Hi guys. I have a question which is bugging me, how to get a good looking dvd from HDV footage. I shoot with a JVC 111 and edit in Edius 4 pro and convert with procoder and author with encore to dvd. My workflow is as follows, please tell me if there is a better way.
1) Capture 720p 25fps via firewire to hardrive
2) saves as M2t format
3) Convert using procoder to Canopus HQ avi for editing
4) edit in 720p 25fps timeline
5) export from HD timeline to M2P
6) author M2p to burn to DVD

Now these are my key problems. The artifacts are not good, I do not like them. WHen I dump my raw footage it looks great, thats M2T converted to M2P and burnt to dvd. It appears that the HQavi creates the artifacts, I have watched them through the monitor and even through media player and you can see the artifacts in the HQ files but not the M2t to M2p.

I want to be able to make a hd and sd so I have heard that I should make a master hd avi then convert that to m2p for dvd. However, as I have mentioned, I feel the damage happened in the early stages. Can someone give me an idea if I am going the right way here. thanks guys

Hello,
apparently the Canopus HQ AVIs are not as good as they should be. In
Edius 3 or rather the last version of the 3 series the 3.61, you can edit
the M2t files you have captured from the camera (the 720p 25fps files)
in realtime without changeing anything or rendering them. If you via
the Procder export your "film" to an M2p file you can author it to burn to
DVD with no artifacts and very good general quality. but this does not
work in Edius 4 (I am useing the 3.61 but I downloaded the "one month"
trial version of Edius 4 from Canopus internetsite as I thought it would
be an improvment, however this was not the case at least not when
editing HD). So when I tried the 4 version I had to render everything
again (slow very slow) as soon as I changed even a small part of the "film"
I had to render: To edit and view in realtime I had to convert the files to Canopus HQ Avi -but then the quality drops. If not converted working was only possible after a lot of rendering and then rendering again....after
rendering it was possilble to export (via Procoder) to an M2p - with no
artifacts, but trying to view the film on the timeline did not work
properly -there was a lot of "frame drops". The M2p however worked
well and the DVD was good. On the Edius 3.61 I can edit the captured
M2t files as they are and view the timeline in realtime with no frame drops,
make a "film" and export to M2p and make a DVD with no problems.
In other words no Edius 4 for me at the moment.
Have you tried to export directly to M2p from the timeline? this should work
but editing is not at all easy with no realtime monitoring but still better than
a lot of artifacts.
Christian

Interesting, weird to think you can edit realtime m2t in version 3 but not 4 pro. I think I have solved the issue anyhow. I simply converted my 720 30p to hq 29.97 NTSC instead of 30p then edited the ntsc hq and made an ntsc dvd out of it. I tested this and sent to dvd to compare, problem solved.

It makes sense now. However, I will be shooting everything in 720 25p for now omn to take away the conversion of frame rates issue.

Thanks for your reply