Panasonic hc-v700 and vs x5

[dmz]

http://www.4shared.com/folder/cup_pcqD/VS_online.html

The above should have the original m2ts as copied from my camera and a zip file containing the smart package.
I rendered it using the "same as first clip" and pixelation appeared again during playback in media player.
Is there a possibility that the camera I just bought is a dud?

[lata]

Hi David

Thanks for the samples.

I do not think the camera is the problem.
First the VS Project is using 25 fps, this may affect the playback when using VS.
Change the menu--Settings to Enable 50 P editing

The two video files are using the same name, I nearly overwrote the 30 second file whilst downloading from 4 Shared. Not to worry....
The rendered file is only 3 sec 31 frames a little difficult to view the problem with such a small video. The full 30Sec video runs ok on VS, the pan looks ok, zoom is a bit erratic but the last section across the trees looks very good, till you pan back left? So the camera is producing good video.

What are you intending to make with the video. A Bluray disc, or a standard DVD as you did with the GS300
Can you render the 30sec35 frame video in full. and upload to 4 Shared.?

I have just played using Media Player Classic and it looks great?
Better than VLC player which i normally use?

Not often I use Windows Media Player?

[erdna]

50p is OK with the Pana 700 with up to 18(20)Mb/s. The "same as first video" nor the template workflow doesn't works well: 28Mb/s 50p video stops a fraction of a second at about every sec of playback in VS, PowerDVD, and mmplayers. I suspect the problem is related to the codec differences (Pana uses 4 ref frames, VSX5 only 2). The Blu-ray 1920x1080P share selection ends up with a 25p video ( one out of 2 frames) causing judder with fast motion. B.t.w.BD format is not 50p compatible

[dmz]

So are you suggesting that I create a custom template and throttle back the 28MB to about 18MB? I can still get 50p?
And what does "BD format is not 50p compatible" mean please?

And is this a problem for most modern HD cameras that have high bit rates?

Ill try and render it in a few formats when I get a chance....

Thanks

[Ken Berry]

And what does "BD format is not 50p compatible" mean please?

There is currently a mismatch between the international specifications of what can be burned to a Blu-Ray disc and what constitutes AVCHD (which is one of the Blu-Ray compatible formats). The AVCHD specifications were updated around 2 years ago now to include a bitrate max. 28 Mbps and using full progressive 50 (PAL) and 60 (NTSC) frames per second with a frame size of 1920 x 1080 pixels.

Unfortunately, the Blu-Ray standard has lagged and not yet included these new AVCHD specifications. Currently, according to that standard, the only 50/60 fully progressive video frame size is 1280 x 720p. When it will catch up is impossible to say.

And is this a problem for most modern HD cameras that have high bit rates?

It is if you are using Video Studio if you want to burn a Blu-Ray disc using AVCHD 1920 x 1080 at fully progressive 50/60 fps and with a bitrate higher than 18 Mbps (or 20 Mbps for AVREC format). The beta testers for the current X5 tried to encourage Corel to include the higher bitrate for their Blu-Ray specifications when burning AVCHD to Blu-Ray, but it didn't happen. They also noted, like erdna, that the current Blu-Ray specification did not include 50/60p above 1280 x 720p. But at least they included the ability to produce the new AVCHD specifications in X5.

You can still burn a Blu-Ray disc using a bitrate maximum of 35 Mbps, but you need to convert your AVCHD to Blu-Ray mpeg-2 for that. That will still of course give excellent quality output.

And of course you can still play your AVCHD with the 28 Mbps and full progressive 50/60p if you don't burn it to disc, but instead put it on a USB stick or external disc, and plug that into your Blu-Ray player or PlayStation 3. Some HDTVs these days even have the ability to take such USB input directly and play the format.

[dmz]

Hi,
The m2ts file in the share is the original from the camera. I have rendered it using the following settings:
MPEG Transport-Stream Files
24 bits, 1920 x 1080, 50 fps
Frame-based
(HDMV-PAL), 16:9
H.264 Video
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 18000 kbps)
Audio data rate: 256 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio, 48 KHz, 2/0(L,R)

and the result is in a file called rendered.m2t . Near the end it gets a bit of pixelation and the grey colours go funny. None of this ever happened with the old gs300....

