content owners license Clients? I'm my own client – a keen hobbyist trying to generate Blu-rays and have them replicated. Which reminds me of the old courtroom saying: "Anyone who acts for themselves, has a fool for a client." An apt comment in this case, with me trying to do the lot. But it's a good learning experience, even if the replication doesn't come off. I contacted aacsla.com a few years ago about obtaining my own AACS license. Peggy on the switch and Justin on the technical side were very helpful. https://forums.adobe.com/people/neil+wilkes  wrote A - NetBlender's DoStudio was bought by Sony Creative Software & has been shut down now. B - Sony's own Blu-Print has been shut down I didn't know about the loss of DoStudio and Blu-Print. I had to go to the Wayback Machine to find my original links to Sony's DoStudio webpages about Blu-ray authoring – the best sources I was able to find several years ago. For anyone interested: https://web.archive.org/web/20140321045627/http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com:80/training/dostudioauthoring Are you sure Blu-Print has gone under? What about these? bluprint | Radius60 Studios Sony Blu-print 2D/3D Blu-ray Disc Authoring System ... View more

Thanks, Neil, for the detailed response. The Star Trek series I was referring to was the original series, broadcast from 1966-1968. ... View more