I recently had some major issues with trying to use HDV 1440x1080i PP2 input/output for doing DVDs.

Since I have plenty of years of PP experience and many DVD productions under my belt, I figured it would be a no-brainer ... ha..ha..ha.

Just to clarify things, I am using the great Cineform Aspect 4.1 plugin to ingest and edit in PP2, just so my old dual Xeon (SCSI RAID with 10K Cheetahs) can still handle things more or less okay.

So, I was shocked by the terrible motion artifacts I ran into when outputting the material in any size or format to use in Encore for making DVDs. No way Charilie! Lousy lousy lousy, aweful stuff when moving. Bad, Abobe, bad!

Here's the only "solution" I could find, but it gives lovely, final DVD output in 16x9 letter box format:

1. Ingest your 1440x1080i input, mix with whatever (SD DV, stills, titles, etc) and then output as a HUGE NON-INTERLACED 1440X1080 AVI. (7.5GB for 13 min.!) Better have space for this one!

2. Buy....(hey, don't freak out at that word!), beg, borrow, or steal (I'm kidding) a copy of TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress or something similar (yeah, right...FOR $99?) and input it into that program.

3. Output from TMPGEnc as an interlaced 720x480 MPEG (yourfile.mpg) with upper frame first.

4. Import that output into Encore (or whatever) and burn your DVD as normal


Presto! Lovely 16x9 DVD output, with ABSOLUTELY NO MOTION ARTIFACTS!

If someone can figure a way to do it without all that workflow (and you know what you're talking about) please share it. There are other forums too, waiting to hear your words of wisdom...

Stephen Armour - Lion Cub Productions (ABE) Brazil

I was under the impression TMPGEnc didn't like Adobe encoded AVIs? How did you get it to open the avi file?

I was under the impression TMPGEnc didn't like Adobe encoded AVIs? How did you get it to open the avi file?

News to me! - both Plus and Xpress are working fine here...

Where did you get that impression?

They certainly seem to work fine together for me, though my AVI's are exported using Cineform's Aspect 4.1 plugin engine. It totally replaces the engine Adobe uses for that type of output (which is really from the same company I believe, only this plugin from them is much faster and optimized for multicore CPUs)

Stephen Armour - Lion Cub Productions (ABE) Brazil

I haven't really tried creating a letterboxed DVD, but I have done HDV straight with nothing more than PP2, 1 gig of ram, and an AMD 64 Athlon 3200. Captured, edited, and burned with nothing but PP2. Sure, it takes a bit for it to render the clips, but I'm used to stepping out for a smoke while rendering, whether it be 3D or video.

You keep saying HDV, so are you actually using an HDV cam, HD compatible hardware, and an HD-DVD burner to create this? Isn't 720X480 SD? I'm confus-ed.

You know what guys,

I managed to get acceptable DVD quality with the compression of my final DVD mpeg files in vegas and then using architect. But I think theres no best solution yet. We're stuck in a world of not yet up to date editing software.(affordable I mean) to get the full quality of our HDV stuff on DVD. Lets just hope the next adobe premiere version will be more "workflow friendly" for exporting to DVD with Quality. Lets face it, HDV looks fabulous in the native format but when exported to DVD, its far from those DVDs we rent at blockbuster. How can a normal DVD look better than our HDV material??? Lets cross our fingers and wait for updated NLE that really support the HDV world.

Stephen,
Thanks for your post.........

I tried it out. The results seemed fine until I tried to build a DVD from the MPEG file produced by TMPGEnc. I used PP2.0 to burn a DVD and the color saturation knob got turned up to full. I don't know why this happens. I could tone it down in PP but this is covering up a problem and I would prefer to get to the hart of this mismatch.

Any ideas?

ChrisG

This will produce a widescreen NTSC compliant DVD. This will NOT produce an HDV file.

Hi Chris, sorry you're getting extra hassle. Seems to be the HD/HDV life.

Don't really know what's happening with your output, but note that I am NOT reimporting back into PP2, but doing the final DVD using Encore. There is definitely a difference, as I do not think PP actually works with MPG files directly, but makes a temp AVI wrapper for them. Something is going on with your temp files. If you can avoid reimporting back into PP2 and do it in another DVD build program, it might avoid prob's. Encore does not try to recompress or recompile the MPGs, but just writes them "as is" and points to them on the DVD.

