|
|
Dafydd,
I meant how am I going to be able to recieve sample clips from members? The attachment file size limit 10MB, about 2secs of MiniDV about what? 10 frames and a splash of Dolby on AVHD? !!! 
Wasn't being too serious here.....
|
|
|
Thanks Fred. Sounds like a desktop would be better for future proofing, with its more capable expansion options, but I thought I'd ask anyway.
No PD is flying, but I'm only editing Std DV at the mo, and I have a lot of Editing Software trails running at the moment, which will be deleted real soon. I've settled on PD and Sony movie edit software. I can always increase the partition.
Thanks again for your input, much appreciated.
|
|
|
Hmmm, Thought that might be the case. Best buy a dedicated fast machine. Do desktops still have an advantage in this area or has the spec of laptops caught up enough to be able to handle it? A mate's laptop has i7 core.
Thanks for that.
|
|
|
Just one query. How am I to asess just 10Mb limit of HD footage? That's my ISP attachment limit. What will that be, just a few frames?!!  Streaming perhaps? ISP gives 10Mbps.
|
|
|
Hello helpful community. Would someone just pass a glance over my DxDiag to see if my machine's up to HD editing? Should give you a laugh! 
Any help appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
|
|
|
|
You really are in a 'falling over' helpful mood today! Consider it done. Cheers!
|
|
|
Thanks for the useful info. Yep, definately want to be rid of tapes. Agree Progressive scan is the way to go. I'll certainly be doing my homework before I buy. A very useful website is 'Steve's Digicams'. Very diligant camera reviewer. Gonna see if Sony and Panasonic still have the edge over the competition just as they did in the early millenia.
Thanks again for all your help.
|
|
|
Thanks Dafydd,
I'll be buying an HD model as soon as I can afford it. In the mean time, if there is to be no upgrade to the DV module, i'll use to Sony suite, then perhaps return to PD when I get my HDV camera. Perhaps I should hang on to PD for this reason, or I could borrow a friend's HDV cam and test it out in this mode. Sounds like the problem is limited to DV in PD!
|
|
|
|
Folks, I've now added a clip showing the Movie played back on a UK TV set. See original post at top.
|
|
|
Thanks Dave.
By making a DVD you have run the clips through the MPEG2 codec. The DVD MPEG standard is Upper field first or progressive scan, hence its rerendered, removing the effect. You need to play it out to a DV camcorder. I have also tried this and found it often corrects. I'm going to try and video my TV monitor so the guys and girls in the US can see the problem. Suspect they'll be some extra artifacts introduced by doing this but it might serve to show the general problem.
|
|
|
Hi Folks. Please observe that I've already stated that you won't see a difference unless the clips are played out on a United Kingdom standard television set not on your computer. This is because computers don't use interlaced video, and so they merge the two interlaced fields together. Look up TV interlacing in WIKI if you don't understand what I mean.
The purpose of providing the clips was so that the proffesionals can recreate the problem with a view to Cyberlink providing a patch. If you don't have UK equipment, don't bother to download the clips.
DAVE: Are you adjusting field order in the storyboard view because the button is not enabled until you click on a clip. If you highlight more than one clip the button is once again disabled. Hence you can only change one source clip at a time.
|
|
|
Today, just before my post was removed from a similar titled topic, a falla suggested that there is a button marked 'More Features' where you can change the field order in PD in the storyboard screen. I hadn't spotted that. I tried this and you can only do it on a clip by clip basis, very slow.
However there was new hope, but only momentarily, because the options have absolutely no effect on the output at all!! I'm very convinced this is a field order problem. I've seen it so many times before in Premiere. The self detect button does return 'lower field first' however. Now here in, I think, lies the problem. Orphaned program code? 
|
|
|
Hi,
I've got a lot of reservations about PowerDirector's inability to retain the quality of the original source clips. I'm editing my old DV footage, and to put PD to the test I captured one small clip from my DV camera. Playing back the AVI, and doing nothing else you can see that the wrong field is being displayed first, upper instead of lower. It can't be changed in PD9. Then if you place this clip in the timeline, with no effects or anything else applied, and export to AVI again, all in the same format precisely, a second degredation occurs. You'd kind of expect that the field reversal would be counteracted when reversed a second time, but this is not the case.
My clip was of a train travelling at slow speed past the camera UK PAL 25fps DV 16:9 Anamorphic. After the first capture stage the carriage windows judder as they pass by quite a noticeable amount. After the second pass through PD's codec (simulating output to AVI or DV cam following edit,) the result is totally unacceptable. I had been trialling PD before I bought it with movie with relatively little motion in it so I didn't notice. Now feeling rather cheated, because I can't use this software, which is a shame because I really like the features of PD. SVRT makes no difference. Something's still being switched/broken. WMP, Quicktime, and VLC media players all suffer in some way or another on playback. Either terrible pic, stalling or freezing if shuttling, on all three of my computers (PC not at fault here).
