Premiere XML to Conform in Flame - Scaling Settings

[montezedit]

Hi all, 

I'm trying out Flame, but coming across an issue when it comes to scaling data in an XML. 

My timeline is 1080p, coming from Premiere. The source media is a variety of different sizes ranging from UHD to 8K, and it was edited online in Premiere. What this effectively means is that scaling properties in Premiere function like so - to display a full frame UHD clip in a 1080p timeline, the UHD scaling is set to 50%.

When I conform in Flame, it appears that the scaling is handled similarly to Resolve's default settings. The clip is scaled to 50% of the 1920x1080 timeline, rather than just 50% relative to the UHD clip resolution. In Resolve, there's a setting I can change in the Input Scaling that solves this - is there a similar setting within Flame? I appear to be getting the same result no matter what I change.

Thanks! 

[slabrie]

Hello montezedit!

Prior importing the XML in Flame, make sure to set the default Timeline FX Resize to Letterbox (Preferences menu / Tools / TL FX tab / Timeline FX Resize section. Then importing your XML will show your content as expected.

[montezedit]

Hi there!

Unfortunately this doesn't appear to solve the issue - any other potential solutions?

[slabrie]

Is it possible that you have a Resize and an Action or 2D Transform FX on your segments?  The resize takes care of conforming your content to the resolution of the sequence and the 50% scale down applied in Premiere is probably affecting the framing of the resized content.

[slabrie]

I see in Adobe Premiere 2022 that if I use the Scale to Frame Size option (right-click) the UHDTV clip gets resized to the HD sequence resolution and framing is good.  Same with the Set To Frame Size.  I also added a scale down FX on a third segment.  Exporting an XML and conforming in Flame (with the preference set to Letterbox) does conform the UHDTV as expected for the segment on which I used the Scale To Frame Size option.  The segment with Set to Frame Size and the one with the 50% scale FX both have an Action FX and I see the issue you see.  The Scale 50% has been traslated to the Action FX so here you have two options:

-click on the Action FX blue led to mute the Action FX.

or

-click on the Action FX and select the axis_L1 and you will see a 50% scale.  Just reset the scale XYZ  (CTRL click on the value fields) and you will be good to go.

[montezedit]

Thanks for your assistance so far Stéphane - but, assuming I've used set to frame size in Premiere, as you described - yes, resetting the Action FX will bring it back to full frame in the HD timeline. However, my goal is to retain whatever resize was done in Premiere - so let's say the editor set the scale to 60% for a clip instead of 50%, and adjusted the position. Because there is no setting to set the input scaling or the treatment of the action FX to be relative to the source clip res instead of the timeline, I will now manually have to reposition + rescale the clips.

I would assume there is some setting I am missing to amend this? In Resolve, for example, I can adjust the input scaling so that everything is scaled relative to the source res, rather than the timeline itself (I.e. 50% means a UHD clip at 50% size in a HD timeline, rather than 50% of the HD timeline size, which makes more sense to me). Is there not something similar in Flame that would amend those action FX?

[slabrie]

Hello montezedit!

I see what you want to do, which is a fair workflow but sadly, it will be quite difficult to get the exact matching between Adobe Premiere and other products. I played with the 3 resizing methods and used scaling and position and did not get the expected results in Flame.  The Premiere position parameters seems to be off.  Importing the XML in Resolve showed the same results as in Flame.  Resolve scaling and position for mixed resolutions content exported as FCP XML 7 imports fine in Flame with matching results.

So, to summarize, when we conform mixed resolutions content like in your case, the Action FX takes care of providing the resize to match the source resolution to the sequence resolution so no scaling is required.  if in Resolve you were to use the scaling and position to frame your content, Flame would apply matching results so the workflow you are looking for is possible but sadly not with Adobe Premiere XML.  There are many threads on the web discussing FCP XML issues form Premiere.

If you are a member of Logik.tv (which you should since this is a great place to share Flame related information), some users wrote scripts to fixed Premiere XML repos so maybe you want to give a try to what they have done: https://forum.logik.tv/t/accurate-xml-repos-from-premiere-into-flame-fixed-by-python/2055