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A few questions for you then - because if you're getting good results, then I have to be doing something very wrong:
(1) What format(s) do you use to Produce your DVD videos?
(2) Does the HD preview, or any of the previews, in the Edit page accurately reflect what your final burned DVD will look like? How about the final Preview in the Create Disc page?
(3) Can you give me an idea of how much sharpening you use, both in-camera (I keep in-camera sharpening turned completely off) and also in the PD Edit page? In PD, could you guess you use minimal sharpening,1/8th of the way along the slider, slight sharpening (maybe 1/4 of the way along the slider), moderate (about halfway up the slider) or more than that? Do you use video denoise in the PD Edit page? If so, how much denoise (again, slight, moderate, midway, or more than that)?
In my case, the HD Preview on the Edit page looks okay, far better than the final burned result. The immediate pre-burn Preview, on the Create Disc page, actually looks quite good - some noise, but nothing too intrusive, and acceptable detail. It's not AVCHD, but it's quite good enough to send to friends and family who don't have powerful computers and good graphic cards.
When burning with the DVD format, I've always selected "HQ-Best Quality" DVD burn. My DVDs will play on either computer (the powerful desktop one, or the low-end underpowered laptop with its uncalibrated LCD screen), but once they have been burned to disc or to the computer's HD they are completely unacceptable in quality, no matter what software player I use - WMP, Nero Show Time, Splash, VLC Media Player. That's true if they're played on the flat screen TV (BD player there), desktop computer, or the laptop.
I've had no trouble at all with burning in the AVCHD format. Those videos look really excellent - best if they're AVCHD to begin with of course, but very good even if they start as MEPG-2s.
I'm a bit puzzled by all this, because although the DVD templates available in the PD 10 program do have some video noise, their detail is very good and the amount of noise I see is far less than I see from the video clips I've produced (rendered) and burned with "HQ-Best Quality".
I'm hoping there is something I am doing wrong, or some tweak I could make during processing or burning.
Bill
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I'm sure this has been beat to death on the forum, so if someone will just point me to a tutorial or an earlier thread, that will help. I need to know how to maximize quality of a DVD which is *burned* using the DVD format.
Thanks to other forum members, I am now able to get good to excellent quality videos by burning in AVCHD, no matter what format I've *produced* the DVD in (awkward sentence, but maybe the idea comes through). Yes, of course the quality varies somewhat, but it's always within the boundaries of "acceptable". These videos will play very nicely on my higher-powered desktop computer and on the flat screen TV. But no video burned using any of the AVCHD formats will play on my low-end and low powered laptop computer, which is probably the equivalent of what my friends and family have.
Therefore, I'd like to produce "acceptable" quality vids by burning in DVD format, and I haven't been able to do that. I know they won't look as good as AVCHDs. Trouble is, my videos burned using "DVD" are all extremely noisy and lacking in detail. I can play them on my very underpowered laptop, which is a good test, but they look awful.
The best I've been able to do when a video is going to be burned using the DVD burning format is to add a hefty dose of video denoise and only a little sharpening. At least then, the videos don't look pixelated and the noise isn't the most obvious thing you see. But there's still very intrusive noise, and there's no fine detail left.
It could even be that my laptop is so puny that it can't play AVCHD, while most other laptops can do so, if the video was produced (rendered) in a lower-bitrate format, such as MEPG-2 or WMV. Mine is an off-brand laptop, so unfortunately I can't give the names of the components.
Is there a solution?
Bill Hansen
Ithaca NY USA
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Fungus -
I don't have the depth of video experience you have, but I did use one of the high-end editing programs for a few months, about 18 months ago. My experience, or my "luck" with PD has been very much better than I had with the other program. PD has been much easier to learn (I admit that although I have the bare-bones basics down now, I still have much to learn) and it's just as powerful as the other program.
It's almost certain that you'll find the solution to your problem by working with the more experiences people on this forum. If not, there is always the option of paid in-person phone help from PD tech support. But use the forum first, and stay with it - be patient and don't let yourself get discouraged.
Bill
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Fungus - try to be patient. I can identify with the frustrations of learning something very new. Every time I start something I've never done before, it's the same thing - frustration, the feeling that things shouldn't be so difficult, and - for me - a long period of thinking that I'll never learn. But I always learn, and often the learning comes suddenly, after days or weeks of frustration.
You have one of the very best video editing programs out there, and the forum is among the better ones too. Stay with it.
