Alludo USER to USER Web Board

Hi,

I'm new to video editing and just bought X2 Pro a month ago after I bought Panasonic TM300.

I record my clips in Full HD... edited them in X2 Pro and finally converted them to "HDV 1080i 50i for PC"... What annoys me is the result. I mean there is a video "artifact" ( don't know the exact word for it)... everywhere... It supposed to be HD but why is my resulted clip has that boxy digital noise?

Somebody pls help.

Here is the sample of my clips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABZyoVHpRgc

It's difficult to say. I know your camera is an expensive one, but it also seems to try to be all things to all men (...er women too!) As I understand it, it has three AVCHD modes filming at max bitrates of between 9 Mbps and 17 Mbps. The latter would give the best quality AVCHD quality. But it apparently has a fourth mode which films HDV but only at a (CBR?) of 6 Mbps. Frankly (and I am a regular HDV user) this is ridiculously poor quality. The normal HDV cameras of all brands (including Panasonic) have a full HDV bitrate of CBR 25 Mbps. The quality is superb. And when you out put in VS using the same properties, the result is also superb.

But it is not clear from what you have posted exactly how you are using the camera. If you are only filming using the HDV mode of the camera, then you will have low quality HD video. And if, as you say you are, then converting it to HDV 1080i for PC' (why not for HDV?), then you are using a bitrate of CBR 25 Mbps which is over four times the original quality. Now of course you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. So trying to "up" the quality of much lower quality original video will inevitably lead to artifacts of various kinds getting introduced.

So what we need to know is what exactly you are filming at. You say 'full HD', but that unfortunately doesn't mean all that much, especially with a camera such as yours. If it is full HD HDV, then it is poor quality HDV -- and I can't imagine why Panasonic added that format. If it is HD AVCHD, at 17 Mbps 1920 x 1080, then it will be high quality (though the new upper bitrate limit for AVCHD is now 24 Mbps, though only for a small handful of cameras).

But if you are indeed filming in AVCHD, it begs the question of why you are outputting to HDV... Mind you, normally, transferring AVCHD at 17 Mbps or 18 Mbps to HDV should produce roughly the same high quality output.

So please get back to us with a little more explanation of exactly what format you are filming in and what you are hoping to produce with it i.e. what do you intend to do with it?

Hi Ken,

Thank you for your quick reply to a "lost and desperate" newbie. I shot all my clip at the highest resolution. (HD AVCHD, at 17 Mbps 1920 x 1080). All the clips played immediately out of the cam or played in my PC without editing will very good and high quality video without any problem....

However, after I edited and converted to "HDV" the problem arises. Why I chose HDV? Sorry, I just playing around and somehow chose it... Is that the main problem? What output should I choose? I want to play it in my PC and upload HD clip to youtube.

Thanks again Ken

If you filmed it in AVCHD 17 Mbps, and if your computer is up to it, then edit it and output it in the same format for the same quality. HDV is much easier to edit on a much wider variety of older computers. But if you are filming originally in AVCHD then stick to it.

I can't work out why your conversion from AVCHD to HDV, though, should have produced such poor results. A lot of people use that to get around difficulties the X2 has with some flavours of AVCHD. But it depends exactly what the properties you used were. For instance, both AVCHD and HDV use Upper Field First, but if, somehow, you used Lower Field First, you would also get the sort of artifacts you describe.

I also asked why you used HDV for PC, and you have explained. But you could also try using HDV for HDV (which uses the original transport stream version that HDV cameras film in -- though its captured as program stream). The output will use the .mpg extension.

I am afraid I know nothing about uploading to YouTube. But I would have thought they would accept AVCHD just as much as they would accept HDV for their HD output.

I believe youtube will only accept "HD" of 1280*720. So one needs to render to that.