FullHD with VS12

erdna · Post by **erdna** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:55 pm

I wanted to prove for my video club that VS12 could produce FullHD resolution with AVCHD material, even with processed (title) clips. Therefore I made a tutorial video (~10 minutes), which I also uploaded to: http://exposureroom.com/members/erdna.a ... c/?im=Less
Unfortunately for this forum, it¡¦s Dutch spoken (my native language). Maybe one day I will upload an English version, but in the mean time plse find hereunder a translation, which can be read while viewing the pictures.

AVCHD is an HD video format that uses the Advanced Video Coding compression format, known as MPEG-4 part 10 or H.264. It has been introduced by Sony and Panasonic a couple of years ago. The format shows strong resemblance to the well known Blu-ray disc format. It is becoming popular as a recording format for disc and flash memory based consumer camcorders, but it looks even more attractive to video enthusiasts for making it possible to create FullHD discs using a standard DVD burner and standard DVD recordable media. Not only from AVCHD footage but also from tape based HDV video, we can now get high quality AVCHD discs. People having a Blu-ray player and HDTV TV do no longer need to playback through their HD camcorder for enjoying the native resolution their HD video¡¦s. Also standard computer DVD players in combination with compatible SW players can playback AVCHD DVD¡¦s.
In the minutes to come we show how to realize an AVCHD disc, and we will prove that FullHD resolution on a standard DVD disc is easily achievable. We will be using a Sony AVCHD camcorder and Corel¡¦s VideoStudio Pro X2 editor, but there are many more camcorders and editing systems available these days to get these results.
After connecting and turning on the camcorder, we get a menu on the camera¡¦s LCD panel were we can activate the connection. We now can see the camcorder¡¦s HDD as a removable disk on our PC monitor. The .MTS files in the stream folder is what we need. We can save them on our local HHD and use them for further editing.
In the next step we open our NLE program Video Studio Pro x2. In the startup screen we select the Editor and get a classic NLE screen with timelines, monitor, and a bunch of other functions and settings.
For this AVCHD tutorial we do not intend to get into details about the editor¡¦s possibilities.
We will put a few files and effects on the timeline and will create a test AVCHD disc.
To keep it simple we will use some files and footage which has been saved on the PC HDD before.
We put a few seconds of moving footage,¡Kalso a still image,¡K and a full HD electronic test pattern, to prove the FullHD capability. We further put crossovers in between,¡K also a title and some music. We can also test run our project, this time in high-speed mode to keep it all a bit shorter.
As soon as we are ready we select the share button, and get different output possibilities. We can file our work as a .mpg file, or we can go straight to ¡§Create Disc¡¨. We select the AVCHD disc option.
The burning module now appears. We deselect menu option because we want our disc to auto repeat for easy evaluation.
After setting the desired AVCHD properties like 16 Mb/s etc., we hit two times the ¡§next¡¨ button, and put a recordable DVD into the burner. The burning process gets started now.
While waiting for our new DVD, still some more information:
VideoStudio ProX2 can be used as a non recoding editing program if e.g. it is used with AVCHD footage and set to output in the same AVCHD format. This non recoding means that the clips are kept in there original format and quality. Only the processed parts , like for instance transitions and, title clips are being recreated
Even those processed parts do keep the highest resolution. We will be able to fully verify this with the demo disc we are producing now.
My experience, and it has been mentioned by several other people that also re-encoded HDV footage results in perfect AVCHD discs, especially when a high bitrates are being selected for the disc creation. Re-encoding HDV into AVCHD takes more processing time, of course. This is also the case when we want to create a standard DVD out of e.g. AVCHD or HDV footage.
AVCHD uses a very complex and computer power demanding codec. In order to be able to get real time editing with less than very high performance computers, VideoStudio has the possibility to use proxy files. These are down converted and easily editable versions of the original clips, which are ted automatically generated when the clip is being put on the timeline.
For the final output, the original clips with the new in and outs are recalled. Also the processed parts like title clips, added music clips etc are being inserted at the right places,
Although this proxy concept can output unchanged original quality, it is known that between processed (titles, transitions) and unprocessed clips it sometimes happens that the frame continuity gets slightly distorted. Visibility depends on the actual motion in the consecutive clips.
In the mean time our DVD is ready
Here we can see the resulting image played back on a blu-ray player connected through HDMI to a 50¡¨ full HD TV.
The screen has been set for a one by one pixel mapping so we can verify the output resolution specifically in the FullHD test pattern.
This detail clearly shows the 1920x1080 resolution, even on the processed title clip.
Besides Blu-ray player playback, which is possible on almost all newer BD players, there is no problem to playback on a PC either, at least when a SW AVCHD player is installed.
Here we get our DVD on a PC, played back by the PowerDVD8 SW player on the internal PC DVD player.
Only drawback is that AVCHD discs cannot be played back on a stand alone home DVD player. Some players can even get locked up it is said.

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 12:08 am

Thanks for sharing that... well done.

Did you record the voice over with anything special?

It's very clear and sounds professional.

erdna · Post by **erdna** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 12:41 am

As a microphone I used Radioshack's sound level meter at about 10" distance, slightly off axis at -80dB and dbA filter setting. For recording I used "DAB Creative jukebox" at 48Khz 16bit/channel (joined mono) battery powered. The microhone was placed in a well filled wardrobe in my (quite and wel damped)sleeping room. In post I high pass filtered with about 3db/oct/1khz.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:27 am

Thank you for sharing this, plus the extra time you have taken providing us with the above translation.

Henny · Post by **Henny** » Thu Nov 19, 2009 4:26 pm

As I read from your post, you seem to be successful in making AVCHD disk on SD DVD's. Well, I am not (so far). I would appreciate a reply on the post I just today put in the VS forum about slide shows on normal disks. I line in the Netherlands, so we use the same TV system. I would prefer to contact you directly, but this could be a start to find a solution.
Thanks, Henny