Just as an aside...what would be the optimum settings for rendering this type of data if the destination was to upload to youtube please?
I think Ill avoid the burning thing. To play it on a TV might be best dont with a file on usb...

Thanks
David

[lata]

Hi David

Did you deselect Smart Render when creating the Rendered.m2ts video.?
I noticed a kaleidoscope effect, a strange colour cast against the grey paneling, seemed ok without Smart Render and Mpeg4 You Tube option?
However panning is a little fast over those few seconds.

You Tube

There is an option from Share-Upload to Web--You tube HD 16:9
This will use one of the default templates for MPEG4, (25fps) when complete simply close the TouTube upload window.
Play to test the quality.

Being a Pal user --- unfortuantley some templates default to 30 fps.
Make Movie Templates Manager will allow you to create your own Mpeg4 template, but I am not sure about the 50fps.

Have you trued the camera on 25fps mode instead of 50P?

[dmz]

Thanks Trevor,
I always deselect smart render.
You cannot get 50fps on youtube?
I also havent tried the camera on 25fps mode. I loved my gs300 - the only reason I got this new camera was precisely for 50fps so setting it 25fps would be a waste of money for me.

Cheers
David

[lata]

Hi David

Well i rendered without Smart Render and I see the difference between your sample??????

I don't understand, I did mention I had a GS300 in-fact its a GS400 but i assume similar.
It records to DV-Avi 720 x 576 frame size Interlaced at 25fps. (13Gb/hour)

A HD 700 Panasonic would use 1920 x 1080 25 fps I assume progressive
The frame size is 4 times larger, the frame rate is double, full frames rather than interlaced

It is full bluray HD standard

You may not see much difference when viewing on the pc monitor, but on a larger HD TV there should be no comparison.

[garjobo]

I have the panny 700 - and yet to really see great results..using other editing packages...about to purchase X5 after a trial run - glad to see things are back to being as easy to edit as it was in the mindv days.

Like your good self I am after best poss quality...i mean who isnt...you spend weeks creating something its natural you want to output in the best way. I am considering Bluray burner...can anyone out there tell me...have they used used X5 with bluray..and if so..any good results?

Any tips more than welcome. I know this forum is very helpful, but time and time again the same usual suspects Ken etc reply..again, as helpful as they are ..I would like to hear from people who are at the same 'level' as myself so to speak..or are using the same camera/HD footage..same problems and who have actually burnt using a bluray player..

Thanks

[39_Steps]

I am following this Panasonic camera thread because I now have an Alpha A57 SLR camera that records up to 28Mbit/sec 60P AVCHD 2.0. I am one more likely to read forums than to learn how to use my VSX4, but did manage to render two 60P clips into one single clip that was presumably 1920x1080 60i (interlaced) using Corel VSX4. The quality was satisfactory on a 17 inch laptop screen of lesser resolution.

My inclination is to record any and all videos in the AVCHD 2.0 60P 28Mbit/second bitrate for the present and worry about making rendered movies later. I do note that the bundled A57 camera software plays movie clips automatically in slide show sequence (by time and date) intermixed with any still shots snapped beteen video clips. Given the available quality, and my inclination to procrastinate, I am in no hurry to splice clips together for rendering at lower interlaced quality.

The 1080P AVCHD video looks pretty good until a still shot of the same subject pops up a second later.

[Ken Berry]

garjobo wrote:

I would like to hear from people who are at the same 'level' as myself so to speak..or are using the same camera/HD footage..same problems and who have actually burnt using a bluray player..

Well, I know that you dump me into the category of one of "the usual suspects", but it just so happens I do have a Blu-Ray burner and have used it with both X4 and X5. It works beautifully with both ... though I have to add that I mainly do my video in HDV format (Canon HV-20) and thus convert to Blu-Ray mpeg-2 (35 Mbps) rather than AVCHD which as you know is limited in both X4 and X5 to 18 Mbps.

