Scale Quality

I'm using Premiere Pro CS4 (v4.2.1.0) on Windows Vista.
I took an Anamorphic 1440 x 1080 HD Sequence and for delivery purposes put it in a 720 x 480 DV Sequence. When I scaled the nested HD timeline down to fit the DV Sequence I was really unimpressed with the scale quality. I checked - the Program Monitor was set to Highest Quality and it was at 100% viewing ... but even when I thought, "well maybe the preview is eh/so-so and the final Export is better..." and rendered out the DV Sequence, the rendered result looked exactly pixel-for-pixel the same as the crummy preview in the Program.
It's like it's a half-way in between an aliased and antialiased scale. Half Nearest Neighbor (to use a Photoshop term) and half say, Bicubic. No, it's not an interlacing / progressive / lower fields / upper fields issue. There is also no field doubling going on.
But when I took the 1440 x 1080 HD Sequence, rendered it out full-size and rez'd in down to DV in AFTER EFFECTS the result was gorgeous.
What gives? Why can't Premiere Pro scale down with the same quality as After Effects? I recall this being an issue a long time ago - has it REALLY not gone away?
Is there a workaround or even a third-party Transform plugin to bypass the native PPro scale setting?
Thanks
Marc

Marc,
As you have found, the Scaling algorithms in PrPro are not the best around. Jeff's method is very good. Some others will use AE for the down-scaling, and some use other programs for the encoding/transcoding. This is probably one area that Adobe should be looking to improve on.
Note: the same quality issues occur with over-sized still images and Scaling. For those, we recommend doing the resizing in Photoshop first, as the Scaling algorithms are better, and that program offers much more control on which one to use.
Good luck, and enjoy Jeff's tutorials,
Hunt

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jethrodesign wrote
Yeah, I see that as long as the image has a resolution of 72dpi, it does come in at 100% of size. ..
For what you want to achieve you are right, sort of, but your statement is wrong.
Images are always placed at 100% size as indicated in the info when you double click the links in the Links palette. However you have to understand what size means here. If the image has metadata containing dimensional information then that is the size in Illustrator. For example if the metadata says 5 x 5 inches it will be placed as 100% with that size according to the Illustrator's rulers regardless of what the pixel resolution of the linked image is - it can be 5 or 5000 pixels per inch. If the images don't have metadata describing the dimensions then Illustrator assumes that 72 pixels are 1 inch and will place the image with that size at 100% scale. For example if the image is with 720 x 720 pixels, Illustrator will show it as 10 x 10 inches at 100% scale.
With work for the web you are most interested in the pixel size of the images and objects. Change the units in File > Document Setup to Pixels. But have in mind that these are 72 pixels occupying one inch on the ruler in Illustrator and not the pixel resolution of the linked images. So, the Transform palette showing the selected images or objects with pixel dimensions will matter if you save for the web or export to a raster image file format where you can specify the pixel dimensions of the image. The pixel dimensions in Illustrator will not matter at all if you print the illustrator file in which case the resolution of the linked images will be used - not the pixel space they occupy in Illustrator. But for the Web all that matters is the pixel dimensions in Illustrator. So if you want the ppi (pixels per inch) in Illustrator to match the actual ppi resolutions of the placed images (links), you have to save all images from Photoshop as 72 ppi or remove their metadata. This will ensure that no resampling occurs when you save images at 100% scale from illustrator for the web .
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Message was edited by: emil emil for clarity and fixing spelling

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>I want to know if there are can be scale 150% without lose quality.
Nope. If you zoom in that much, you are blowing up the video by 50%. You are making the compression artifacts associated with that format bigger.
>Is there any filter to prevent it?
Nope.
>Or just limit percent on scale?
20% is typically the most you can do without being noticed. 50%...yeah, that will be noticable.
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donkamiliani wrote:
I do not want to scale (Using Motion->Scale) each clip separately. I want to do it for all clips
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Does decreasing a clips scale have the same effect on
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I am using a canon scanner 700 to scan old photographs and plans/maps for high resolution publication. The plans and photographs are both in colour and in bl/wh and grayscale. I usually scan in gray scale unless its an important, coloured plan.
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However, the files open in Indexed Colour mode, and not grey scale as I scanned them in.
My questions are :
a) why does it open in indexed colour mode?
b) is there any loss of information if I simply change them into grey scale?
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http://www.bogada.net/support/settings-2.gif
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