Had enough of hi definition

[Capricorn12]

Its been a very frustrating 6 months since I got HD camcorders. The help on here has been great but I seem to go 2 steps forward and 3 back. I have had AVCHD discs that vibrate the bluray playerreally badly, jittery images, poor smeary images and ones that wont play. Putting the video on a memory stick either wont play, has little blocks jumping around on movement and the odd one that plays ok. I have tried AVCHD, mp2, mp4 and even SD card to play back via the camcorder but the camcorder cant see the files on the card. The video played back direct from the camcorder is superb and I just want to get close to this but am failing badly. I am not hyper critical but would just like to get something close to the original without it giving you a migrane with the flicker or shake the player to pieces for the first 3 minutes of the disc. I have a film show in 5 days but may have to cancel it if I cant get the 3 short films to play right. If this happens I will sell the camcorders a give up. Sorry to rant but frustration has taken over now.

[aljimenez]

If you are posting to vent your frustration, then you seem to have achieved it. If you want some help, you need to post more details about your video files, how you are editing them and what you would like to achieve. Many of us have been with HD and now with 4K long enough to have made it through the phase of frustrations you have now.

For example, I do not use DVD's any more, nor Blueray, nor AVCHD. I use flash drives to distribute, and online Vimeo/Youtube with h264 compression. However there are many others in this forum that do use DVD's and AVCHD that can help.

[lata]

Hi Capricorn12

Sorry you are still having problems with your HD video files.
Without going back through your older posts can you give us some more details.
The Make and Model of your Camcorder.

I assume the camera records to SD memory stick or the cameras internal memory.
How do you transfer the video to the pc?
Connecting the camera to the pc via USB usually shows the camera as a removable drive allowing you to copy and paste the files.

Ok
Can you upload a few video samples to a sharing site, Microsoft One Drive could be used, Google Drive or DropBox
We can try your video on our pc’s to see if we have the same problems.

Smart Package
You may be able to save your project as a Smart Package, zip the folder to upload to One Drive
That way we can see your settings and what edits you have applied.

[Capricorn12]

Sorry all I think stress took over and frustration set in. After going through every last detail it seems my iso files have got corrupted. Doing a new disc from scratch has improved matters considerably. Wish I could clear up the last bit of flicker on pan shots with lots of detail. At least they are watchable now. Will look into bluray or saving on a hard drive when I have more time and money.
EDIT the camcorder is a panasonic hc v550 and I remove the SD card and drop it in the reader on the PC. Sadly the video on disc or hard drive/memory stick is never as clean as the video directly from the camcorder.

[canuck]

Can you post the video properties of the camcorder file and of the processed file? I would suspect that you are not selecting the properties for your output video that are the same as the original properties.

[Ken Berry]

Wish I could clear up the last bit of flicker on pan shots with lots of detail.

Unfortunately flicker while panning is a 'feature' of HD video, especially when there is a lot of fast action you are filming. Flicker will be reduced a little if you use 50/60P instead of 25/30P or 50/60i. You can also lessen the impact on viewers by not panning over a wide angle, and panning verrrrry slowly if you can. If you look at professionally made videos with pans, both of these are evident i.e. short and slow.

If/when you can afford it, you might also want to consider buying a tripod with a floating head. This is the sort of thing used by professionals and movie companies for their panning. You can control both the speed of the pan, which is always smooth, and of course the width of the angle covered. Most floating head tripods are pretty expensive ($300 or much more). However, Velbon -- a well known tripod brand -- sell one for the pretty amazing price of around US$75. At least, that was the price I paid during a visit to a camera store in Santa Barbara about 6 years ago. One of the best investments I have ever made...

I should note, however, that one of the downsides of using 50/60P is that if you want to make it into a Blu-Ray disc, the international Blu-Ray standard will only accept 50/60P if the frame size is 1280 x 720. In other words, if you shoot video in 1920 x 1080 at 50/60P, it will be downconverted to 25/30P in the process of making the Blu-Ray. Mind you, 1280 x 720P still gives very good quality. It used to be the HD standard for TV broadcasts around the world, and still is in some parts.

