Widescreen Video File Refuses To Playback in 16:9

[skier-hughes]

Agreed.

[rozel]

Hi Graham and Hi Trevor.

Have returned home from work and read with interest what you are both saying.

I am following your discussion but think I need to reiterate where I am at now so as not to confuse either of you: -

1. Initially, I captured the footage from my DV Tapes - Clip 1, Clip 2 and Clip 3 using Adobe Premiere CS5. The capture format was "DV", NOT HDV. The properties of the captured .AVI files are all the same and I am posting a screen print below of their properties as detailed from within VLC Player: -

2. I then imported all three into Premiere as individual clips and dropped them on to the timeline in the order I wanted them and mucked about with several sections cutting and then pasting them where I wanted them and then spent an eternity increasing the sound of the quiet parts, because I forgot to "zoom" my mic, relative to the bulk of the video.

3. It is from this final timeline (saved within my Premiere's Project) that I have begun the "Export Process", the subject of this whole thread.

4. My first attempts are well documented but whether they are DV-Avi's, I am not sure Graham. The settings I have used are posted in this thread. I have used Microsoft AVI and Microsoft AVI Uncompressed formats - god knows what they are actually ending up as!

5. Any of the AVI files produced via the above Export Process are playing fine within VLC Player but when introduced into VS or MF, they are previewed as Squashed 4:3 in that the video has black bars either side and the people in the video are too tall (elongated as it were) etc. In VS this can be remedied using the "Distort Clip" option but in MF, the program I really want to use, I can get it to play properly using the "Multi-Trim" option but how then do I get that to play properly in the main Preview window?

6. Last night I "Exported" from Premiere's Timeline in .mpeg format - the bit rates used were: - "Minimum Bitrate (Mbps) 2.5 : Target Bitrate (Mbps) 7.24 : Maximum Bitrate (Mbps) 15.13. I had it in mind that DVD stuff should be around these figure, but I will stand corrected. If you think it important, I will gladly post my full settings - I also used VBR 2-Pass Encoding. Having looked now at a comparison between the .mpeg file and the latest .AVI file using VLC Player in Full Screen - my monitor is a ProLite E2607WS and has a 26" screen, I really cannot tell the difference The AVI file is about the same size as cumulatively as my 3 Captured Clips (35Gb) whereas the .mpeg file is around 9.5 Gb. Thanks for explaining btw the reason why MF is showing a BluRay output at over 43 Gb's! I will return to the output format from MF later.

OK before I do anything else and with reference to this post and not earlier ones, what would you like me to do ? Which stuff do you need the properties from? etc etc.

One thing that is bothering me is this - if I tick the box "Render at Maximum Depth 24-bit" in Premiere, the Preset changes to "custom", the "format" stays the same but the preset eg DV Pal/DV PAL Widescreen changes to "custom" - could this be anything to do with the problem?

Please remember that my mpeg plays perfectly in VS and MF now, with no black bars at all and in perfect Aspect Ratio but when played in VLC Player, it plays back in correct Aspect Ratio but black bars exist down both sides.

I will wait further instructions

Cheers guys

roz

[rozel]

Not sure if this helps and am not sure why I haven't tried this before, but when I import my Captured Clips into MF, they play as they should

This proves, I think, that it is the way I am exporting my "edited footage" from Premiere's Timeline.

BTW I haven't rendered the Timeline before exporting - just thought I would throw that in as I believe exporting automatically renders.

I really want to export the edited footage and not start over with the raw captured clips

roz

[skier-hughes]

DO NOT choose anything, I repeat ANYTHING except, microsoft avi and PAL dv widescreen.

Forget the 24bit maximum depth, this is one of the things causing the trouble.

I note from your captured clip you did record and capture as 16bit audio, but at some point this became 12 bit as well???? Forget I just said that

DO NOTHING AT ALL except choose microsoft avi and PAL dv widescreen

Think I made that bit clear

Test with a small section, say 10 seconds long, import into MF adn check to see how it looks, and also check on the properties as you have previously and let us see them.

I'm off to play badminton now, so I'll leave you with Trevor, by the time I get back from the pub, I won't be caring to much about what you've done

[rozel]

SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You nailed it Graham. By Heck mate that was brilliant! I naturally thought that by checking the box "render at maximum bit depth 24 bit", I was doing the right thing, but obviously not!