So I've tried out two other products, MAGIX Movie Edit Pro and Sony Vagas Movie Studio, neither of which exhibit any loss at all. Despite my fond memories of PD, I think I shall be seeking a refund. Can't see updates being rolled out very frequently in the support section. Before you ask, I have the latest update. The ouput from these all play out in the mainstream players.
I've seen a number of picture quality postings in this forum, where I think that the advice given has been a little US centric, and it seems to me that PD does not handle the subtle country specific differences in their respective formats properly. Very short sighted not to sense or allow the user to change the field priority for instance.
I mean this with my very best respect for all you experienced editors, when replying to a member with a problem, may I remind you to consider that the problem could be regional in nature. Not directly aimed at anyone specifically, but just an observation in the forum.
I have attached below a sample output. To see the effect properly you need to watch the movie through a DV cam connected to a monitor or large TV capable of PAL-I 25fps interlaced anamorphic 16:9.
WMP deinterlaces the image and so a difference is hard to detect. VLC media player clearly shows the offset fields, and any scrubbing through the movie results in freezing or crashing. Note the pixellation in the trees and the clarity of the fella taking a photograph. The movie was exported with SVRT, and no pre-render took place so it SHOULD be as I first captured and produced it. (I've had to shorten it you see to get it past my ISP). For those that don't have a UK TV set, or a means of export to a DV device, I have also attached a recording of the effect by videoing the TV set output with my camcorder. This really shows the problem.
The original clip displays none of these problems despite being re-edited twice through Vegas. 
|
|
|
Hi,
You're not alone. I'm running PD9 32bit, and I have the same problem with my DV capture, the field order is incorrect with no means of being able to change it. I'd like to also have an option to be able to select upper or lower field first when writing back to DV tape.
I consider this to be a major problem for the purposes that I bought the software!
I should not have to export to a competitor's product and re-render the whole production again.
This for me, is a complete show stopper!
Anyone know of a fix in PD9's code, perhaps where a flag can be set?
|
|
|
Hi,
Thanks for your reply. Since writing I've found I've got a Codec Issue. The old Pinnacle drivers/codecs are causing the problem. Files created from the past with this computer are also causing this problem on this machine, but they are working on my windows 7 machine. I'm on the case. The Pinnacle software uninstaller is just not uninstalling everything, so I'm rebuilding the machine now. Long overdue anyway. Yep! been lovingly looking at new DV cams, but I still have a lot of catching up to do editing my cherished old DV tapes!! 
|
|
|
Hi,
Don't know if this is going to help, but I had a licence key issue. This occurred because I installed PD, then immediately installed the latest update. My key was rejected. So I had to uninstall PD, reinstall, launch, enter key, which was accepted, then apply the update. This rectified the problem. Just wondering whether this might be connected to your problem.
|
|
|
HI,
I am new to this forum having just purchased PD9. ver.9.0.0.2930 (latest update)
I am having problems capturing Mini DV video from my Sony DCR TRV900, which is supported by PD. The Pc platform has been successfully used to capture DV using Pinnacle Sytems DV200 from yesteryear.
Problem 1:
In the capture screen the video plays beautifully through the Firewire connection, and the cam can be controlled.
The quality profile is selected as DV AVI Standard Format. (UK PAL 25fps, PCM Audio)
When I click record the capture begins perfectly for about 3 secs, then the sound changes with a slight high frequency chopping. You have to listen closely to hear it. There is also some, what sounds like, digital audio clipping crackles. Reducing Vol control has no effect.
When I stop capture and PD attempts to import the file I get a message about the format being incorrect.
The recorded clip will not play at all in media player or win movie maker.
The clip plays in VLC media player, but you can detect the sound problems at a lower level. (Slightly better than when recording taking place, live). Some clips have perfect sound. However if you try and fast forward or rewind the clip, VLC looses control, plays at wrong speed or freezes. There are no dropped frames though.
If I set the profile to MPEG 1 or 2 all is captured perfectly, but I want to be able to capture in DVAVI and write my project back to DV tape without encoding back and forth.
Presumably, it is power director that is compiling the clip format, or is it the camera's native format merely fed straight through? Does the firewire card play any role in the construction of the output file?
The firewire card is:
Dynamode PCI-3PFW, which reports as VIA OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller in device manager. Packaged documentation states complies with OHCI spec V1.0 and
V1.1, Microsoft OHCI,DV and SBP-2 driver in all windows systems. Integrated 400 Mbit PHY.
OS is Windows XP Pro. Sound Card: Realtech AC'97 Audio.
Problem 2:
Auto batch capture initially works well providing the scene thumnails. When I stop the process, PD refreshes the thumbnails and they all dissappear!! All the timecodes seem to be intact and you can set it to capture, but the thumnails never return. When I click finish, no clips are even attempted to be imported into the captured content screen. If they had, the problems above then prevent import into the media folder anyway, but none the less, strange.
When quality profile is set to MPEG the same happens but the thumbnails return when the clips import.
Hopefully, I've included enough information for you to be able to suggest what might be happening here.
Any help would be appreciated.
|
