HDV to SD premiere cs4 workflow

[Dan Chiaperini]

Hi guys,
Happy easter.

I am new in HDV and NLE, and I would like to share this with you. I hope you enjoy it.

Few weeks ago I decided to change my old junk PC into a new intel quadcore with 4 gb memory and a 9600 512mb geforce (it is not the fasted one but for light video editing I think it is more then enough). To get the most of it I install the windows vista 64.

First of all I install the CS 3, but for some reason it was slowest then in my other PC, so I remember about the premiere CS4, and it was going wonderful, until I finish editing and came the encoding part. You just cann´t used anything besides encoder, how adobe did this. You cann´t frameserver or either install a different encoder.

So after serching on the need this is my final workflow:

Sony FX7 miniDV, HDV 1080 60i
Capture: hdvsplit
Editing: premiere pro CS4 (newest update)
Encoder:
-I direct open the premiere project into after effects, and then rendered lossyless with Huffuyv 100% quality.
-Open the AVI in Virtual dub and resized lazcross (I am not sure if it spelled like this)
-Frameserved from vdub to tmpgenc to export dvd with 2 Vpass. 1/4/8 Mb
-Authoring with DVD architect pro 4.5.

I think the results were amazing, there are not that saw (i.e. jaggedy edges on objects) on the edges and in moving parts due to the interlaced (which is the main issue from exporting from premiere and encoder).

But, I still get some squares in a short beard or in crowed places that make the image not perfect clear as I want. I believe it is some configuration options from tmpgenc, because I test the AVI from the Vdub and it is perfect.

So, any comments?
Dan

[Matt Vanecek]

That seems a lot of work, to me.

1. Import from camera (HDVSplit, HDLink, or from Firestore, depending on my feeling)
2. Convert to Cineform AVI (as soon as it's available to me on CS4--I have it installed on PPRo 1.5, but am trying to get into the CS* world...)
3. Edit, etc.
4. Export to AVI (usually MS DV, if final target is DVD)
5. Compress to DVD mpeg-2 with TMPgenc Xpress
6. Create DVD menus, DVD, etc., usually with Photoshop/Encore

TMPgenc has resizing filters, if I don't export to MS DV. You don't really gain anything with the uncompressed Huffyuv, because you're not going from uncompressed-->uncompressed with lots of in-between editing. Rather, you are going from lightly-compressed-->really compressed. Depending on if you consider the source M2T and what PPro does to it as lightly-compressed, I guess.

Anyhow, I much prefer the Cineform workflow, and now that they've released Neo Scene that is reasonably priced, it is pretty reachable for most hobbyists, I think.

That's my take on it, but there's rarely only one right way to do things. Whatever is most efficient for you is the best thing for you to do, until you start working for somebody else.

Thanks,
Matt

[Markus Klatt]

But isn't all the workarounds just because of the bad scaling of interlaced material in Premiere?! I am just at the beginning to read all the topics about it but what I've read so far is, that

- HD interlaced material is normally upper field first
- SD interlaced material (DV and mpeg2 for DVD) is bottom field first
- sizing the HD-UFF to SD-BFF in PP results in very flickering/jagged horizontal lines in the streams. I can confirm this after my very first tries in PP CS4 ;)
- one solution seems to be to change the HD material from UFF to BFF in After Effects CS4 before scaling

Since I do now own After Effects CS4 (just a 6.5 std till now) I have to avoid this step, but need to have most natural, sharp and perfect downscaling from 1080/50i EX1-footage to 576/50i-DVD-streams (I live in a PAL-country and because I have "fast action footage" I need to film in 1080/50i and cannot film in 1080/25p).
Till the start of my HD-filming I used PP 1.5 with the debug- or videtools-frameserver to give DV-footage directly to TMPGEnc for noise-filtering and encoding in the same step. No export-framserver seems to work with PP CS4 till now, so I cannot export my 1080i-footage out of PP directly to TMPGEnc, what a shame!

In consequence I have to find a workaround. I will try this week (could do not before), but because what I've read and because of this thread I expect to do it somehow like this:

- editing in PP CS4
- export as lossless 1080i material as Microsoft AVI with HuffYuv 2.2.1 codec (install for free if it is not on your system)
- scale and if needed change UFF to BFF in either avisynth script-framserver or Virtual Dub
- I would prefer avisynth since it is an importing-framserver and I would not have to rerender everything again after Huffyuv-export from PP.

So in a perfect world (but without exporting-frameserver for PP) it would be

PP (editing) --> Hufyuvv.avi (temp. 1080i file) --> avisynth.script-frameserver (scaling) --> TMPGEnc (denoising + encoding)


I do not know, if this will work. Any hints to this, please?
Regards
Markus

[Dan Chiaperini]

Resize in PPro just such. Don´t do that.

Originally Posted by Markus Klatt

- export as lossless 1080i material as Microsoft AVI with HuffYuv 2.2.1 codec (install for free if it is not on your system)
Markus

That is a problem to me, even I have that installed in my computer, I don´t find the option on premiere CS4. That is why I have to open it in AE CS4.

