XL1s Jaggy Artifact Problem...

Anyone who can help me... I thank you immensely!
Anyone who tries to help me... I also thank you immensely!
Anyone who ignores this post... I hate you! Kidding :)
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Here's the deal.
I'm shooting a heavy duty, special effects intensive film. Here's what I have.

>Canon XL1s, 16xII standard lense
>Digicomp Green paint on canvas (our green screen)
>Production Lights (650's, 1k's, etc.)
>Movie is shot in FRAME mode/MOVIE mode
>Monster Cable DV firewire
>PC with Nvidia Video Card with firewire ports (4 of them)
>Sony MiniDV Tape Excellence Series
>Capturing with Premiere 6.1 for PC

Here's the problem.
When shooting the film it looks great. My viewfinder and my monitor show the image quality to be sharp and beautiful. When I send the video to my computer it's a much different story. For starters there are a lot of jaggy/pixelated/artifacts all over the place. On occasion, chunks of pixels, LARGE pixels. Keep in mind however, there are no dropped frames.
Secondly the sharpness isn't really quite there. Now I know that on a computer monitor with high resolution that you see more pixels, and when shown on a tv you don't really see them... BUT, when compositing, these pixels can be a real pain.
Please help me out here. Should I be capturing with another video card, another software package? Is my camera possibly damaged? The camera dropped once, although it didn't seem to noticeably do anything to it. I mean, is it normal to have this much pixelation?!

ANY HELP would really... well... Help!
Thanks a lot!

> Delorian

[Rob Lohman]

To check whether it is your camera just play the footage back
on a normal TV. Do you see the same problems? If not, it is not
your camera or the footage. A couple of thoughts that crossed
my mind about this:

- Maybe your firewire cable has a break in it or is otherwise
(internally?) "damaged"?
- What Operating System are you using? Which DV codec?
It might be that your DV codec is messing things up.
- Does this artifacting only happen in Premiere or also when
playing your footage with the Windows built-in mediaplayer?
- What program did you use to capture your footage?

[Adam Lawrence]

Did you consider that you may be shooting in LP mode???


LP mode adds more shooting time to your tape but compresses the quality
of the image, which makes a "pixelated like" image. Almost like a ".gif"
looks like on the web.

This will determine in your view finder. on the top of the viewfinder it will
display either LP or SP..SP mode is what you want..

I once shot a whole coporate video in LP mode and didnt know it...

But it the long run it didnt really show thus i didnt use much video
footage in the final oucome. Plus i dont really think they could tell! heheh

[Chris Hurd]

Adam, I'm sorry but that's not correct. The LP speed mode has no effect on the quality of the image in the DV format. Unlike analog formats where LP speed mode caused a serious hit in image quality, in digital video formats such as DV there is *no* difference in image quality in LP recording. None. It's all 1's and 0's anyway.

The primary disadvantage of recording in LP mode on DV cameras is that usually those tapes will only play back properly in the cameras that shot them, due to the very tight tolerances of the tape speed in LP. Also, if you're using cheap tape, you're more likely to have tape glitches and drop-outs in LP mode. But again, LP mode does *not* affect image quality in DV.

For Delorian, it's really important to view your video on a proper video monitor (even a cheap consumer-grade TV; I use an $80 Orion 13" sometimes) rather than a computer display monitor. There's a huge difference. Hope this helps,

Thanks for helping out!

To answer some of these issues, I am indeed recording in SP. And I capture in Premiere unfortunately.
I use the Microsoft DV codec... I was not aware that there was other codecs! If there is please tell me what they are and where I can get them. Please remember, a codec for capturing, not for rendering... as I haven't rendered these yet. I'm getting these jaggy's with capturing. No frame drops however.

Thanks for your help and any future help here!