These are the properties of my Test AVI - a seven minute segnent from my Premiere's timeline: -

It is playing back superbly in MF and I'm now ready to rock and roll and add all my "extras". Not sure how to create a disc - I was hoping to take advantage of a BD-25's greater size and thus not degrade the quality too much - I will check this out later and post my Timelines full export's size. No doubt it too will be around 35Gb's in size plus my extras, but what then?

However the matter has been sucessfully sorted and I am extremely grateful to you

Thanks to everyone who has contributed - we got there in the end.

Regards

roz

[skier-hughes]

Phew, at last we can sleep

As has been said a dv.avi is around 13gb per hour.
A high quality mpeg2 file will be around 4gb per hour.
When converted to mpeg2 and if you use ac3 audio instead of lpcm you can expect your mpeg file to be around a third of the size.

As I also said, dv.avi is just that, it cannot be changed. Mpeg2, however, can be. YOu can lower the bitrate, from 8,000 for high quality, to 6,000 for standard quality, to 4000 for low quality. You can also lower the bitrate of the ac3 file. I normally use around 250, but you can go lower again.
All this reducing of bitrate will mean that you can fit more length of time on a standard disc.

I don't know what all your extras etc are.

My wedding videos are rarely longer than an hour, of course these tend to be CoE weddings.

In order to fit 3 hours of video onto one disc, you could lower the bitrate and use a dual layer disc.
You could do a well edited piece and this would be the prime disc, and then also supply a boxed set of discs, with everything on. I've done this sometimes, I once had to do a 5.5 hour wedding video............ the vicar sang 3 songs in the service, his sermon was excruciatingly long, the receiving line went on for days if not weeks, the speeches were rallying calls to the troops............ They wanted everything in, I wonder how many times they've watched it after the first time!!!!!!!!

Generally, in my expert opinion, shorter is better and they always thank you for it in the end

I'm glad we got there in the end, happy editing

[skier-hughes]

Forgot to say, you can burn to a blu ray disc as a data file, but this won't play on a blu ray player, but will be viewable on a pc that can play blu ray discs.

[rozel]

Cheers for that Graham - most helpful/useful

Could I ask about AVCHD though? I have read somewhere that you can export to "AVCHD" which is a hybrid Bluray and which can play back SD footgage in Bluray players.

I have used AVCHD extensively but not with my Camcorder or in instances like I am in now.

Any thoughts ?

roz

[Ken Berry]

I have read somewhere that you can export to "AVCHD" which is a hybrid Bluray and which can play back SD footage in Bluray players.

That is true up to a point, but I think it may be misleading you in your basic expectation.

Yes the above statement is true, but AVCHD hybrid disc can only be played in a Blu-Ray player rated to play hybrid discs. Not all of them are. Those that are so rated will have an "AVCHD" sticker along the top, just like the old VCRs which could play DivX had a DivX logo along the edge somewhere...

Now, any video which can be converted to AVCHD -- and this includes SD footage -- can be burned to a hybrid disc (or indeed Blu-Ray disc). But the conversion, while nominally making your SD footage HD, will not improve the quality by much, if at all. You will possibly know the old expression: "You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear"!!

But the really basic thing you did not mention in relation to hybrid discs is that they are burned to SD DVD blanks, though in a Blu-Ray BDMV file structure. You are thus limited to 4.3 GB. Using the highest quality AVCHD bitrate permissible on such discs, which is 18 Mbps, you can fit not much more than 20 minutes of AVCHD onto such a disc. However, it would be silly to convert SD to AVCHD using the highest quality bitrate since as I said above, you are just not going to see an significant improvement in quality regardless of the bitrate you use. Using a lower bitrate will, though, allow more video to be burned to such a disc. But I suspect you will still find that you will still be limited to under an hour of video unless you are willing to accept a quality which is lower than you would get from an SD DVD in the first place...

[rozel]

Thanks Ken for that. During my research into AVCHD's I came across the fact, as you rightly say, that AVCHD can be burned to Std DVD blanks only. What has confused me is that I use AVCHD quite a lot for movie playback but this is via a hard drive attached to my PS3 and then there is no limit ie; I regularly play copies of my precious blurays which sometimes exceed 45Gb's!