One thing - you mentioned that you're using the PAL video playback. I'm in the US, so I don't use PAL. Maybe a Google search for tips on burning to the PAL format would help. I'm sure there are members of this forum who are far more expert than I'll ever be, and who can help you with PAL also. Stay with it! Once you solve the first piece of the puzzle you'll wonder why it ever seemed so difficult.
Bill
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I'm a newcomer to video and to PD 10, but I recently had the same problem you're having. My trouble was that in the Create Disc module, I was trying to burn my material using the DVD tab. Try this: after Producing in AVCHD (or whatever) - save your project to the HD(File/Save As - I like to save the project back to the folder where I have the MTS files but that's just my preference). Then, still in PD 10, go to Create Disc. Do not use the default DVD tab! Instead, look at the upper right of your PD screen and click on "2D disc" and choose "AVCHD" 0 not DVD. Burn the project to disc. I think you'll find that it will play beautifully.
Note that the file size will be larger than if you'd used the DVD default when burning - but the quality will be there. I've read that you can get 30 minutes of good quality video on a DVD, but I haven't tried that yet. If you need more than 30 minutes, obviously you're going to have to go to BD - but then people who don't have BD burners won't be able to play your video.
The other things to watch out for, if you're still having problems, are that Hardware Acceleration is turned OFF (gear at the top of the PD screen, then Hardware Acceleration, uncheck it) and SVRT is turned off before rendering. In my case leaving these two things turned on is okay, but others have suggested turning them off if you have trouble burning.
You almost certainly know this - but the resulting AVCHD disc will play beautifully on a computer which has Windows Media Player or a similar player which supports the necessary codecs. It will not play at all in if the proper media player is not present.
Hope this helps. There are many folks here who are much more knowledgeable than I, and who can give you better help.
Bill Hansen
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HAH! I'VE GOT IT!
As usual with these things, the solution was not obvious to me, but it's too simple:
I don't know whether I should feel a bit stupid, or not. Since I've been burning to DVDs, I've been using PD 10's default "DVD" option in the "Create Disc"/2D Disc screen.
If, instead of that, I (1) produce in AVCHD, then (2)click on the "2d" tab in Create Disk, (3) choose "AVCHD" instead of "DVD" (and then activate AVCHD online), and then (4) burn my disc - all my problems go away! The resulting disc was burned to DVD using an "inapproprioate" choice in the 2D menu, but the clip now plays perfectly - almost no noise, nice details. Delightful!
The other nice thing is that if I burn these AVCHD files (see above) back to the HD, they do have the BDMV/Stream folder, which of course plays perfectly well. When I burn files back to the computer's HD using the DVD button in the "Create Disc/2D" Disc path in PD, all I get are IFO, BUP, and MOV files.
Of course, I'll have to find out whether people with less powerful computers can play these discs. I assume they can't - so for them, I'll burn using the DVD option and they'll just have to put up with the noise etc. They'll probably be much less fussy than I am anyway.
Bill
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To James1 - Okay, now you've done it - you've given me an excuse to brag about Ariel. She's eleven years old, has had three operations for various cancers and has leukemia, currently in remission. Yet, at an age equivalent to about 88 for a human, she still charges around the house or yard ocasionally, walks 2-3 miles on hills with us, does all her AKC jumps at the same height she jumped when she was young. She has eight AKC titles in obedience and rally, is a therapy dog certified by Therapy Dogs International, and has the AKC Canine Good Citizen award. She is the cheerful, loving, playful, funny despot of our family, telling us when it's time to get up in the morning, when it's time to go to bed,time to feed the dogs, turn out the light, and so on. Second only to my wife, she is the love of my life.
About those options to produce videos and burn them to disk - I've tried every one of them except MPEG-1, burning to DVD (not BD) and all of them give me the same less than desirable appearance, far different from the Preview. Hardware acceleration on or off, SVRT on or off - doesn't make any difference. I've come to the conclusion that the Preview which is available just prior to burning (the arrow which is just to the left of the "Start burning" button) may or may not indicate how the video would look if burned to BD, but it has no relation at all to the video's appearance on DVD, no matter which format is used to produce the video. Surprisingly to me, AVCHD doesn't look any worse than MEPG-2 (which has a much lower bit rate, closer to the bit rate of DVDs).
Another forum member has been trying to help me with this, so better days may be coming - but I'll be grateful for any insights you have too.
Finally -If you know how I could play videos which are burned back to the computer's HD, please let me in on the secret. See my note to HDedit, just above this one in this thread.
Thanks - Bill
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HDedit = You recommended: " burn to folder first and play back the video from the "Stream" folder created. That is what will be written to DVD. "
This addresses another problem I've had and which I've asked about on the forum. There seems to be no way to play videos produced by PD and burned to the computer's HD. What I see on the HD are two BUP files, one VOB file, and two IFO files. The IFO files will "play", but of course they're marred by banding. The BUP and VOB files won't play at all - no surprise there.
