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I also reported the problem via the official Corel technical support form.

Man, that was a frustrating effort.

At first, Corel had failed to move my user account information from the Ulead Web site to the Corel Web Site.

So I tried reporting this issue.

Then I got an e-mail indicating they had no record of my approximately one dozen Ulead product purchases.

Then I wrote them and told them this was incredible (among other things).

Then they wrote me back and told me they had found my purchase record.

Whew!

So their official technical support has been advised.

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

They're giving me the stock answer: "uninstall/reinstall the software."

When I get home, I'll re-open the issue on their Web site and let them know they're going to have to do better than that.

And if they don't get their act together, I'm going straight to Dobson with a letter.

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

Steve, what's your opinion here???
Isn't that bug related to mainconcepts mpeg2 encoder repectively to the smartrendering "mechanism" ???
Shouldn't we warn all other users/customers that want to buy a Videostudio product just for editing mpeg2 material?
Regards
Sektionschef

As I mentioned earlier I have sent an email to Corel. I have received confirmation that it has been forwarded to the VideoStudio Development Team.

sjj1805 wrote:As I mentioned earlier I have sent an email to Corel. I have received confirmation that it has been forwarded to the VideoStudio Development Team.

Great!!! Thanks!!!
But what is your personal opinion here?
Regards
Sektionschef

I am simply a user of Ulead products like yourself. I am not a software engineer and so whatever I may think is irrelevant. As a Forum Administrator and Moderator if I do find a problem that appears to need investigation by the software company I pass it on to them for evaluation.

I mainly edit DV (avi) files with the Ulead software or create slideshows from JPG's from one of my digital cameras. When editing MPEG files (from my TV card) I tend to use another manufacturers software to cut out adverts and the like, then create a DVD with Workshop 2.

I have stated many times on the forum that you do not need to restrict yourself to one piece of software and to use the best of whatever is available.
take a look at this link and you will see I used 11 pieces of software to produce one of my DVD's
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... 8728#68728

I got another response from Corel's technical support:

Response (John Francis) - 08/06/2007 02:19 AM
Dear Jerry ,
Thank you for your valuable feedback. I have escalated this issue to the Software Research and Development Team within Corel. We appreciate you taking the time to share your insight as a customer and we look forward to improving our service to you in the future.

If they know what they're doing, they should be able to find this bug without any further assistance from me.

I did more testing over the weekend and I confirmed Smart Render does negatively impact the final, rendered MPEG-2 output of Corel VideoStudio 11 Plus at the end of title edits.

And I've confirmed Smart Render negatively impacts HD MPEG-2 as well as standard definition MPEG-2.

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

Aside from the bug reported here.... my observation through weeks of trying to identify the source and find a work around is that the current crop of encoders used in $500 or less packages is simply not capable of really good rendered HD output. And I am speaking of the 1080i level here.

If you view footage on a top of the line 1080p HDTV the difference between direct playback and rendered quality is readily apparent even to the untrained eye. It might not be as noticeable on a 720p set; in fact the viewed output quality of the current encoders looks more like 720 on all output, good, but not nearly as good as the original. There is a much smaller viewed difference between SD camera footage and rendered SD footage.

MainConcept, on their website, describes their new HDV plug in for Premier as being "entirely rebuilt from the ground up". This would seem to imply that for HDV they realized that the current level of encoders were somewhat marginal. I do not know how good the new encoder is, (at $400. one would hope it is great!) But, it seems to me that we are going to have to wait for an improved level of (bug free) encoders in our editing products before we can enjoy all that HD has to offer.

The quality knocks your socks off if you can smart render!

I don't trust MainConcept... period.

If they've passed along a faulty SDK to Ulead, Magix, etc., then why on God's green earth would I be willing to fork over $449 to MainConcept and then the hundreds of extra dollars required to buy the extremely expensive Adobe Premiere only to find out the problem is still there?

There's no way I would do that.

Besides, there's a far less-expensive solution.

I spent a mere fraction of that amount on Cineform's high definition intermediate .AVI-format codec ($249).

Corel's Smart Render technology works perfectly with the Cineform I-Frame codec (Neo HDV) .avi HD files!

Corel's Smart Render technology works on the Cineform .avi files as well as it works on DV .avi files!

So, for me, this virtually lossless codec is the solution to this bug.

After editing in Cineform, I then output to the high definition format of my choice... HDV, WMV HD... whatever.

This past weekend, I authored my first "HD DVD-R" project.

