Output quality from PP2

[Miguel Lombana]

Originally Posted by Michael Y Wong

PPro 2.0 export is $h!tty!!!

Here is tried and true SIMPLE workflow that I've been using to get excellent DVD/WMV-HD results. Just so you guys know, I shoot everything in HDV so this may not apply to some of you SD guys.

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I hope this helps!

Michael

Michael are there any changes in procoder that you have to do to any of the switches? I know that when i use it for some reason it seems to latch onto 4:3 as a default and I have to manually make some changes, using version 2.04 in Procoder (full version not express).

[Gene Crucean]

Originally Posted by Christopher Lefchik

You mean the overall brightening of the image?

Basically yes.

[Michael Y Wong]

Originally Posted by Miguel Lombana

Michael are there any changes in procoder that you have to do to any of the switches? I know that when i use it for some reason it seems to latch onto 4:3 as a default and I have to manually make some changes, using version 2.04 in Procoder (full version not express).

Michael, for mastering quality dvd in procoder you are right the ONLY thing I need to change is 16x9. I'm running ProCoder 2.0.

Burn a dvd via this method and give it a try on your projector (via progressive scan dvd player).

BTW Killer Gear you have there! I WISH i had a 955ee, im running a 930 and not running cineform, performance could definately be better!

[Christopher Lefchik]

Originally Posted by Gene Crucean

Basically yes.

The brightening you see is the result of a bug in the QuickTime 7 Player. There is nothing inherently wrong with Adobe Media Encoder's QuickTime H.264 export (nor with any other H.264 encoder, for that matter). Apple is aware of the problem. In the meantime, you can play H.264 videos in another player such as VLC media player. You may even discover that you like it better than QuickTime. ;-)

Regardless of whatever bugs there are in the QuickTime 7 Player, H.264 remains an excellent codec.

[Daniel Cegla]

What's wrong with exporting to progressive footage? I saw this mentioned earlier in thread and some of you said this was bad. (if footage is shot 720x480 @ 60i)? The quality looks much better then when selecting interlaced in tmpeg... is this the wrong setting to use?

[Gene Crucean]

Originally Posted by Christopher Lefchik

The brightening you see is the result of a bug in the QuickTime 7 Player. There is nothing inherently wrong with Adobe Media Encoder's QuickTime H.264 export (nor with any other H.264 encoder, for that matter). Apple is aware of the problem. In the meantime, you can play H.264 videos in another player such as VLC media player. You may even discover that you like it better than QuickTime. ;-)

Regardless of whatever bugs there are in the QuickTime 7 Player, H.264 remains an excellent codec.

If you can't deliver a self explanatory movie, then it's useless. It's not like I can deliver a movie and then tell them "oh by the way... you'll need to install this and this... and if that doesn't work try this" just to watch it. Btw, it's been a bug since QT6. I think apple has had time to fix this by now.

Btw, VLC is horrible. Don't get me started on that or MPlayer.

[Christopher Lefchik]

Originally Posted by Gene Crucean

If you can't deliver a self explanatory movie, then it's useless.

No movie is inherently self explanatory in and of itself. I'm curious as to what you mean by that statement?

Originally Posted by Gene Crucean

It's not like I can deliver a movie and then tell them "oh by the way... you'll need to install this and this... and if that doesn't work try this" just to watch it.

Considering that MPEG-1 is about the only universally supported format, there is always the chance using any other format that you will eventually run into someone who has problems playing your video file.

Originally Posted by Gene Crucean

Btw, it's been a bug since QT6.

Can't have been, as QuickTime Player didn't support H.264 until version 7.

Originally Posted by Gene Crucean

I think apple has had time to fix this by now.

Even considering the bug was in version 7, I would agree with you wholeheartedly.

Originally Posted by Gene Crucean

Btw, VLC is horrible. Don't get me started on that or MPlayer.

Can't say I've used MPlayer. I have used VLC media player, and I certainly don't see a reason to call it horrible.

[Miguel Lombana]

Mike,

You suggested Exporting to Tape to keep the final edit of a project in HDV, what is your typical result for a 15 minute video to render out and record?

I had a project that needed a fast turnaround for the local news, took it back to my office and did what I had never done before, Exported to tape, suddenly what was a really fast machine and a really simple project took hours! I was really screwed and don't know what I did wrong.

Is there a secret to this when working with the raw M2t files and not running Aspect HD, just vanilla PP2.0 and it's HDV drivers?

I really need to know what to do to speed this up for the future...

