How to edit HD on your SLOW computer: Offline editing in Adobe Premiere (can use other program)

Think you can't edit HD? Think again! If your PC is only a few years old, you may be able to pull it off with this technique. Basically I'll show you how to edit low resolution footage that your PC can handle and then render in high quality HD!

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Edit HD footage on slow PC
• edit HD
• edit high definition
• off-line editing
• online editing
• Adobe Premiere pro CS4

[somorastik]

Do I need to keep the aspect ratio (16:9)? And you wrote here in comments to keep the framerate, I have a 720p 60fps video. Thanks for help man.

[CarlyleSpeaks]

@somorastik I would not worry about frame size/aspect. Just make sure to keep frame rate and audio quality of original. If you change audio like I did, Premiere will create audio timelines to match your proxy's audio, then when you try to switch to full quality, premiere will remove your audio since it's not compatible with audio timeline/track/layer.

[somorastik]

Okey, step by step. I start ADOBE MEDIA ENCODER, click ADD add my mp4 clip. Format H.264 (that I dont change), next is preset. From there I can choose, some HDV formats, PAL widescreen, youtube, myspace and so on. No other presets you are talking about. How do you do it? Do you use a different encoder?

[CarlyleSpeaks]

@somorastik Nope, you got it! You are right on track. Only thing left is to figure out what your machine likes. Time to experiment. Try to play with web formats like youtube but not HD. Look for a SD preset, then decide if you need to lower settings any more.

[somorastik]

How do you convert your clips in media enoder? I read your replies to comments but I couldnt find the compression setting you were talking about. Thanks

[CarlyleSpeaks]

@somorastik No special settings. You set it the way YOU need for YOUR system. If you have a 486 computer from 1993, then you might want to try 320x240. 1GHz Pentium? Maybe 480x320. It really does not matter. Use whatever compression you want. The key is that you cater to your system's performance AND the limits of compression artifacts that you can handle. You can't compress so much that you can't see anything in the video. You need to be able to tell what is happening in the clips.

[CarlyleSpeaks]

@ZeDBeE85 export h.264 for web. Project settings match source footage.

[JeyelSchroeder]

#2 A nice surprise on top of that is that you can even lie to PR and claim that the file named [file1.wmf] is in fact the file named [file1.avi], which might become handy if the LQ files are compressed to another format than the originals.