Edited DV not as good as original

[Doverwhite]

I captured 2 approx 55 minute DV camcorder tapes via firewire to .avi type 1 and built a movie using VS9 of 2 x20-25 min approx clips one from each tape. Added a couple of titles and as I thought I may wish to add another clip from another tape later I decided not to burn a dvd at this stage but to save the edited movie back to DV/avi and got a file of about 10GB. Thus I thought I could save disc space by deleting the 2 original approx 12 GB files.

Before I did this I decided to view the new AVI using WMP to check that all was well. The movie played perfectly except that it was immediately apparent that the picture quality was not as good as the original. I checked this by playing the same short scene alternately on the edited file and the original. The difference was very apparent.

Am I doing something wrong or missing a setting? I thought that as I stayed in the same format there would be no encoding loss??
Will provide details of settings on specified request.

[Ron P.]

Hi Dover,

Here's the specified request... What are they, both the Project Properties and the video clips properties...

[Doverwhite]

Many thanks for your response. OK cannot find text copyable version of clip properties and regret do not know how to paste images on this forum.

Project

PAL (25 fps)
Microsoft AVI files
24 Bits, 720 x 576, 4:3, 25 fps
Lower Field First
DV Video Encoder -- type 1
DV Audio -- PAL, 32.000 kHz, 12 Bit, Stereo

Both Clips however as far as I can see are identical to the above.
can provide specific additional info from each set of clip properties if specified.

[Ron P.]

Dover,

When you rendered your DV (avi) from your project, did you select Same as Project Settings or Same as First Video Clip? Did you select another custom setting that would reduce the resolution of the video file?

Sometimes VS will have some abstract settings as default, and unless you change them, you can end up with a terrible result.

Now when you right-click on a video clip in the library I know you can't select it to copy and paste the properties. What you can do is when you get that prompt inserting the first video clip into the timeline, click on details. Then you can select it with your mouse, and copy it to the clipboard or notepad. You can also take a screenshot of the properties dialogue and post it.

To post an image here you need a webhosting service to upload it to then link the image here using the following code;

Code: Select all

 [img]http://yourwebhosthere.com/imagename.jpg[/img]

If you don't have a webhost, then you can use one of numerous free ones, like Imageshack, or Putfile..

[Doverwhite]

Dover,

When you rendered your DV (avi) from your project, did you select Same as Project Settings or Same as First Video Clip? Did you select another custom setting that would reduce the resolution of the video file?


Now when you right-click on a video clip in the library I know you can't select it to copy and paste the properties. What you can do is when you get that prompt inserting the first video clip into the timeline, click on details. Then you can select it with your mouse, and copy it to the clipboard or notepad. .

Firstly I checked "same as first Clip " otherwise took defaults.

Not quite sure what you are saying - what prompt? also cannot find a "details" to click on?

As I say anyway unedited clip and project properties are identical. Clip properties only lists file names times no of frames etc in addition.

Thanks for your patience however

[Doverwhite]

Afterthought...

I was going through the process again. Why does the s/w insist on playback at same time as render? Thus it takes 50 mins to render the 50 min project to .avi. I cannot see anywhere to switch off the preview.

Also what does one set options to for avi? Some are I would have thought only relevant to mpeg?

[Ron P.]

As an alternative to selecting the Same as Project settings or First video clip, you can scroll down to the bottom of the Share>Create Video File menu and choose Custom. In the Save As window that opens select Options. This will open another window, having 3 tabs, going to the 3rd tab AVI allows you to use other CODECs. Look through all the settings to see what can be customized.

No unfortunately there is no way to disable the preview during capture, rendering or burning.

[Doverwhite]

Sorry but I am about to give up on this S/W and try something else.

Firstly I do not understand why do codecs come into this? I am not re- coding. I am editing avi to avi!
I have been experimenting with inclusion of the supplied test card clip into single clip and multi clip trials of project to .avi. Whilst the test card clips reproduce perfectly the video clips show a definite degradation even for a one clip movie over the original captured .avi. This is the same irrespective of "Properties as first clip" or "...... as project" I notehowever the test card clip is in NTSC720/480format

I am beginning to get the impression that this S/W is processing everything in NTSC 720/480 format and then re-codes to PAL720/576 format with a consequent loss of quality both on the first inward and second output transcodes.

