poor dvd video quality

[bbrusnyk]

Another nube here, so I have a gopro hero 960 and a new 3+ black and I'm having problems burning dvd's that retain high quality in proX 7. First of all I was told to match my raw video 1280-960 to the project settings but could not find a 960 setting so I used 1280-720. I don't know if this is part of the problem? I create proxy files of all my clips and edit my project with no problems but from here on I am not sure I am proceeding correctly. I hit the share button then select disc then dvd and the only options are for 720-480 which when burned to disc looks like crap. If I select avchd the quality is much better but wont play on a dvd player only on a bluray player and not on my computer or my buddies??? Also all of the snap shots I took from the project looked even worse in the rendered project. I wonder if that is because the snapshots are from the proxy file of the clip and when rendered don't revert back to the original clip? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[skier-hughes]

A dvd has to be 720x480, you have no other choice.
your 1280x960 is a 4.3 movie size, so if you are going to make a dvd, you'd be better off inserting your files, ignore matching your settings, editing and saving straight out as a 720x480 moeg2 file.
I'm afraid if you take an HD file and save as a SD file you are going to have to suffer some quality loss.
DVDs in best quality take about an hour of movie, any more than this and you have to lower the bitrate to fit it on the disc and this will reduce quality further.

[bbrusnyk]

A dvd has to be 720x480, you have no other choice.
your 1280x960 is a 4.3 movie size, so if you are going to make a dvd, you'd be better off inserting your files, ignore matching your settings, editing and saving straight out as a 720x480 moeg2 file.
I'm afraid if you take an HD file and save as a SD file you are going to have to suffer some quality loss.
DVDs in best quality take about an hour of movie, any more than this and you have to lower the bitrate to fit it on the disc and this will reduce quality further.

Thank you very much for replying I'm just an old dirt biker that wants to record my remaining memorable rides [and crashes] and I'm not real tec savy but I do want to master this editing mountain. I can get good quality when I burn using AVCHD option in the share section of pro x7 but how do I get it to play on mine and my buddies dvd players and computors. They will play on my bluray player. I don't know if it is just a matter of an incorrect or missing setting in the burn stage. Also I was wondering if it would be advantageous if I purchased a bluray burner or a dual layer dvd burner to be capable of projects with the higher bit rate and better quality because I haven't even tried the higher quality modes that my new gopro is capable of. I watch the raw footage off the camera and would like to get as close to that quality as possible I don't need 2 or 4k but as close to 1080 as possible would be awesome. One more thing is when I watch raw footage 720-480 off my old hero 960 from the camera It looks quite good but I haven't tried to edit and render those files because I prefer the taller video of the 960p format better but would it look as good as the original video after editing and burning to a dvd as it is 720-480 to begin with? Sorry for all the questions your help is greatly appreciated'

[Ken Berry]

I can get good quality when I burn using AVCHD option in the share section of pro x7 but how do I get it to play on mine and my buddies dvd players and computors. They will play on my bluray player.

Unfortunately, AVCHD discs (known also as "hybrid" discs) will ONLY play in a Blu-Ray player. They use standard DVDs, yes. But they are in fact otherwise Blu-Ray discs with exactly the same structure as a proper Blu-Ray disc. That's why they are call hybrid. They can be made with an ordinary DVD burner, but can only be played on a Blu-Ray player. However, Blu-Ray players these days are getting very cheap in many parts of the world, so if you really want to keep your memories in the best format possible, then I suggest you need to seriously consider buying one.

Forget about dual layer DVDs. In the first place, few of us here (including me) have ever had any success with them. And just because you can get almost double the amount of video on one, doesn't mean that the quality will improve. They are still limited to 720 x 480 and a maximum bitrate of 8000 kbps and the quality which goes with that. Just to give you an idea, my own GoPro Hero 3 Black films its AVCHD/mpeg-4 at a bitrate of around 29,000 kbps. Since quality is largely governed by bitrate, you can see that AVCHD gives more than 3 times better quality for that reason alone (though it is even better than that). It also shows the very sizable quality hit you get when reducing original GoPro footage down to standard definition DVD quality.

Another possibility you might want to consider these days is simply making new AVCHD clips from your projects, and forget about burning any kind of disc. I have a Blu-Ray burner, lots of blanks, and not one but two Blu-Ray players (actually they are Sony PlayStation 3s, but apart from games, they are excellent Blu-Ray players too). But these days I almost exclusively make AVCHD final clips, load them on a USB stick drive or external hard drive, and play them on my HDTV either via the Blu-Ray player or via my Western Digital streaming media player. These automatically detect AVCHD on the stick or external hard drive and player them at full high def quality. Some more modern HDTVs will even play AVCHD on a stick or external hard drive plugged directly into the TV (which all have USB jacks in them). So that is something else you and your friend might want to think about.

As a footnote, I might add that I would also consider changing the format size of your GoPro video in the camera to something VideoStudio regards as more standard. Personally, I set mine to 1920 x 1080 and use 50 full frames per second (as I am in a PAL country -- you would use 60 fps as you are in an NTSC country). The quality is superb and I have never been disappointed with it, nor had any problems at all editing it in VideoStudio...