However, I have also -- before I bought the Blu-Ray burner 18 months ago -- made AVCHD hybrid discs using X2 and X4, and again the results are excellent. As you probably know, AVCHD hybrid discs are a sort of "poor man's" Blu-Ray. They are in effect full BDMV Blu-Ray folders but burned to a standard DVD. They can only be played in a Blu-Ray player authorised to play such discs (those players will have a sticker saying 'AVCHD' somewhere on the rim of the casing.) I always used the highest quality settings (i.e. 18 Mbps) and this limited the amount of AVCHD I could burn to a single layer DVD to a little above 20 minutes. But given the cost of Blu-Ray discs over here, which is still pretty prohibitive at around $5 each, it is a cheap option, especially since few of my finished videos run for more than 20 minutes anyway.

I found the end quality of these hybrid discs indistinguishable from an actual Blu-Ray disc when played on my PlayStation 3 and 46 inch HDTV. And in the past I used to copy some of the hybrid discs to friends who have Blu-Ray players. In all cases they worked and displayed the same high quality.

You can try it yourself and see (if you have a Blu-Ray player). When you finish editing, you select Share > Create Disc > AVCHD. And in the burning module, you can even build a menu for such discs. VS used to be one of the few packages that allowed this with hybrid discs, though I no longer know about what other packages might now offer in this regard. And if you have a video which runs longer than about 20 minutes, then you need to lower the bitrate to accommodate this. Some people claim to have burned 50 minutes or more to a hybrid disc, and say they are happy with the result. But to me that would involve lowering the bitrate to a point where the final disc would probably not be much better than a standard definition DVD.

[garjobo]

Cheers KEN for a post i just about understood fully - the whole 18 thang..wish things could be similar though...all this AVCHD only players etc etc

The one thing that jumps out at me though is that..20 min!!! 20 min!!! i thought one of the advantages of blu-ray was it could hold MORE data/info!!! My epics usually last well over an hour!!!

So..what your saying is, 20min is kinda max then for a blu-ray? I was about to purchase some blank blurays discs..clearly i now need to check something else...how long they will last...One thing after another isnt it!!!

[canuck]

Cheers KEN for a post i just about understood fully - the whole 18 thang..wish things could be similar though...all this AVCHD only players etc etc

The one thing that jumps out at me though is that..20 min!!! 20 min!!! i thought one of the advantages of blu-ray was it could hold MORE data/info!!! My epics usually last well over an hour!!!

So..what your saying is, 20min is kinda max then for a blu-ray? I was about to purchase some blank blurays discs..clearly i now need to check something else...how long they will last...One thing after another isnt it!!!

You misread the post. Ken said 20 minutes is max for Best quality AVCHD video on a standard DVD. Of course BlueRay discs can hold up to 2 hours at best quality BD video.

[dmz]

Thanks for all your replies. I still have two fundamental questions that need answering.
One is : Is the video camera I bought a dud?
If you check the original file copied from the camera without editing (the m2ts) at the same link (http://www.4shared.com/folder/cup_pcqD/VS_online.html) you can see that it jerks as the camera is panning.
The same thing happened on the video I posted earlier. This never happened on my gs300. This suggests to me that the camera is a dud.
The second question is - Is VS PRO X5 capable of producing quality edited videos from these files?
In the same location I have three rendered files.

The 25k one has the following properties:

PAL double (50 fps)
MPEG Transport-Stream Files
24 bits, 1920 x 1080, 50 fps
Frame-based
(HDMV-PAL), 16:9
H.264 Video
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 25000 kbps)
Audio data rate: 256 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio, 48 KHz, 2/0(L,R)

..which would seem to be the properties that should produce the highest possible quality file. In looking at that you can see some pixelation which means it is rubbish.

The 18k file is one that would be produced for a blu-ray burn if required:
MPEG Transport-Stream Files
24 bits, 1920 x 1080, 50 fps
Frame-based
(HDMV-PAL), 16:9
H.264 Video
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 18000 kbps)
Audio data rate: 256 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio, 48 KHz, 2/0(L,R)

Strangely it seems a bit better than the 25k.

Ultimately it suggests to me that vs pro x5 is incapable of rendering quality videos produced by my camcorder (panasonic hc-v700).

The last mp4 file is the youtube version.

So Im wondering whether its worth getting a modern camcorder as so far I have not got anything near the quality that I had with my gs300.

Thanks