Just to clarify something: these are obviously NOT HD DVD's! Just regular 'ole letterboxed 720x480 sized DVDs, but without motion artifacts. The only dif is that by using TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress, we can control how the fields go together and avoid seeing all those ugly stairsteps (or whatever you want to call them) when our video is displayed as NTSC interlaced. Plus we have the added advantage of output that looks like original SD video, even after all your special effects and transitions are done to it. That's one reason I use Cineform Aspect. Just like music, the higher the initial quality used for editing, the better the final output, even when down-rezed.

There are certainly other ways to do it, and you can also output directly from PP2 to DVD. It's just giving you much less control of your final output onto DVD.

There are many, many issues with HD/HDV capture to final output, but until the world goes to a single, unified system that is digital from end to end, and does not use compression or interlacing at any point from capture to final transmission, we're stuck with a mess. Just try to make the best of it and you'll still look pretty good to most people!

Sorry that doesn't help you really...

Stephen:

I think the deinterlacing is the key. Instead of making an HDV non interlaced avi, however, I render as the second step, an DV .avi, from the HDV time line and get a pretty nice result. Have you tried that and compared results ?

Chris, from other posts I gathered that PPRO does a terrible job at resizing the HDV footage... are you saying that you let PPRO resize from HDV to DV deinterlaced and you get good results?

Chris (Barcellos), absolutely it's the deinterlacing factor. And yes, I often do AVI's directly from the PP2 timeline for verification DVD's and have gotten quite good results.

However, with me, the issue was using those same AVI's to make a full menued DVD using Encore. That's really the reason I go back to making my own mpg's. Any high quality prog that does that would work. Since Encore re-compresses any AVI into an MPEG file for burning, I was often getting motion artifacts at that level. Using a mpg verified as good eliminates that prob.

I guess it's really a matter of controlling the whole process from start to finish for guaranteed results. Isn't that what Hollywood does too? Never leave anything to the whims of poor software...

I also use PPro2+AspectHD 4.x I have gotten good results by letting Cineform output a standard definition .avi for Encore to use...with one proviso: In the Cineform export setup, go to the "Keyframe" tab and change HDVs "Upper First" to "Sequential-no fields". That makes output 480p that is pleasant to watch on my 50" screen.

....................
3. Output from TMPGEnc as an interlaced 720x480 MPEG (yourfile.mpg) with upper frame first.
.......................
Stephen Armour - Lion Cub Productions (ABE) Brazil

Stephen,

How long did it take for TMPGEnc to ingest and output your 13min, 7.5gig file?

I just want to know if I am doing something wrong, because it seems to take forever to do anything!

Cheers,
Robert

Stephen,

How long did it take for TMPGEnc to ingest and output your 13min, 7.5gig file?

I just want to know if I am doing something wrong, because it seems to take forever to do anything!

Cheers,
Robert

I can't recall my system having taked exceptionally long to process anything through TMPGEnc. My current system is still an old Dell dual processor XEON workstation (3.06 Ghz). I think TMPGEnc takes advantage of multiprocessors or multicore's, so What type of CPU are you using ?

By the way Don, I have done them as you suggested and yes, it did give good output. I was only using the interlaced output for the greatest player/TV compatibility (Brazil). Don't really know if the progressive output would be a prob, but I usually aim for the least common denominator...

Chris, from other posts I gathered that PPRO does a terrible job at resizing the HDV footage... are you saying that you let PPRO resize from HDV to DV deinterlaced and you get good results?

In my opinion, better than HDV direct to DVD.

At least one person here says exporting directly from HDV to DVD using premiere (rather than encore), works great. That may be the case. I personally don't require a lot more menu fuctionality than premiere provides at least for current projects, so that definitely sounds like the best way to me. Do you think this will result in lower quality than going the TMPG route then exporting from encore? Will that provide better DVD results?

The cineform aspect import, does that actually improve the footage? Dang, $400 on EBay for that, as much as the software itself. Is it necessary for top quality??? That's kind of rediculous if so. Then another $99 if you want to build out big menus in encore.

....old Dell dual processor XEON workstation (3.06 Ghz). I think TMPGEnc takes advantage of multiprocessors or multicore's, so What type of CPU are you using ?
...

I guess that your old dual XEON is a bit faster then my old AMD64x2 4200 four drive, 2gig, 7950gt setup.

I do tend to select all the 'best' options. Maybe I need to go for more basic settings.

At least one person here says exporting directly from HDV to DVD using premiere (rather than encore), works great. That may be the case. I personally don't require a lot more menu fuctionality than premiere provides at least for current projects, so that definitely sounds like the best way to me. Do you think this will result in lower quality than going the TMPG route then exporting from encore? Will that provide better DVD results?