I didn´t know about the upper and bottom field first, I will see what I can get from that.

resize in Vdub just livied jagglesless, my problem, I belive, is the enconding setting in tmpeng.

What you mean by denoising? What is the effect from that?
I am get a few squares like that ones you you have when download a poor quality movie from the net (I get much much much less but still I want that perfect crystal clean)

[Markus Klatt]

So, last evening I had the first tries with that.

Just exporting "Microsoft AVI" out of Premiere Pro CS4 --> choosing HuffYuv-codec (free install, newest version 2.2.1), 1920x1080, bottom (lower) field first (LFF). Upper field first did not work at all (resulting video could not be played) and I've read that PP will reduce the resolution dramatically when transfering interlaced into progressive material. So only choice was LFF.

Worked fine, but the resulting avi is huge. 12GB for around 3 minutes.

This avi I opened directly in TMPGEnc 4 XPress (newest version .268) for resizing and encoded with my old+normal settings for DVD-mpeg2.

The result is much better then exporting from PP as DVD-mpeg2 directly. Its more sharp, looks more natural with less jagged lines/flickering. But at horizontal edges you still have some noticable flickering. Its ok, but this has to be improved!

I will try to do scaling by avisynth and/or Virtual Dub. The both have very good scaling and deinterlacing/interlacing options so hopefully there is a way to further reduce the flickering/jagged lines.

If one has any hint or link for optimal settings in avisynth and/or Virtual Dub for downscaling 1080i to 576i (or 480i) please let us know...

Thanks a lot!

P.s.: denoising ist just a filter in TMPGEnc to reduce picture noise to make the image little smoother. It does NOT have to do anything with scaling/interlacing.

[Dan Chiaperini]

Hi Markuss How are you?
I the day before last night to last night I was runing some test and I get the same solution as you.

I find the export with huffyuv in premiere so I can take out a step.
Opposity to a few things I read in the internet the Huffyuv export must be lower field first.

I resize it in Vdub and the results are amaizing, I was not able to resize it into tmpgenc, so I cann´t compare.

I used the de-noise and that reduce the blocking/ artifacts I was getting.

I am doing more test soon I will have more info and I will post in here.

[Markus Klatt]

Hi Dan,

yes, I do not know why, but one has to export LFF when exporting AVI with HuffYuv-codec. Any other setting results in black videos or resolution loss because PP deinterlaces...

I then used similar settings as [url?http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/dvd-authoring/146750-hd-sd-dvd-interlace-questions.html]Jon did here[/url].

This works very nice for 1920x1080/50i to PAL-SD-16:9-widescreen 720x576. The quality is slightly better than resizing in TMPGEnc directly.

If there is no other way I maybe try exporting to MOV, since the HuffYuv files are extremly large...

Unfortunatly I am not able to frameserver from VDub to TMPGEnc. I've read a lot abput the problem, but could not solve it till now.

[Dan Chiaperini]

Hi Markuss,

Today at night I will take a look at that page.

I finish my test yestarday.
I like the results but I still think I can improve a little.
I get no blocking no artifacts but now I get a very jaggling (saw in the edges).

I export from PPro CS4 using Huffyuv, full quality LFF, rezise in Vdub, and encode into tmpeg xpress.

Few details:
-My Huffyuy is 70,8 Gb (I get a 40 min video) and my vdub AVI (resized) is 71Gb. Why? The vdub is 720x480 and the Huffyuv AVI is 1440x1080.
- I also can´t server from Vdub to Tmpgenc, I don´t know here it create the AVI file in my vista.
-The tmpgenc xpress filter for resize is always checked, I don´t know if that make any impacts, I will try the 2.52 version but because my PC is multicore it take too long (about 8hours with the noise reduction filter) while the xpress take about 1:30h.

One question, have you ever used lagarith to export out the ppro CS4? Is that better then huffyuv?

That is it so far, thanks for the help.
See ya

[Peter Manojlovic]

It's been a long time since i've used other codecs, but i believe Lagarith recompresses faster (taking advantage of multi CPU)...

On a side note, to all the people who use Vdub for resizing, filtering etc....It needs to be known that Vdub works in RGB..Perhaps it's not a big deal for most peoples' quality comparison. I don't know. But it's an unessecary step.
If Lanczos resizing, and freeware cleaners are preferred, i'd suggest to people to learn AVISynth..
A great wrench to have in the toolbox AND it works in native YUY2..

Perhaps not necessary for people who've spent thousands on Adobe Software already...

[Markus Klatt]

Hi Dan and Peter,

thanks for your input!
I did not know Lagarith till no, but I will have a look. But HuffYuv works and it's only the size of the files, that is annoying.

@Peter
Thanks for the hint with RGB in VDub! I prefer AVISynth but have to find the best filters/commands for resing 1080/50i to 576/50i.
So VDub was the most easy way since Jon posted the process here.

If one has the perfect scripting commands for AVISynth, he/she is welcome to post them here. ;) Otherwise I will try myself soon and post my results here.