Thanks,
MIGUEL

[Michael Y Wong]

Miguel,

To partially answer your quesiton, that would heavily depend upon the compliexity of your project. If you use Magic Bullet editors then forget having anythign delivered on a tihgt timeline. Straight cuts, basic dissolves or any of hte feature s directly from PP2.0 wolud render the fastest. The less complicated functions u use, as a general rule would yeild faster rendering.

I would also recommend encoding to M2t file FIRST (as ur master file) then afterwords recording to tape after from ur M2t. Altho I do notice that when writing an M2t to tape PP2.0 does take a few mins to index the file (or wutever it is doing) b4 actually recording to tape.

I can't give u exact figures unfortuanty since I do most of my rendering when I'm @ work @ my day job and am too busy @ work to monitor how long these things take.

[Miguel Lombana]

Originally Posted by Michael Y Wong

Miguel,

To partially answer your quesiton, that would heavily depend upon the compliexity of your project. If you use Magic Bullet editors then forget having anythign delivered on a tihgt timeline. Straight cuts, basic dissolves or any of hte feature s directly from PP2.0 wolud render the fastest. The less complicated functions u use, as a general rule would yeild faster rendering.

I would also recommend encoding to M2t file FIRST (as ur master file) then afterwards recording to tape after from ur M2t. Altho I do notice that when writing an M2t to tape PP2.0 does take a few mins to index the file (or wutever it is doing) b4 actually recording to tape.

I can't give u exact figures unfortuanty since I do most of my rendering when I'm @ work @ my day job and am too busy @ work to monitor how long these things take.

Michael I wanted to get a final answer on this for you, I was unable to get the footage to the TV station, in the end it appears that our local HD News station can't handle actual HD footage. In their haste to be the 1st station in the market to jump to HD News, they only upgraded their studio cameras, their AVID system is still SD and all their shooters only changed to 16:9 from 4:3, even their remote truck is not HD yet.

I also offered them my cam to capture via Firewire and to my dismay they were unable to accept this as well, seems that their engineer forgot some major upgrades. Their tape guy attempted to take my MiniDV-HDV tape and ingest it into their editing system via a DVCam deck until I told him it was HDV and suddenly the bell went off in his head and he realized that they had forgotten something, decks!

Ok back to my issue here, the workflow didn't work for several reasons, 1st I attempted to export it from the timeline back to HDV and Premier Pro advised that it had to transcode the footage to HDV, this was a 6 minute timeline and the conversion took 40 minutes. After reviewing some information on the Cineform web, I learned that there is an issue with this where you need to have Premier Pro 1.51 installed and you need to copy the HDV folder from 1.51 into PP2 for timeline export to properly work.

The suggested workflow by Cineform worked flawlessly and I have modified my workflow accordingly. The new and fast workflow is as follows:

1. Capture via HDVSplit (this leaves me a raw m2t file that I can split and use later).
Note: I'm aware that HDLink will do this as well and write the CF AVI's in the same process, however each time I attempted this HDLink crashed after several minutes of capture, HDVSplit was able to capture the entire tape without 1 crash.)

2. Use Cineform HDLink to scene detect the m2t file and create the Cineform AVI's for use in Premier 2.0

3. Edit and prepare to export.

4. Export via Cineform M2T back to the hard drive.

5. Cineform HDLink this CF M2T file back to the camera (Camera has to be in HDV mode, if the VCR in the Sony Cam is set to Auto, tape write fails, this is documented in the Cineform FAQ.)

6. The Cineform M2T file can now be manipulated in Procoder into any format that I need such as WMP, Divx etc. As well this file imports directly into Sony DVD Architect which will downrez to DVD, no Procoder necessary and results (to my eye) are basically identical.)

7. The archival timeline is now on tape for safe keeping in HDV format and I can also use the internal downrez of the cam on that footage to re-import back to the editing system as SD for whatever reason or in my case feed a news studio via RCA cables.

Although cumbersome, this workflow is rocksolid and I have been able to complete a major Christmas project for one of the local police departments in a very fast turnaround, similar to what I was used to with DV.

Hope this helps someone else.
Miguel

[Mikko Lopponen]

Originally Posted by Gene Crucean

Actually that Deinterlace option is just for the preview window. If you look on the right side you will see that Lower is selected in the field order option.

! No, it's not. It deinterlaces everything. Not just the preview window.

The "lower" is just to tell the encoder if the material progressive or not. And you just deinterlaced it so it's progressive but you're encoding it as interlaced. It's not that hard. I mean your pictures obviously show deinterlacing at work in the premiere captures. Turn it off if your project is shot as progressive.

I get pretty good exports from ppro. The scaler sucks though so if you're going from hdv->dv then scale the video somewhere else.