To buy Aspect or Not to buy, that is the question...

[Michael Steeves]

Hello all,

I've been wondering if I should purchase Aspect Hd, and wether or not is would be of any use to me and my wedding video business.

I am running a JVC-HD100, and using Premiere Pro V2.0.

I have noticed that when I Author a DVD at the highest quality, I'm not that happy with the final quality of the footage when I compare it to an uncompressed AVI file straight off the Mini DV tape. There's a big difference in the quality, and I'd like to solve this problem.

Would Aspect HD make that big of a difference in the quality of the footage on a DVD? I'm on a tight budget, and the cost of Aspect HD is quite high, will it be worth it for the wedding industry? Will my wedding clients notice this difference in quality?

P.S. Eventually I will go into the Blueray market, but not in 2007... I probably can't afford it yet.

Thanks to all who reply.
Michael
www.dyweddingmedia.com

[Marc Colemont]

Not only for the quality, but also for the editing speedflow in PPro 2.0 I have choosen AspectHD. There is also a High quality conversion tool inside HDLink to convert from HD to SD resolutions and visa-versa.
I suggest you install the trial version and you will see the difference for yourself.

[Richard Leadbetter]

Download the trial and I find it hard to believe you would want to go back to your current workflow. Editing with CineForm AVI files is better than editing with hardware-accelerated DV solutions of the past. It literally makes working with HD easier than working with SD DV footage.

However, if you are saying that your edited exports from Premiere in AVI format are much better than your MPEG2 exports, clearly you should be looking at another MPEG2 encoder rather Premiere's built-in effort.

I always used to use Cinemacraft CCE back in the day when I concentrated on SD projects, although Procoder wasn't bad. Not all MPEG2 encoders are created equally though, that's for sure. It might be worth giving Cinemacraft CCE Basic a whirl and encode some of your AVIs with it.

But if you're working with HD footage as a base, you really should be using Aspect simply because it'll make it's money back many times over simply from the boost it will give to your productivity. And as I'm sure you're aware, time is just as important - if not more so - than money.

[Michael Steeves]

Thanks,

Do I need both Cinemacraft CCE, and Aspect HD? I was under the assumption that Aspect HD was an MPEG 2 Encoder as well... I'm new to this HD thing, so I'm a little confused.

I will try the demo version of both of these products, and see what happens.

Cheers.
Michael

[Ervin Farkas]

We're talking about two different things here. Basically you don't need CineForm to work with HD in PPRO 2.0, but CineForm will make your NLE work easier with HDV. CinemaCraft is for mpeg2 encoding (output to DVD) and has nothing to do with HD. You can use CF without CC, and CC without CF.

If you decide to go the HD route, as discussed in this forum, you may want to use a different software for resizing (either VirtualDub or After Effects) before feeding your AVI file to the encoder.

In the mean time, as a transition step, you may try using CC in your current SD workflow. You will probably never go back to using anything else...

[Mark Leonard]

anyone who owns pp2 and does hd editing should own aspect imho :). but your quality issues are probably what I learned a long time ago, that pp2's encoder sucks big time. was getting horrible quality no matter what I exported with. so here's was the fix...buy yourself a copy of tmpenc (the big version, $99 i think). export your final project as a cineform hd or dv avi. use tmpenc to encode to dvd mpg (adjust whatever settings you feel like playing with) then burn with your dvd authoring program and make sure it doesnt re-encode your project. (but also buy aspect and never look back!!!)

[Michael Steeves]

Thanks for the replys.
For those that have been mentioning Standard Defination, or SD files, please understand that I am only working in High Defination. The JVC camera I'm using is a high defination camera, and I rarely have touched the SD options on it as of yet.

That being said, I guess I misunderstood what the Aspect HD program was for. I thought it would be the only program that I would need to capture and render my HD files and have them look their best. I guess I also need one of these other programs as well. Hmmmmmm...

I'm confused. But, I guess I will learn about that when I finally do get one of these other programs.

I'm the type of guy that pushes buttons to see what they do, and spills my coffee all over the manual...

Thanks for the help.
Michael

[Steven Gotz]

The Cineform Aspect HD 15 day trial is fully functional. So try this. Edit in HDV, and export to Cineform CFHD AVI. Take that output into a SD project, scale it down and export to MPEG2-DVD. See if that suits you.

[Michael Steeves]

Thanks Steven,

I will get the trial of Aspect HD.

This part of your answer confuses me a little bit. Please forgive me as I'm new to the HD editing group, actually to any editing group... as if you couldn't notice, so please forgive me if my confusion is a bit noobish... Codecs, and project workflows are still a little bit confusing to me.

You said that I should do this...

"Take that output into a SD project, scale it down and export to MPEG2-DVD"

I do Not understand why I am to take the HD output and put it into an "SD project"... I Do understand that these files are really big and won't naturally fit on a DVD witout compressing them to MPEG2, but why is it done in a "SD project" instead of a "HD project"... That's a little confusing to me. I have no arguments, I just don't understand the process.


Thanks for all the help.
You all have been very kind.
Michael

[Steven Gotz]

First of all, unless you are pretty advanced, you won't have the software and the hardware to write an HD project out to an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray DVD.

So, you either have to have a special DVD player like I do that plays WMV-HD files, or a special video card in your PC that will play HD on your HDTV. I have one of those also.

Let's assume you want to give a DVD to Aunt Zelda to show her your firstborn's first steps, or you oldest child's induction into the Air Force Academy. Aunt Zelda is advanced enough to have a DVD player that her son set up for her on her little TV in the Sewing Room. You need to write a Standard Definition file to the DVD. A regular standard definition MPEG2-DVD file.

The problem is that writing that file from a HDV project seems to cause an unacceptable loss of quality. I don't know why. So, I write the HDV file out to a HD file, import that into a project designed for regular MiniDV cameras, I scale the clip down to fit into the 4:3 standard drfinition frame (720X480 in the USA) and export from that project. For some reason, it looks better that way.

[Tim Bucklin]

Michael,

As the others said, give our trial a shot.
Also, it should be noted that Aspect HD fully supports the JVC's 24p mode.

The reason that exporting straight to MPEG from an Aspect HD project looks bad is due in part to the scaling. This is why others are recommending scaling in a different step.

If you have a finished project already exported to an HD CineForm AVI, you can scale it using HDLink. Just open the "convert" tab, select the file you want to scale, and set the resize option to your desired format in the "prefs" window.

Now, you'll have a properly scaled widescreen, cropped, or letterboxed SD AVI file ready to be transcoded to MPEG for DVD creation. See Steven's post above as to why you want an SD file.