The cineform aspect import, does that actually improve the footage? Dang, $400 on EBay for that, as much as the software itself. Is it necessary for top quality??? That's kind of rediculous if so. Then another $99 if you want to build out big menus in encore.

One easy way for you to find out, is to download the Cineform Aspect trial, use it and compare your output. For simple stuff, if direct output works for you, go for it!

Our needs are a little higher, so we tend to squeeze everything we can from what we can afford. We're thinking of taking the HDMI camera output from one of our Sony's (HVR-V1U) directly through a Blackmagic Intensity card into a PC for that very reason. Uncompressed is uncompressed, and with Aspect, we're flying high! We'd like to save our master's as high quality HD's, then downrez for current needs. That way, we've future-proofed our long-term productions and could probably even use them on Brazil's soon-to-come digital TV system (ISDB-T) if the opportunity ever appeared...

So you think the HDMI output will edit just like SD on your system using Aspect? Do you plan on storing the HD Masters on tape (export back out to camera or deck) or on hard drive space (that would be a lot of space!).

Also, do you think one of these blackmajic style cards would work on a lap top? I already have an nvidia card in there and I am assuming... another card would not work...

Cheers,
Michael

So you think the HDMI output will edit just like SD on your system using Aspect? Do you plan on storing the HD Masters on tape (export back out to camera or deck) or on hard drive space (that would be a lot of space!).

Also, do you think one of these blackmajic style cards would work on a lap top? I already have an nvidia card in there and I am assuming... another card would not work...

Cheers,
Michael

Actually, It'd probably choke and die if I try to stuff uncompressed input into my old dual XEON, even with the Aspect codec. I'm having a friend build a new system for me for this HD project that can easily handle it.

As to the storage medium, I'm waiting for Blu-ray/HD DVD thing to sort itself out and then will buy the biggest capacity disk burner available. That will probably be around 50 GB since I can't wait very much longer. That should be enough space for the Cineform-encoded media and production stuff. HDDs is always an option as well. 120 GB drives are very cheap but don't lend themselves well to shipping for duplication/distribution. Since these are long term projects, initially we'll use regular letter-boxed DVD for distribution and reserve the HD original content for later.

As to the Intensity card and HDMI ingest, I've been grinding that around in my nutshell for a few weeks. I have a friend who works with very high end video for industry/military/gov and I'm thinking of asking him how hard it'd be to put together an embedded portable system just for ingest to an HDD in field, using a board with one slot system for the BM board. I would also have to use the licensed codec from Cineform. It would not need anything else other than firewire i/o to offload the data, plus someway to know how much space is available on the HDD. One single fast little HDD in it could easily handle that i/o.

I'm really needing something smaller for crane/dolly field work using the V1, and don't want to use compressed input if I can do better.

Anybody interested in something like that? He might actually make something if there were enough people showing interest. What would YOU pay for something like that if interested?

If I'm not mistaking, there is a thread some place around here, a guy was asking about this kind of a system he was planning on manufacturing. Come to think, it might have been about uncompressed HD...

Quick question...

If you encode your movie in TMPGEnc, build your DVD menu in Encore, import your movie into Encore as an asset and burn your DVD with Encore, will Encore re-encode your mpg that you made with TMPGEnc?

If is does, kind of defeats the purpose of using TMPGEnc.

Anyway to get Encore to NOT re-encode your movie?

Quick question...

If you encode your movie in TMPGEnc, build your DVD menu in Encore, import your movie into Encore as an asset and burn your DVD with Encore, will Encore re-encode your mpg that you made with TMPGEnc?

If is does, kind of defeats the purpose of using TMPGEnc.

Anyway to get Encore to NOT re-encode your movie?

No, it does not re-encode a MPG as it is already in the format Encore needs. And yes, it would defeat our purpose if it did that!

If it wasn't for the menus, DVD structure etc, I would do them directly as progressive 720 DVD's from the PP timeline...but that is not the case. It seems much better to control exactly what is going to be shown, and that can only be done with menus and all on a DVD if your video is already to go when you import it into Encore.

We always preview it before hand in exactly the format we'll be using on the DVD. It's all about control, control, control....if you want to preserve quality.

Thanks Stephen! I entirely agree about the need for control. I just love to add easter eggs to my DVDs. Now if only I could figure out a way to make accessing those easter eggs more intricate by pressing a code on the remote instead of simply pressing up and down until they are highlighted.