So - if you know how I could play a video file edited in PD and saved to HD, I'm eager to know the secret. Many thanks!
Bill
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]By request, here is a screen shot of the adjustments I made to MTS files when producing to AVCHD and burning to DVD. Also attached is an unedited MTS file. I'll try to attach the edited form of the file also.
Bill
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Second try. Posted this yesterday but apparently it didn't make it to the forum.
Shot several 1 to 3 minute clips of my dogs yesterday afternoon, cloudy skies but adequate light. The appearance of the immediate pre-burn Preview of my videos is far different from the appearance of the videos once they're burned to disc, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong - or whether it's just something inherent in PD which I will have to learn to live with. I hope and assume that it's my shortcoming, not PD.
Shooting in 60i, 24Mbps, 30 fps - edits in PD include very slight color and brightness adjustments, slight increase in sharpness. Producing in AVCHD, 1080X1920 60P 28Mbps (not the difference - shot in 60i, first produced in 60P - but producing in 60i yielded the same results). After clicking Create Disc, viewing the Preview (not the Preview in the edit window - the button just to the right of the "Start Burning" button) the Preview looks exactly like I want it to. I was very pleased! - minimal video noise, reasonable sharpness (the camera is limited there), acceptable tonal range and color for the single-sensor prosumer level camera. After burning to disc, viewing the resulting video (playing disc) shows quite a lot of video noise, excessive contrast, and serious over-sharpening. It's really ugly!
The same thing happens when I produce the video in AVCHD 1080X1920 60i 24Mbps - the Preview just before burning looks really good to me, but the disc playback is ugly.
Adding some video denoise doesn't seem to be the answer. That just smears out fine details without removing enough video noise.
I need to know how to avoid this. I don't know whether I'm using an incorrect producing format, whether I'm using the wrong burning format, or doing something else wrong.
Thanks for whatever help -
Bill Hansen
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FWIW - Here's a newcomer who has used a couple of competitors' editing programs and is very pleased with PD 10, and with the help available on this forum. My video aspirations are limited; I'll never produce a video within light years of Barry's quality, but its inspirational to know what can be done with "prosumer" equipment, careful attention to detail, and Power Director.
Bill Hansen
Ithaca NY USA
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Hi Tony - I'm not at all worried about the BD stats. I would be interested in knowing the stats of the "DVD HQ' which is available in PD10. Just from its position in the list of options in PD 9, it looks like the "DVD HQ" is a lower quality profile than the "(HDV) MEPG-2 1080i" which was sdropped from the list.
However - Even if that is the case, for me, who has no intention of getting into BD at this time, the "MEPG-2 DVD HQ" profile is certainly adequate. If there's any difference at all in the image quality of the resulting videos, I'm pretty sure I'd never see it! I'm very happy with the IQ of the MPEG-2 available in PD10. I was just curious. I still am.
Bill
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Thanks Tony - If I'm interpreting your reply correctly, it looks like PD10 does eliminate the highest "quality" MPEG-2 which was available in PD8 (the MPEG-2 1920X1080 version). That won't make a difference to me in the foreseeable future, but I can see why some people would miss that PD8 version, if the BD version makes much larger file sizes (and I'm guessing that it would require a BD player to play it).
Bill
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question about this - is there an equivalent to the previous (HDV) MEPG-2 DVD 1080i - other than going to BD? It looks like they dropped back on the resolution of the MEPG-2 format, unless you're willing to go to BD. Or is the (hd) MEPG-2 1080i the equivalent of that (HDV) MPEG-2 1080i which was dropped?
Bill Hansen
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Thanks for your reply, and for the screen shots. I think we're probably talking about the same things, the exception being that it's difficult for me to get MPEG-4s to play if I burn them to the HD instead of to a disc. However - just now I did get a short 6 clip MPEG-4 to play normally after I burned it to the HD. That was the first time it worked.
Otherwise my AVCHD's and DVD files look the same as yours, so I'm on the right track.
Much sooner than I thought, I find that I'll need to create a menu with Chapters. Not now - but in a few days I'll look over the available tuts again, and then perhaps post a question to the forum..
Things are going as well as they could. I'm very happy with PD.