> Delorian

I am also using Windows 2000 and a resolution of 1280 x 1024

[Chris Hurd]

There are a variety of codecs out there... one of the best available is the Canopus DV Codec, used by Avid and other professional NLE systems; usually it requires Canopus editing hardware but you can obtain the Canopus DV Booster Pack at http://www.justedit.com/products/dvbp.php3 which includes the codec.

Also keep in mind that DV is 720x480; if you're looking at a DV image full-screen on your monitor at 1280 by 1024 then of course it won't look good. Again, port your DV out to an external NTSC video monitor or even a cheap TV to see what it *really* looks like... the computer monitor ain't going to show you. Hope this helps,

[Bill Ravens]

One of the acknowledged best codecs on the market is available from MainConcept.... www.mainconcept.com

The microsoft codec shows gradual deterioration with multi-generational copying. The MC codec does not.

You can download the codec (v2.04) for free and try it out, it has a small watermark in the corner. I think it's $50 to buy and well worth it. I use it exclusively. You'll need a program called DVCSWITCH to force Premier to use this codec. It's available at www.softdeko.8m.com

Good luck.

I hate to be the bearer if bad news here, but this is exactly why I joined the forum today. I need to find out how to get the Cannon XL1 stuff into and then out of Premiere ver. #6.02.

After I planned this shoot, worked everybody to death and came home with this beautiful footage. I expected the same results I had when I took my other projects to Broadcast television, but instead, I was redirecting this into a MM Flash/Director 8 project that my staff is working here.

Jagged, bad compression, bad sync. Finally, I called Adobe.

Well! After a long wait I was very disappointed to find out that...

... the Cannon XL-1 is using a format not supported by Adobe and some other editing software...

I was blown away...

I was redirected to www.scnalyzer.com but I haven’t been able to make the conversion product work yet.

This could be the start of your solution.

Does Anybody have any experience in this arena...

I would be as grateful as Mr. DeliriumHaze up there... :)

[Bill Ravens]

I also use Scenalyzer Live. It's an excellent product. In the preferences window, the first tab, there is a radio button that will let you select Type 1 or Type 2 .AVI file format. Video for windows(vfw) will NOT be able to read Type 1. Make sure you are capturing with Type 2.

Big, Green, Army.....

TANKS......

I check it out...

I have been trying to get a copy of Premiere for use at my school(its entirely PC but that is beside the point).

What is the problem with the software?

Is there another reputable program that will run succsessfully on a PC?

Dennis

No problem with Adobe, I have edited on everything, including a $90K Avid 9000 and, for the price, I can't beat the Premier product

The Cannon camera has some short comings with its file format that (a whole year later) I am just coming to be aware of.

INteresting...

JayPoucher,

Do you know if the same problem applies to the GL1?

(Thanks for the software advice)

Dennis

[Bill Ravens]

I'm not sure what Adobe's problems are, I've been around Premier since version 4 and it's been nothing but balky for me. I think Premier get embedded in the NLE marketplace early on by bundling Premier with every hardware solution for capturing that came down the road. They established themselves so well that now most of the third party plugins are written exclusively for Premier. Perhaps this software will work properly when bundled with high end hardware PCI capture cards, but, it has NEVER worked well for me. You'd think that with the reputation of Photoshop, Adobe could produce the same quality product in Premier. Premier uses the old windoze vfw interface, and therefore can't read the newer Type 1 avi's. To make maters worse, they make it difficult to use a different DV codec than M$'s. I've recently searched the market for a dependable, professional quality NLE. Canopus and Avid were two potential candidates, but, both have a particular drawback....just visit the forums for this software to see what's up. I finally settled on Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video 3. I'm VERY happy with this NLE that bundles a compositing program in with the NLE. It's stable, it recognizes multi-processor machines and writes out to a high quality MPEG2 codec (mainconcept) as well as their own DV codec that produces stunning images. The best of this codec is that video produced by VV3 will play on the Mainconcept or MS DV codec if there aren't any others installed. On top of that, it's half the price of Premier.
Hope I've provided some useful info.