@Dan
I managed to frameserve from VDub to TMPGEnc XPress 4. Its a little difficult. I found the solution here, but it is not obvious:
Frameserving to TMPGEnc 3 Xpress from VirtualDub?

1. ) install VFAPI Reader
VFAPI Reader
2.) install readavs-vdr
http://www.videohelp.com/readavs-vdr.zip
(the how to is iexplained in the thread from "erratic posted 2004 Nov 27 08:34")
3.) Start TMPGEnc
4.) goto menu "Options" - "Preferences" - "Input I/O handler"
5.) DISABLE ALL but not VFAPI Reader - VFAPI is the only handler to enable!
6.) within VFAPI Reader just enable readavs-vdr
7.) be sure not to enable other input handler - especially not the AVI-handler.
8.) restart TMPGEnc
9.) framserve from VDub, just save framserverfile as frame.vdr (not avi!)
10.) now you can select that frame.vdr and encode on the fly in TMPGEnc

The same must be done to read AVISynth scripts in TMPGEnc. But first I need the correct scripting commands in AVISynth to do the same as in VDub....

Regards
Markus

[Jon Geddes]

Markus,

I just wanted to point out that the workflow I mentioned can be improved upon by using more advanced scripts in avisynth, for example: taking proper color conversions into account, and using even more advanced resizing / deinterlacing algorithms. However, that adds much more complexity to the process, possibly more than the average editor is willing to do when the workflow I mentioned yields very acceptable results.

I'm sure you've read the methods posted by Dan Isaacs. His method uses advanced scripts in avisynth to correct for premiere's unwanted conversion of colorspace of HD content (it always converts 709 to 601 on export, even when you don't want it to), and he uses scripts to resize using the spline36resize command, which is suppose to be slightly better than lanczos3. He also recommends using HCEncoder, which is completely free, works great on multicore systems, and offers comparable results to the famous Cinema Craft Encoder (CCE).

[Peter Manojlovic]

Markus,

Just to get things into perspective. A lot of those tools you mention come from the days of when freeware was the best fix for bad analogue captures..Again, VFAPI is RGB. Your encodes slow down considerably. Since most people on these forums are working with good sources, many of the issues (and therefore processes) are gone.

I strongly suggest, that you take advantage of what Cineform has to offer..Let your NLE do the cuts, let the Cineform codec do the processing (ie color correction, deinterlace, pulldown etc), and if need be, have AVISynth serve to your favourite encoder...But that's it..

Just my opinion though.

[Markus Klatt]

@Peter

Thank you for your input! In the meantime I could play a little around with the vdub workflow described here and that of Dan Isaacs with avisynth.

Since the debugframserver does not work for PP CS4 anymore I have to render an intermediate file to deliver my edited video for deinterlacing, resizing and encoding (I use TMPGEnc for denoising and encoding). I use "Microsoft AVI" with HuffYuv or Lagarith codec for that intermediate video file.

What advantages would the Cineform NEO SCENE ($129) codec give me? Better lossless intermediate.avi with correct color space? Perfect deinterlacing? Perfect resizing?

I would assume after my tests that deinterlacing and resizing from 1080i to 576i is very, very good with above mentioned workflows but I am really not sure about other parameters like color space.
And, if Cineform NEO SCENE would be equal perfect in deinterlacing and resizing then I could save some efforts - just rendering a scaled intermediate file and take it directly by TMPGEnc.

So, do you have any hint for me, if Cineform is worth its money for my purposes, please?

[Peter Manojlovic]

I don't want to hijack an old thread....
I'd suggest starting another one...

If filter, deinterlacing and rescaling is so important to you, i'd suggest re assessing your filming workflow.
EX1 footage under favourable conditions with the proper scanning mode should yield you results that don't require any extra filtering.

NeoScene was made for serious hobbyists and alike..But since you can capture and deinterlace at the same time with the capture utility that is included, you'd be saving a huge step. The $129 you save is well worth it. But if you're on a tight budget, your method is good enough..
Give the trial version of Neoscene a try, and post back your deinterlacing results.

If the quality of Neoscene codec was good enough for Slumdog Millionaire, it should be good enough to use with your EX1 shots. In your perfect world, it would be Edit in Premiere Pro>Save as Cineform Codec>Rescale with the best AVISynth script you can find (good luck with that one)>Encode with your .AVS script to Tmpgenc (no filtering required)..

[Markus Klatt]

Thanks again, Peter!
Since the thread starter Dan had the same problems and trys as me (need HuffYuv, VDub etc.) I hope he is enjoying these informations too. If it goes into special details of Cineform I will open a new thread.

Of course there is little money left after buying EX1 + accessoires + new PC + Software as a hobbyist without real customers. Although $129 seems to be a fair price I wouldn't buy it if there is no real advantage. And I was confused if the cheap "Neo Scene" would be the correct thing out of Cineforms product portfolio.

I just registered and downloaded Neo Scene 1.21 and will give it a try within next week. I will let you know how I feel with it.

Thanks again!