Thanks - Bill
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After trying to describe my understanding of the PD process and reconcile it with what you wrote, it occurs to me that maybe I should just let things lie, and be happy that most of the editing/producing/burning/playing process is working for me. But let me give it one try, setting forth my understanding of what goes on, and what has occurred with my attemps so far. Remember - burning to disc works just fine. It's burning to the computer's HD which doesn't allow me to achieve playable videos, except in limited circumstances:
When I produce a video on PD, it doesn't burn anything at all. The act of "Producing" (rendering) doesn't even save anything, except to the extent that PD does temporary saves as work progresses. It just creates a file type the name of which I can't see and which has the white logo with a musical notation in its center, like an audio file might. That file does not play, but it can be saved with a project name and imported back into PD for further work, just as you wrote. Also, that file can be worked on in PD's "Create Disk" module.
If, after "producing" the file in a format such as AVI, MEPG-4, I go on to PD's "Create Disk" module, then click on "Burn in 2D" and then (in the resulting menu) click "Create a folder" (and create the folder) and click "Start Burning" - that's where I can create a file on the computer's HD which can be played by the computer or on the TV if I burn it to disk.
However, the process outlined in the paragraph above doesn't always result in a file which can be played by most software players. That is, not all formats can be read if the file is burned to the computer's HD. I asked about this in a thread to the forum last week, but only one person responded and basically he said he didn't know how to burn files to the HD in a format which would play on the PC. Frustrated, I did my usual blind banging of my head against the wall, trying different ways to "produce" and burn tothe computer's HD, until I found today that if saved to the computer's HD only WMV and MEPG-2 files are played by WMV12 or Easy Media Player. AVI, MEPG-4, AVC, and MOV are not read by any of the several software media players I tried - except for Nero Show Time, which reads them all with no difficulty at all. If I burn to any of those formats (MPEG-4 etc) the resulting file on the computer's HD is not MPEG-4 etc, but BUP or MOV.
The other thing which surprised me was that none of the video formats (WMV, AVI, MPEG-4 etc) were saved with the same format name. The playable parts of the WMV and MPEG-2 formats always appear in a folder which PD automatically names "My Video". When I open that folder I see that its contents are divided into 4, sometimes 5, parts. If the original format was WMV or MPEG-2 , I can click on an ideogram labelled "Video_TS" or "VTS_..." and that will play.
Of course the whole process is much more straightforward if I burn to disc, and most of the software media players I tried will play those video files without difficulty. They also play on the Sony BD player which is plugged in to the TV.
Bill
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The answer appears to be that if I burn to the computer's HD in WMV or MEPG-2 format, the resulting video clip plays normally. WMV, of course, doesn't look the best. MEPG-2 is really pretty good. But anything "more" than MEPG-2 will not play if it's burned to the computer's HD. They all play beautifully when burned to a disc, even AVCHD at 1920X1080 60P, 28Mbps.
I am so pleased with this program that I could jump up and down and shout. And at my age, that would be quite a feat.
Bill Hansen
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That has occurred to me also - maybe PD will only play videos which have been burned to disc? It seems strange that one can burn a rendered video to the computer's HD and yet be unable to play that same video simply because it resides on the HD.
Can someone with more experience comment on that, and anything else which bears on this inability to play files which reside on the HD?
Thanks -
Bill Hansen
Ithaca NY USA
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Not really answering my own question - but I burned the short clip to a DVD in 1920X1080/60p and it plays just fine. I wonder why it won't play if it's burned to the computer's HD? On the HD, the file is a BUP, which isn't supported by Windows Media Player or the others I mentioned, but apparently it is supported by Nero Show Time.
Opening the DVD disc in Windows Explorer and looking at Properties, I do not see the file type. I assume it's H.264AVC but then why isn't the file on the HD also H.264AVC? Any thoughts or advice? (Or just quite worrying and enjoy the DVD?)
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Is shooting a video clip shot in either 30P or 60i and then producing it in 60P worth while? (I don't have the option of shooting in 60P).
I ask because my lack of success could be due to my own inexperience and lack of knowledge, or of course it could be that "up-res'ing" to 60P is not a good idea to start with.
I've produced a 2 minute clip in AVCHD 1440X1080 60P and burned it back to the computer's HD after creating a special subfolder for it. The resulting clip plays normally in Nero Show Time and looks quite good, but it won't play in Windows Media Playe, UMP Player, or VLC media player.
Bill Hansen
Ithaca NY USA
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This is Bill. Others have probably written that members of this forum aren't developers, but "just" users, trying to help one another. For me, the HD Preview, prior to rendering, works well. I know you realize that you could easily clip out a short bit of your rendered video, burn it, play it, and then go back and re-edit if you wish. Aside from that, as a newcomer to all this, I can't offer anything.
Bill Hansen
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