Help with workflow from Handbrake to Premiere CS4, please

January 30, 2009 12:49 PM

Art teacher / animation project / OS X 10.5 : I am using Handbrake to rip portions of DVDs into digital files. I would like to edit these files with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 into 2-12 second segments. I need a little help figuring out how to do this properly, please.

I am an art teacher working with a few advanced students on an animation project. I have done lots of work in Flash and figuring that out is no problem. We have begun experimenting with frame-by-frame style animation - where an image is drawn for every frame or every other frame in a sequence, like traditional animation. To help with that we find videos and export them as JPG or TIFF sequences. We can then draw over those image sequences to get a feel for how to draw and capture motion.

I have started using Premiere so that we can focus in on short manageable sequences to animate. With Premiere CS4, I can take a sequence from YouTube and edit it down to 2-5 seconds pretty quickly. I'd also like to take interesting motion sequences from DVDs I have and work with those as well. I downloaded Handbrake and used that to rip files from my DVD. I tried the different codec options (MPEG and h.264) but none of the resulting files will import into Premiere. Video production is a bit of a blind spot for me as a digital artist/teacher, so I need some advice. Handbrake produces AVI and MP4s (I think).

I'd like a freeware-oriented workflow for the short term that allows me to get video from a DVD that Premiere CS4 can open. In the medium to long term my school can probably purchase a more "professional" set of tools, especially once I demonstrate how this process will work.

I should emphasize that I am not pirating or copying movies in any way. We are using very short segments of videos to get a feel for how to draw and animate different kinds of movement.

Thank you in advance for advice and suggestions.

posted by Slothrop to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Try using MPEG Streamclip instead of Handbrake. You may have to pay for the MPEG-2 QT component if you don't already have it installed.
posted by mzurer at 1:53 PM on January 30

Yes, the Handbrake files will not import directly to Premiere or Final Cut.

This is what I do. You can probably find a similar freeware solution or methodology. I bought Quicktime Pro. Open the files in there and then export them to DV Streams (Settings: DVCPRO / NTSC / 4:3 / Preserve Aspect Ratio). The export is relatively quick, the video high quality and the files will import.
posted by phaedon at 1:55 PM on January 30

For freeware, I'm thinking vlc can do the trans-coding you need here. Sorry, I'm not an expert at this, but vlc is a pretty versatile piece of software, with the virtue of being free.
posted by cameradv at 11:09 AM on January 31

The idea is that handbrake can't take it to an editing codec, and MPEG streamclip can.

But that's only for unprotected materials (no CSS) - which handbrake does. The problem with handbrake (and other programs that permit fair use of this sort of media) is that they tend to pick aa codec (like divx) that good for playback, and bad for editing.

You might take handbrake, push the data rate high - try setting the Quality to 100%.

THEN, drop it into iMovie 08 (or to MPEG Streamclip.) iMovie 08 will transcode all the material for you (and even output an XML file for FCP that will link to the Quicktime media.) The XML can be opened by PPro CS4.
posted by filmgeek at 11:49 AM on February 2