So silly me, in this instance Std DVD's are out.

But I am very pleased to learn that my SD footage can be burned to Bluray discs - BD-RE 25/BD-25's to accomodate my full Project. I think if you read this whole thread, I have used the terminology that "you cannot make a silk purse from a sow's ear" several times already When you research though it's not obvious to someone who is starting out burning to these higher capacity discs, what can be achieved and what cannot. I have started another thread in the MovieFactory Forum and I think I am now ready to rock and roll with my project and start authoring it, having at last exported my edited footage from Premiere CS5 successfully, with Graham's superb help.

Thank you for your input

roz

[Ken Berry]

as you rightly say, that AVCHD can be burned to Std DVD blanks only

In fact, I didn't quite say that. I said that hybrid discs are burned to SD DVD blanks. AVCHD can certainly be burned, as a hybrid disc, to a DVD blank. But AVCHD as a format is also fully Blu-Ray compatible and can be burned directly in its top quality HD format, to a Blu-Ray disc without further conversion. The other Blu-Ray format is HD mpeg-2, but it of course produces larger files and thus less space on the disc...

[rozel]

SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You nailed it Graham. By Heck mate that was brilliant! I naturally thought that by checking the box "render at maximum bit depth 24 bit", I was doing the right thing, but obviously not!

These are the properties of my Test AVI - a seven minute segnent from my Premiere's timeline: -

Test Properties.jpg

It is playing back superbly in MF and I'm now ready to rock and roll and add all my "extras". Not sure how to create a disc - I was hoping to take advantage of a BD-25's greater size and thus not degrade the quality too much - I will check this out later and post my Timelines full export's size. No doubt it too will be around 35Gb's in size plus my extras, but what then?

However the matter has been sucessfully sorted and I am extremely grateful to you

Thanks to everyone who has contributed - we got there in the end.

Regards

roz

Well I spoke too soon !!

When I shouted sucess!!!!! I thought I had it sorted but I was only exporting a small section from the start of my timeline - about 2 mins and it worked perfectly. However the other day when I set about exporting the whole Sequence I have come back to the original problem. I tried three times yesterday to export again but each time I got the original result - it will not play in MF7 in 16:9 !!!

Today I exported another tiny portion from the start of my timeline and it plays perfectly!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am toally confused and embarassed to say the least

As we have proved, the original DV Clips play as they should in MF7 but the Full Edited Timeline Export from Premiere CS5 does not.

I have already mentioned that I have not "Rendered" the time-line as I thought "Exporting" does this automatically - if this is right, then I can't see how rendering it and then exporting would alter anything. I confirm that all the timeline is made up of my camcorders footage ie; I have not thrown in anything third-party. All I have done in the timeline is cut and paste some sections into different parts of the timeline and divided the 3 Clips into "sub clips" as it were to edit the Audio track to make soft passages louder. Obviously somehow this is interfering with the export.

Sorry to come back now but I am getting desparate

Please help me some more "calling Graham" once more please

roz

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Roz

Sorry I cannot help with your Premiere output……
You mentioned proving that the original videos play ok in MF7, I remember asking for the originals properties as Video Studio sees them but I cannot recall you posting the details???????????????

Have you considered using Video Studio to edit your original files rather than using Premiere.

Ok

You are aware of the options to distort your faulty video to a widescreen video.

After which Share Create Video File choosing DV 16:9

This should convert the video to DV-Avi. Which is what Premiere should be doing.

Does this produce a good 16:9 video file.

[rozel]

Hi Trevor

OK I have imported one of the original unedited clips into VS, here are it's properties: -

UnEdited Clip VS Properties.jpg (28.77 KiB) Viewed 3269 times

I will later this morning export again from Premiere my edited timeline and then introduce the export into VS for "trimming" and so as you suggest.

That seems a good solution Trevor. I will update as soon as I know the results.

Thanks

roz

[Trevor Andrew]

Thank you, the properties you show are typical DV.Avi as to be expected.
When you convert your video using Premiere the output file should use the same properties.

The additional render I am suggesting should not be needed, however……
Using the original video clip, use Make Movie Templates Manager-Add function to create a template.
Then when you re-render your video use that template.