Editing in Premiere Pro CC utilizing Photoshop CC and Bridge CC all from 2017

Joe’s rules and stuff for editing in Premiere Pro CC utilizing Photoshop CC and Bridge CC all from 2017 and some old ass Encore stuff thrown in for good measure. Okay I am a bit all over the shop with the below, but I am just hammering this out and try to help out some poor saps I see on the various forums struggling with seemingly endless questions, so here goes. First, a little background: I edit my video in PPCC 2017’s latest iteration. Rule NEVER upgrade this software in the middle of a project, wait until whatever you are working on is absolutely finished, output and over, or pay the price! My source material is currently coming from a Canon XA 20 shooting HD 1080p in MP4 at 50 FPS and a Sony NEX 7 outputting .mts files at 25 FPS (though this has been replaced by a Sony A6500, YAY). I was shooting 4k on the A6500 for a while after I got it, however with my current computer this is going to come back to haunt me when I try to edit it so I have reset it (the A6500) to HD 1080p at 50 FPS as well and the HD footage looks absolutely stunning as far as I can tell. I have not started to edit with it but I am sure I will have no problems with that once I get to that footage. I also take footage from a Samsung Edge S7 also in HD 1080 at 25 FPS and it too looks surprisingly good. Then there is some GOPRO as well in 1080 HD from an older Hero 2, still not bad to throw onto a PP timeline. I edit it all, render it out and run it into the now no longer supported Encore program left over from my CS6 master suite and burn it onto BluRay discs played on a Sony BD790 player which upscales it to 4k on my LG OLED 55” screen. WOW! It is a joy to watch and listen to through my high-quality home theater set up though I have to do a lot of gain riding (sigh). The final disc quality is gorgeous and the bit rate is just right, no stuttering, perfectly smooth. I have burned 36 BluRay discs this way. I do some color grading as I see fit but judiciously and fix messed up audio in Audition too. Only have to be careful when processing the photos not to push the shadows in Bridge’s camera raw processor past +30 or I get little white motes in the photos on the slideshows that I make to go with the videos, also do not try to do more than 30 photos at a time unless you have a supercomputer. Mine is getting a bit old now so as it is processing the RAW files I am writing this (slow). All the photos I’ve shot are either shot in the meh Sony .jpg fine format, but I switched to the .arw output so I have more headroom to fix em up. The Sony .jpg compression is mediocre and tends to be orangey and weird with the red-er values and noticeably lossy. Fewer problems with this in the raw format but the files are heavy, all my images are converted to .psd (HUGE) in Photoshop before I drop them onto a video timeline. My wife has an iPhone (paid for by her job) and it is painful to try to get those images looking good unless it is a beautiful day out. NEVER use iPhone video mixed with others because of the different frame rates. 25 and 50 FPS okay to mix but put a .mov file at 29… whatever FPS onto your timeline and you are screwed. Make a separate timeline for iPhone videos interpret the frame rate to 25 for PAL and use frame blending and it will be okay for burning to BluRay discs with the other stuff. I tell my spouse not to shoot any video on it but it happens anyway and I just have to deal with it. There are workarounds but it is a total PIA. Might try an app I discovered called Voddio to re-interpret the frame rate. But jeez, $14.00 just to fix the frame rates… Why doesn’t Apple use a PAL frame rate for the phones they sell in Australia? Other random rules: Do not bother adding chapter markers in PP just do it in Encore. Watch how big the rendered files are, try to keep them under 30 minutes or you may wind up having to split them up when you get to Encore and keep the total under 23GB for a Blu-ray disc as if you are like me you’re going to add a nice little pop-up menu to navigate around the disc. Use any more than 23 GB on a supposedly 25GB disc and it will choke and your burn will FAIL. As far as how to set up these menu’s in Photoshop you will have to put in the research time like I did to figure all that out. It is do-able and once you get one done and it works to keep a copy in a special folder just for all your menus, copy them back into PS and modify the text and number of chapters and fancy little shit like frames and chapter indicators as you need to. Always set up the chapter navigation buttons manually. Watch your bit rates in your final output files for Encore, write them to re-writable BluRay discs until you get all your shit straight. Once you get your settings are right and they work and look good then commit to a once only burnable disc. Do this for each and every disc! Just in case you mess up then you can go back and fix any screwups. Some of which you will only notice watching on a larger monitor and spelling mistakes… Yikes! Make presets of all the little things you do in PP save them in a separate file and migrate them to new iterations of PP when you upgrade the software e.g. brightness, contrast, fast color corrector fixes, changes of scale, sharpening etc. I think I have a hundred or so of these including audio ones, picture zooms, and various moves. Set up a title template with your favorite font with spacing, kerning, size and such. Set up other fav title stuff right in the title properties box if you’re happy with them too. Be methodical set up bins in PP the same for every project and for each timeline in a project. I have bins video A, B, C, etc. same for images, music, titles and one for stupid iPhone video though I do not do so for the sequences, as I want to see them all and copy and paste the sequence titles and modify them for subsequent ones in a project. 2nd, Set up your computer correctly from the get go, OS and programs on the fastest HDD drive you can get (WD Velociraptor 10,000 rpm) or better yet, a sizable SSD if you have the money, I would get a 1 TB because eventually, you’re going to need all that space (someday). Separate HDDs at least 7200 rpm for media (video imports, photos) one for audio, one for renders, one for scratch disc and project files (get an SSD for this, loads far more quickly) and another separate one for other video files (I keep ISO files of every BluRay disc I burn). Now that they are available, get at least 4 TB or you wind up like me, started with a 1 TB, then went to 2 TB… you get the picture. Oh, I use WD Black drives and have no regrets doing so thus far. Everything I have is backed up to a QNAP NAS with 24TB of storage. I’ve spent too much time making all this stuff to just lose it. Also, I keep an ISO file for every disc I’ve burnt! Oh, wait I already wrote that. If you are setting up a new rig (which I am planning on doing soon and have put in a fair bit of time doing the research), get an Intel i7 CPU with at least 6 cores or even more and faster if you can afford it. GPU, now that the Geforce 1080 is out I would go for one of those at the very least especially if you are going to use After Effects, regardless it will help your editing with PP CC 2017 and make it go much faster. Get as much RAM DDR4 as you can afford, at least 32 GB, wait, make that 64, no fuck it 128! Watch the dollars skyrocket too. You are already paying for a CC subscription anyway… if you are like me. If you want to make Schmick Blu-ray discs it is going to cost you some dollars but the payoff is awesome homemade content. Just need to make special shout outs, first and foremost to the late Harm Millaard without whose contributions on the Adobe forum I would have floundered when it came to the basics of setting up a proper NLE system. We lost a legend when he passed away last year. However what he’s written is still up there, remains relevant and is required reading for any noob or even experienced editor like myself. Also good info on Creative Cow and Puget Systems. YouTube has some killer tutes for setting up menus in PS and heaps of other titbits, just have to wade through a lot of stuff to find the pure useful nuggets of info out there. Any specific questions? I may or may not be able to help as I have a toddler to document as he grows up. Any trolls can of course buzz off. No silly questions which you can Goggle just like I had to, it is called learning.