I used Corel VideoStudio 11 Plus this past weekend to burn HDV program stream (.MPG) files to an "HD DVD-R" image, which I burned to DVD-R with widescreen menus.

I then took the DVD-R to the local Boise Circuit City store and I tested playback in a new Toshiba HD-A2 model player.

The Toshiba "HD DVD" player was connected to a 56" Samsung DLP high definition TV.

The DVD-R contained HDV video shot by a Canon HV10.

(This video was mailed to me by a client so that I could help him with his HD DVD-R authoring workflow.)

WOW!

Everything worked.

The video -- of a guy climbing an ice wall -- played in pristine high definition without a flaw.

People in the store started gathering around to watch.

They asked me if it were true that the video were shot by a consumer high definition camcorder.

They couldn't believe the quality.

The audio also played perfectly.

The menu buttons worked like a charm.

No problems at all.

And I was able to do this with a program that costs $99.99.

We have, indeed, entered a new video age.

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

bsuratt wrote:MainConcept, on their website, describes their new HDV plug in for Premier as being "entirely rebuilt from the ground up"!

Jerry,

I, too, tried Cineform and yes, the output looks good. But I found it only marginally better than a rerender using 1080i files. It still loses too much. Using an I-frame enabled editor like Womble I can cut and save my clips, move them to VS11 and then smartrender with a nearly perfect picture. (Or, leave it in Womble and complete it there.) So, it can be done. Just not with an editor that has a lot of features or without doubling the time of the workflow.

HD Video at 720 looks great; most network broadcast is at that level. But if you catch a true 1080 show on say Discovery HD on, say, a Sony XBR2 LCD you will see what I mean. I use a Sony HDR-FX7 camcorder and the smartrendered picture quality is very comparable to a real 1080 HD broadcast. I have found no current rerendering process that comes close to that capability. This includes VS11, MF6, MSP8, Vegas7e, Studio11 Ultimate (if you can get it to work). Womble MVW/DVD will do it but, as noted, sans bells and whistles.

bsuratt wrote:...move them to VS11 and then smartrender with a nearly perfect picture.

bsuratt, do you mean that you can accept the distortions that VS11's smartrenderer produces? Or don't they appear on your system???
For me, this terrible bug in Videostudio's smartrenderer is unacceptable and its better to reencode and have an overall worse video quality than have good quality but distortions in the final video!!!
Regards
Sektionschef

Cineform has posted the results of some native vs. cineform comparisons:

http://www.cineform.com/technology/HDVQ ... alysis.htm

I don't know; they seem pretty close to me.

On the other hand, APPLE today released the brand new 2008 version of iMovie with full AVCHD support and so I'm planning to buy a Macintosh soon as well.

But I think Apple utilizes the intermediate codec approach; not sure, however.

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

bsuratt wrote:I found it only marginally better than a rerender using 1080i files. It still loses too much.

Sektionschef

bsuratt, do you mean that you can accept the distortions that VS11's smartrenderer produces? Or don't they appear on your system???

No! They are not acceptable!
However, if you cut your clips only on I-Frames (using another software such as Womble) save and then bring them into VS11, add transistions, etc, but no cuts, then smartrender will work OK without the "blips". (This explains why some transistions are affected and some are not when cut in VS11 alone.) (But then why bring it into VS11 at all? I usually do not. But it did work for me the one time I tried it.)

Womble will do the entire job with only an rare stray "block" anomaly (more like a film grain spot) but nearly perfect... just lacks a lot of features.

Overall, it is not a viable workflow. We still need a fix and hopefully a better encoder.

I tried your test.mpg and added the transition at 3:20 and was able to produce the blips seen on virtualdub at frames 94-95.

I used Videoredo a lot for cutting mpeg2. So i tried frame accurate cutting on an I-frame adjacent to 3:20 (3:21) and then put the parts1 and 2 back into VS 11 and put a transition between - and used smart render - no blips in the final clip.
However when I changed Videredo to editing accuracy - "GOP" instead of frame accurate editing as above and did the cutting as above and joined with the transition in the middle with VS11+ - no blips - but the cut could vary in position so that the GOP was not broken.

Suggesting that editing with GOP accuracy is important for the smart render feature of VS11 to work without distorting P,B frames.

ocular wrote:Suggesting that editing with GOP accuracy is important for the smart render feature of VS11 to work without distorting P,B frames.

Thanks for doing tests and confirming this bug!
Yes, it seems that if the cut falls on an I frame then no blips are created.
Unfortunately VS can't tell you where an I-frame is.
see also this workaround at the beginning of this thread:
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... 1938#71938
Regards
Sektionschef