Quote: I just cannot seem to get a crystal clear HD DVD on PD12. I am a novice with some knowledge, probably just enough to get myself in trouble. A whole lot of trial and error on my part.
I try to shoot just nice clear videos for home use. Family & GrandKids.
I am using Canon Vixia HF S21 & MF M41 cameras. Files are .mts at 24 frames. I have bounced around on all possible settings and just can't seem to find what I need to do to get that beautiful clear video that I know my equipment will produce.
Anyone have any suggestions of what settings I must use to get the results I desire.
Thanks
Wil

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OK, I have changed my profile and added an AVATAR. Hopefully all is good. Wil

I'm still interested in thoughts on my question regarding interlaced vs. progressive. SVRT always seems to recommend an interlaced format for my videos but I've been disappointed that it seems to result in horizontal lines during motion and a saw-tooth effect on vertical lines. It appears that my original video clips were in interlaced format so I assume this is why SVRT is suggesting that for my final product? I don't have my user manual handy for my camera at work today but do you think this is a setting I could change at the camera and result in less rendering PowerDirector?

jduffy09 - SVRT will ALWAYS recommend an interlaced output if your source files are interlaced, and progressive if your source files are progressive. It's designed to bring you the fastest production speed, not to do any "heavy lifting" like changing the frames per second or going from interlaced to progressive.

You CAN have PD12 produce an interlaced video as progressive, you'll just need to wait longer for the CPU/GPU do all the transcoding. One thought is what is your output media destination? Creating a progressive output for a DVD just means reconverting back to an interlaced format when you burn the disk, but if you're going to be watching on your computer or uploading to YouTube then progressive would be preferred.

The first thing is to determine your source media specs. Select a clip from the PD12 library, then right-click and choose properties. The video section will tell you everything you need to know to move to the next step.

Assuming that you want a progressive output, you can use MPEG-4 or H.264 to force a progressive bitstream that should be half the source media's interlaced frames per second. In other words, if your source media is 60i you'd want 30p; if it's 59.94i you'll want 29.97p.

Go to the Produce page and choose an output format. Of the existing presets, MPEG-4 doesn't have any 1440 settings and H.264 only has 1440x1080/24p,60i or 60p, not 30p (or 25p if you're in PAL land).

As a test, I'd suggest producing a clip using a 30p output but with a lower screen resolution, like MPEG-4 1280x720/30p. The jaggies should be gone, and then you can add a profile (click on the "+") and choose 1440x1080 and set the frame to half your interlaced rate.

If that works you're off an running! If not, please post back and attach a short clip from your camera so that others can try to find the best producing settings. Good luck

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Quote: One thought is what is your output media destination? Creating a progressive output for a DVD just means reconverting back to an interlaced format when you burn the disk, but if you're going to be watching on your computer or uploading to YouTube then progressive would be preferred.

Thank you, your information was extremely helpful.

Answers to your questions. In the last few years I have gotten away from burning discs. In the past I've used PD to upload home videos directly to YouTube while producing a wmv copy to save on my hard drive. The quality was satisfactory to me because I was using an SD camcorder.

Last fall the family got me a Sony HD camcorder. I still upload the home videos to YouTube, so that can be lower quality, but I want to start saving my permanent copies in a decent HD format. If I want to watch an older video I will stream it to my blu-ray using Mezzmo or I will actually copy it to a thumb drive and plug it in to the player.

Since my last post I read online that the issues I'm having with interlacing are more noticeable on a computer monitor and may not be an issue on the TV. If this is the case I won't worry about it much since the TV is my primary intended viewing method but it sounds as if progressive is probably best if I'm not planning to burn discs?

I visited Hawaii Volcanoes National Park last week and produced an 8 minute video. I'm trying it in several different formats so I can compare quality as well as file size. I'm not a videophile by any means but I want it to look great but not take up a ton of space. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but a gig for an 8 minute video seems like a lot to me! Maybe I need to grow out of that!