[bbrusnyk]

Awesome Ken. My dilemma would be that it is cheaper to give away discs to my buddies. I think I will look into a bluray burner. In regards to the record mode on the camera the reason I upgraded to the 3+ black was for the superview mode and ultrawide 1440 so I could keep the taller video and still fill a wide screen. As these are recognized formats in corel I hope the editing process should go well. Also does creating proxy files for ease of editing degrade the video when you render it out or is it better to covert to avi then edit. I like using the proxy files in corel because it keeps my laptop less cluttered. With 1080 superview or 1440 how much time could I put on a bluray. Sorry for all the questions but my mind is like a sponge now and wants to take in all this valuable info. I'm having a lot of fun with this editing stuff it just gets a little overwhelming when I stumble but thanks to guys like you I get back up and rolling thanx again. PS I still plan on using my old hero 960 which project setting would work best for the 960p?

[Ken Berry]

As these are recognized formats in corel I hope the editing process should go well.

The problem is that they are NOT formats recognised by Corel Video Studio. Sure, you might see those individual figures mentioned in Corel templates, but it is the *combination* of the figures which is important, and there they do not match. The "superview" frame sizes, as I understand it in Go Pro, include 1920 x 1440 and 1280 x 960... Well, experience here in a couple of recent threads, is that Corel cannot deal with either of these frame sizes. It tries to convert them to a frame size which it regards as more standard -- in these two cases, 1920 x 1080 (or 1440 x 1080) and 1280 x 720. The reason it does so is because the international Blu-Ray standard sets these latter figures as the sizes it will accept, and not the GoPro sizes. That is also the reason why I select the standard sizes. (You might also note here that the international Blu-Ray standard does not accept 50/60 full frames per second for any frame size other than 1280 x 720. So if you intend to burn to an actual Blu-Ray disc, you need to either set the camera to use 30 fps or downconvert to 30 fps. The same applies to a standard DVD where you would need then to set the burning properties to Frame Based in order to use the 30 full frames per second.)

The only thing I can suggest, if you continue to use those frame sizes, is to use GoPro's own Studio editing program which is called Studio. It's free, but unfortunately it is limited in what it can do. But at least you can do simple edits and output in the formats you want. But then you would have to do as I suggested above and simply transfer the new clips onto a USB stick or external hard drive and plug that into a Blu-Ray player (or direct capable HDTV) and play them that way.

Also does creating proxy files for ease of editing degrade the video when you render it out or is it better to covert to avi then edit.

No the creation of proxy files is only for the editing stage. When you are satisfied with your edits, then they are applied back to the high def original clips which retain their full quality. So no need to convert.

I am afraid I have never heard of the Hero 960, so can't help you there.

[bbrusnyk]

Very interesting Ken. What about the 1080 and 720 superview modes from what I understand is that they retain the 4:3 format but stretch the outer edges to make it 16:9 still retaining the tall video but sill filling the wide screen all be it producing a lot of fish eye affect but is supposed to work well when filming from a helmet because when you are watching you are focusing on the center not the sides of the video. Also does the corel fish eye fx correct vey much of this or does it just zoom in the video to correct it. Long story short, will corel burn 720 or 1080 superview onto a bluray disc? The Hero 960 was the base model of the original hero HD minus the 1080 mode. It has been a great and industructable little camera which I now plan to use for all the ground and roost shots where 4;3 mode is advantageous. Corel lets me burn this on the AVCHD menu now to a DVD but from what I think you just said won't allow me to do on a bluray disc is that correct. Please forgive my ignorance.
Thanx again.

Sorry for the edit, I just looked in my 3+ manual and it says the screen res for 720 and 1080 superview is 1280x720 and 1920x1080
respectively will corel handle these files properly.

[Ken Berry]

Looking at the GoPro Hero 3+ specifications, I see that they classify the "superview" format sizes as being 1920 x 1080 and 1280 x 720. Now these are absolutely rock standard high def Blu-Ray and AVCHD format sizes -- the only thing making them 'superview' being that they are filmed using the full fish-eye effect for which the GoPro cameras are well known. See http://shop.gopro.com/APAC/cameras/hero ... aster.html for the full specifications. So there is absolutely no problem using those formats. As I have already said, those are the formats I use with my older Hero 3 Black, and I never have any problems. It is -- as again I have already said -- some of the other screen resolutions shown on that same spec sheet -- including 1920 x 440 and 1280 x 960 which cause problems in Video Studio, so should, where possible, be avoided.

As for fish eye, the filter that comes as part of VS does a decent job, but I think has some difficulty with the more extreme fish eye effects of which the Hero is capable. However, I find that Mercalli, which comes with the Ultimate version of VS does a better job, and proDAD, which makes it, also has a specialised de-fish eye program called Defishr which also does an excellent job, but of course you have to buy it. GoPro's own Studio also has a good de-fish eye function and is worth looking at if you haven't already. They have only released a new version very recently.

As for your footage from the 960, if you could use it to burn an AVCHD disc on standard DVD, then you can certainly use it on a Blu-Ray disc. As I have also said above, for all intents and purposes, apart from the type of disc used, an AVCHD hybrid disc and a Blu-Ray disc are essentially identical.

EDIT: I see you have now edited your last past to say what I have said in this post about superview. But I will leave it as it is.

[bbrusnyk]

Thank you very much Ken for answering all my questions. Sorry for repeating some of them I should have read your replies more carefully. I will look into that mercalli more thanks for the tip.
Cheers Bob.