Like aljimenez above, however, I very seldom make Blu-Ray discs anymore, though I have a BD burner and a heap of blank BD disks. Like him, I tend to make AVCHD clips from my project, using 50P (PAL) and 1920 x 1080 and a high bitrate (around 30 mbps). And I put them on either USB stick drives or external USB hard drives. Many HDTVs these days will take stick or external drives directly and play the HD video directly from them. If not, most (all?) Blu-Ray players these days will also take them and then play the video to the HDTV via HDMI cable. In my own case, I have two Sony PlayStation 3s which, apart from their gaming, are also excellent Blu-Ray players in their own right, as well as being computers and having their own hard disks. So I transfer a final copy of my projects to the hard drive of the PSP for playback at home. Excellent quality.

[Capricorn12]

Thanks again Ken for your very informative reply and the fact that flicker does happen under certain conditions. What intrigues me is that video straight from the camcorder shows hardly any flicker. After checking my videos it seems recording at 50p does improve the flicker as you stated. I do have a good tripod with a smooth pan action so it looks like I will be carrying this around more in future. The camcorder does have a very good inbuilt stabiliser but handheld shots will always have some movement. Maybe some modifications to my shooting techniques will bring rewards. Thanks again.
Edit I will try putting my video onto usb sticks or hard drives as I have several to experiment with. If someone could run through the settings and procedure it would save a lot of experimentation. I do like the sound of this method.

[Terfyn]

I have the HC-V750 and, like you, put the SD card into my PCs card reader. I always record in 1080/50p unless pushed into mp4 with the Slo-Mo option. I have had problems of "flicker" and sticking frames on Preview (due to the computer not being fast enough to process in real time) BUT the rendered file is always smooth and in sync. I render to AVC/H.264 and download on to a SD card which runs perfectly on my Panasonic Blu-Ray player.

Hope this helps.

[Ken Berry]

If someone could run through the settings and procedure it would save a lot of experimentation. I do like the sound of this method.

If the video from your camcorder is, as I suspect, standard HD AVCHD, then first, in File > Preferences, make sure the box is ticked beside "Show message when inserting first video clip into timeline". Then, in a new project (note it has to be a new project), when you insert that first clip from your camcorder, you should get a message asking if you want the Project Properties to match those of the clip. Say OK. Do your editing, then when ready, you simply go to Share > Same As Project Properties, and you should get a new video with exactly the same properties -- and quality -- as the original!!

[lata]

Hi

If your DVD player or TV has a USB connection, then simple copy the original video clip to a USB memory card / stick

Depending on the format of that video and the capabilities of the TV DVD Player usb it should play.
Do you have a DVD Player or Bluray Player.

We do not know the properties of your original video files, can you provide that information.
Right click any clip on the timeline and choose properties, what are they?

Maybe Motion Transport using mts extensition.
My DVd player will not play HD so I rename the file to use a MPG extension, this seems to fool the player in playing the file.
The Bluray will of course play HD and has no problems with MTS

Your video may well be Mpeg4, again we don’t know the exact details


Again if you are able can you provide a sample, upload to Microsoft One Drive.

[Capricorn12]

Eureka. Due to all the help and patience I have received from this site I finally have the three videos I plan to show on monday on a memory stick that plays in my tv with excellent results. If I render the videos at 50p I get a slight stutter on the video. This happens whether the original was recorded in 50p or 50i and I think is a function of the tv. In 50i it works extremely well and one video that suffered flicker quite badly is now almost flicker free with just a trace on fast pans. I just match all other parameters to the original and save as avchd. Oddly I tried this approach a month or so ago and had problems. I have made a note of my workflow and will folow it in future. My dvd player is Bluray but the videos are better using just the tv, and it means I dont have to move my dvd player. Thanks again. Malc

[Capricorn12]

I am posting this just for information to others in case they are having similar problems. After finally settling to record my avchd video files in the same format onto usb memory as that offered the least picture disturbance i.e. jitter on pans, I was quite happy. This played well plugged directly into the usb socket of my tv. As I show my films at a local church I decided to get a bigger tv of the same make. This one will not play avchd files via the usb port !!!! I have used mp4 in the past but it has been jittery on pans. I have now set up to render my video to mp4 but have changed the frame rate on render to 50fps which allows me to up the bitrate to 24998kbps (as the original) and the pans are silky smooth. The picture quality is excellent on the new tv and the file format should be compatible with more tvs than avchd is.

[lata]

This one will not play avchd files via the usb port !!!! .

Hi Capricorn

Glad you are making progress.

As the TV wont plat MTS or Mt2s video files, try renaming the file to use the extension *******.mpg

I do that for my TV which then plays the video ok.