I want to make sure I understand something. Are MP4 and h.264 the same, in that the final product is an MP4 file, they are just different methods of doing so? Are there any advantages to one method over the other? I tried a video using the SVRT suggested product but simply changed it from interlaced to progressive and was satisfied with the result. I'm sure I could create a custom mp4 profile as well but again, are there advantages to h.264 over MP4? Is WMV not a good option in most people's minds these days?

So many choices!

I think the "best" option for you is anything that you're happy with

There's no need to mess around with all the options if you've found a way to make a video that suits your needs. YT will complain about needing an MP4 in "streaming" format and mention something about iMovie settings, but you can ignore safely that and YT will still process and stream the video normally.

As for the output file size, definitely let go of the "it seems so big" mentality. All that HD quality uses a lot of space, and if you got 8 minutes into 1GB you're doing everything right! My 5 min videos are about 1GB, but they are 1920x1080/60p. BTW, for action videos, 60p (or higher) is really the only way to go. See Exhibit A

Even if you can't do 60p, your Sony camcorder should have a setting that allows you to record in 30p or 24p, and you should make that change now so all your future videos will be jaggies-free.

Finally, I was at HVNP over Christmas. Lot's of great things to experience and record there

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Quote: I want to make sure I understand something. Are MP4 and h.264 the same, in that the final product is an MP4 file, they are just different methods of doing so? Are there any advantages to one method over the other? I tried a video using the SVRT suggested product but simply changed it from interlaced to progressive and was satisfied with the result. I'm sure I could create a custom mp4 profile as well but again, are there advantages to h.264 over MP4? Is WMV not a good option in most people's minds these days?

So many choices!

MP4 is a container.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP4

H.264 is a Codec. (an encoding method)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

.m2ts is a file extension that has H.264 encoding or Mpeg-2 encoding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2ts

When you produce AVC H.264 in Powerdirector you get a .m2ts or .mts extension.


Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Unfortunately my camcorder only records in 60i. So that means I should select or create a 30p option for encoding, right?

Which Sony camera model is it?

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

HDR-CX190

Fascinating. The marketing sheet states "The easy-to-use HDR-CX190 ultra-lightweight Handycam® camcorder records stunning 1920x1080p Full HD video and 5.3MP pictures;" and yet the manual clearly shows only 1920x1080/60i or 1440x1080/60i settings. Guess which one is reality-based?
With that settled, I'd recommend using the higher quality 1920x1080/60i 24Mbps (FX) setting rather than the HQ setting (1440x1080/60i 9Mbps), even though it will increase your produced video's file size. The 1920x1080 setting uses the HD wide screen 16:9 ratio, while 1440x1080 uses the old-style TV "boxy" 4:3 ratio.

Either way, I think using 30p is the way to go when producing your videos.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

The 1440x1080 defaults to 4:3 but you can change it manually to 16:9, which I have done. The only reason I used the HQ setting was b/c I only wanted to take one card and didn't know how much video I'd be shooting. Turned out, not much. I used to shoot EVERYTHING and then edit down later but I've gotten a little more selective about only filming the crap that I think I actually might want to see again!

Hi jduffy09,

I'm sure others have chimed in, but I am new to PD12 also, and had a similar problem with faint horizontal lines distortion especially during movement.

For me, it was simple through my experimentation and came down only to this:

- ALWAYS produce in the same resolution as your recording camera. If your camera is set to record at 1920x1080 at 30fps, then you create a custom production setting to produce with the same values (1920x1080 at 24 fps is not the same and you can only get that in the MPEG 4 production, not in the MPEG 2). If this is done properly, all of your horizontal lines will disappear.

- You can change resolution later via different methods, but produce the movie first with these matching settings.



With respect,

Nitai

PS... When creating the bitrate speed in the custom production profile, select the highest one available for all options, ie, 45000 kbps or what have you. It will tell you the highest value available. Select it.

Quote: PS... When creating the bitrate speed in the custom production profile, select the highest one available for all options, ie, 45000 kbps or what have you. It will tell you the highest value available. Select it.

Question: Why would you create a custom profile to match the original resolution but choose a much higher bitrate than your original file?