I accept that I may see a (hopefully small) PQ downgrade when burning to DVD (even SP 1hr) but I did not expect to see such a drastic difference between edited and unedited .avi files. No wonder I have never yet been able to produce a decent DVD from my archive material.

[Ron P.]

Sorry but I am about to give up on this S/W and try something else.

Firstly I do not understand why do codecs come into this? I am not re- coding. I am editing avi to avi! Sorry I misread your last question. I thought you wanted to know how to set options for rendering to AVI.
I have been experimenting with inclusion of the supplied test card clip into single clip and multi clip trials of project to .avi. Whilst the test card clips reproduce perfectly the video clips show a definite degradation even for a one clip movie over the original captured .avi. This is the same irrespective of "Properties as first clip" or "...... as project" I notehowever the test card clip is in NTSC720/480format Yes VS is produced in Taiwan, which is NTSC country. However when you install, you are presented with the choice of NTSC or PAL.

I am beginning to get the impression that this S/W is processing everything in NTSC 720/480 format and then re-codes to PAL720/576 format with a consequent loss of quality both on the first inward and second output transcodes. The only way that can happen is that you did not choose PAL, when you installed, and your video and project properties are PAL. However since your project properties are set to PAL, this should not be occuring.

I accept that I may see a (hopefully small) PQ downgrade when burning to DVD (even SP 1hr) but I did not expect to see such a drastic difference between edited and unedited .avi files. No wonder I have never yet been able to produce a decent DVD from my archive material.
There should not be any degradation in rendering to the same DV/avi format. However if you did capture DV which is slightly compressed, and are rendering to full uncompressed AVI, then there may be some, loss in quality, but that should barely be detectable.

Try going through Steve's tutorial,
From Camcorder to DVD, to see if it can help you find why you are having the quality issue.

[THoff]

If you use SmartRender, there should be no change in quality simply because nothing except for the sections that were edited will be rendered.

DV is a intra-frame codec, meaning that each frame gets compressed independently. So with SmartRender and without the need to encode frame-to-frame differences, 99% of your video should still be using the original data from the camera.

I would start looking for the cause of the problem someplace else.

[Doverwhite]

I would start looking for the cause of the problem someplace else.

Many thanks for your reply but any ideas where I should start looking?

My PC is plenty big enough with a 3.0GHz processor, 250 GB SATA disc and 1GB RAM.

The original clips imported as .avi via firewire are excellent. but as soon as I edit one of these clips for example removing say 20 mins from the beginning and 20 mins from the end then save the edited clip to a new avi file the playback quality of this file is markedly poorer than the original clip.

I am checking Smart Render, should I leave Non Square Pixel Rendering checked or unchecked?

[Black Lab]

I am checking Smart Render, should I leave Non Square Pixel Rendering checked or unchecked?

I have it checked and have no problems.

Sounds like your project and clip properties are not jiving. You've never posted both of them. Would be interesting to see.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi white cliffs of

Going back to the beginning:-

When you capture do you select DV as the capture format, and more importantly does the DV remain as DV.

Trevor

[jchunter]

Dover,
I am sure that the reason you are getting degraded quality is that you are not explicitly setting up the properties when you create your video file of the project: (SHARE/CREATE VIDEO ). You are accepting the default properties, which do not match your captured video file properties.

Please read and follow the procedure that is described here: http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=27 Take special note of the section entitled "Create Video File," which describes a procedure that will take you directly to a DVD-Compliant video file, ready for burning.

It also explains the importance of managing your properties MANUALLY at every stage of the video editing process. Failure to control properties can reduce the finest video file to garbage very quickly - OK, sometimes it will waste hours of your time while trashing your video quality.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi white cliffs of dover

Many thanks for your reply but any ideas where I should start looking?

Insert any clip to the timeline Share Create Video File—What do you see in the list NTSC or PAL ?

Trevor