High Quality out of PremierePro?

[Benjamin Richardson]

I haven't edited in HD(V) since last October, and here's why:

I was shooting a video with the canon XL H1, with alot of creep zooms. I edited the footage and when I went to down convert the footage all of my creep zooms would stutter at the focal point, that on top of that fact the footage looked like out of focus DV ( to say the least). I remember hearing of other peoples complaints on this forum about adobe's media encoder, and it looking soft after the down convert. I went through weeks of trying to figure out the problem and even sent it straight to the people at adobe for them to re-create the problem themselves, and they couldn't even fix the problem. They then suggested I buy main concepts new encoder ( hundreds more out of pocket for their mistake).

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that i don't trust adobe's media encoder, nor do I approve of its quality (I've seen it near the bottom of lists here on DVinfo). Is there anything i can do about this less than getting a new Editing program, perhaps avid?

plug-ins maybe?

I have Adobe's Production Studio Premium Bundle, hence why I'd rather stick with Adobe.

Maybe you could convince me to stick with Adobe (especially considering Cineforms Aspect/Prospect)

[Graham Hickling]

You dont need a new editing program ... just render out to avi and then encode your MPEGs with a standalone encoder - TMPGEnc is good and cheap if cost is an issue.

EDIT: Re-reading your post, I guess its maybe the downconvert that's your main concern. If so then that's easy to address - render out to 1440x1080 avi, then downconvert using the Lanzos resize filter in Virtualdub, which is excellent quality and will cost you precisely $0.

[Michael Barrette]

A little confusing for this newbie to encoding.

So you downconvert using Lanzos, then create mpg's with TPMGenc? Is that the best way to get HDV edited project ready for DVD in Encore?

Cheers,
Michael

[Graham Hickling]

Originally Posted by Michael Barrette

So you downconvert using Lanzos, then create mpg's with TPMGenc? Is that the best way to get HDV edited project ready for DVD in Encore?

Correct. If you are unhappy with PPro's resizing ability, you can export an avi from PPro at HDV size. Then resize that file to DV size using the high-quality "Lanzos" resizing option in Virtualdub. Then convert that to mpg ready for Encore.

Is it the "best" way? Opinions vary. Getting TMPGEnc to resize the HDV-size file as it encodes to mpg should give similar quality and avoids 1 step.

By the way, you asked in the other thread if Cineform AspectHD improves image quality. AspectHD's main use is to allow for responsive, fast editing of HDV on a medium-spec computer. So it IS worth $400 in that it saves you having to buy a much faster processor etc to get the equivalent editing speed.

It also provides a high-quality codec you can use if you need to create "intermediate" files without loosing quality. (For example, in the workflow above you could save the DV-sized file in Cineform's codec.) However, the excellent, free huffyuv codec can be used for your intermediate files, so that's not really the rationale for having AspectHD.