Messages posted by deldridg

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I realize this is a rather old thread, but for those who are searching for answers, I'll add my advice. There are serious weaknesses/problems in how PD handles audio. If you are getting an audible level of distortion, make sure you are producing a clean audio file OUTSIDE of PowerDirector at 48 kHz. If you supply a compressed audio or an uncompressed WAV at CD standard (44.1 kHz), PD will have toe convert it and that's a big problem.

Also make sure it is mastered with a hard limiter and stay below -14 integrated LUFS.

Even with a pristine audio mastered as described above, the audio out of PD (at least H.264 and H.265) is substandard. You might have to take the volume down to -20 LUFS to get it to an acceptable level. Even then, it may be a problem.

Good advice and thanks for sharing. I usually do my audio work in Cubase Pro and clean it using the latest Izotope RX. After forking out so much for those products I always expect the final result to be worth it so your advice is much appreciated!

Cheers and thank you from Aust,
David

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Quote I even managed to get better audio bitrate by using the -b:a 384k option. Hope this helps.

Gosh, yes it does. I thought I had tried this but obviously I hadn't. Many thanks Mikhail

Alan

EDIT - I found the hotfix thread and this does seem to help. Will have to test out some different scenarios.

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/51067.page

I'm glad I found this thread. I purchased PD15 today and was confused by the poor audio quality for mp4 files. So I decided to create MKV using LPMC, which sound fine in VLC, but after uploading to YouTube the sound was all distored. So I took the MKV file converted to MP4 using Handbrake. That's a lot of work to get a file up into YouTube with quality sound.

The videos being created are those from a Sony FDR-AX33 with sound from a digital piano being feed into it. I sometimes replace that sound from what Pianoteq recorded while playing. Either way, original sound, or replaced sound, creating an MP4 from PD15 sounds horrible.

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong

Very glad I found this thread too and especially the link you posted in your edited reply. I've also been recording music but the sound has been sourced from some pro sample libraries. The original AAC encoding by PD15 had me in shock - awful dynamics, lost transients and mud everywhere. Thanks to your link, much of the destructive compression has been eliminated and now I can focus on creating music again!

So big thanks from Sydney, Aust - Dave

PS. I'm a cycling muso too unless I'm reading too much into "bSharpCyclist"!

Quote Hi Members,

There is a hotfix for AAC audio now available.

...

Please Note:

AAC is a compressed audio format and it is expected there would still be quality lost if comparing with lossless audio formats or PCM.

Cheers

PowerDirector Moderator

Wow - what a difference. Not perfect (it is lossy after all) but a substantial improvement and thank you.

I'm experimenting with PD15 to create some piano works for YouTube, sourcing the piano audio from some significant sample libraries and was horrified at the awful job the original AAC algorithms did to my hard music production work. This has restored my faith somewhat - hopefully it can be further improved but most of the mud appears to be gone and I will be able to sleep again!

Many thanks from Sydney, Oz - David

Quote: Hi David,

Just tried the theory option - as you wrote, comes up with a blank project.
The video route is a better option, run with that and see if it matches what you're after.
PS. Enjoying the geeky stuff is what keeps one's mind activeeeeeee.
Dafydd (pronounced Da-Vith... with a smile or a white rock.)

Cardiff - yep quite ok as a city, plenty of open parks with lakes. I visit the city quite often.

Hi again Dafydd,

Just mentioned above that I have had a cursory play with the video option but so far with disappointing results. I will try some line thickness/key colour combinations and will report back to this forum if it's helpful to anyone else trying to achieve the same thing.

As you say, it's far more stimulating to be messing about under the 'hood'! Shame the dev team obscured the PiP code - so many possibilities would emerge! Now I wonder how I could reverse engineer PIPPARAM...

Some yrs ago I drove from London to Criccieth and back down towards Cardiff and back to London (in a red Mini of course!). Gorgeous countryside and fabulous driving roads. Can't wait to go back - you, like us here in Australia are truly blessed!

Cheers,

David

Quote: Hi David -

As you've determined, Chroma Key is one of the attributes in PiP Designer that cannot be copied & pasted. Basic object settings & motion can be applied to a sequence easily.

I gather you're trying to avoid opening all the .PNGs in graphics software and applying transparency to each. Yes? I've done that myself on a few occasions. More tedious than time consuming.

Another possibility is to produce the sequence, then apply chroma key to the video file, which is then overlaid on the other video. That would give you the transparency you're after.

Cheers - Tony

Hello and thank you Tony,

yes, you are correct about my avoidance of repetitive tasks. I get enough of them maintaining our property, making school lunches, driving kids around etc.! (Doing anything for/with my kids is of course a joy actually, but I can do without manually editing hundreds if not thousands of .png files in my too-busy life!!).

Producing a video and adding a single Chroma Key? Elegant, quick and effective? Now now Tony, where's the fun in that? I don't get to reverse engineer someone else's XML and then write code until all hours while my family are asleep (and I should be)!!

Actually, I should have mentioned that I have tested this route. These are early days but I'm looking to integrate some VideoScribe 'doodling' into my business and so far the video pathway has only produced fairly average results with a thin/grainy result. I haven't been able to achieve bold lines - largely, I'm guessing due to compression in the video produced by VS.

Perhaps there is a line thickness/background colour combination that works best?? Just thought of that - will have a play tonight (when the missus/kids are asleep - and I should be!!).

Many thanks!

Cheers,

David E (Sydney)

Hi again Dafydd,

as a PS - it is my guess that your initial theory would likely work though it's the replication of the attribute from a single image instance to many others that I'm after, rather than the substitution of attributes from X images to X images.

This is why I did a differences analysis to attempt to find the replicable elements that I could automate.

However I'm naturally drawn to testing the theory you propose but I can't see how that approach will solve my problem. Am I properly understanding your idea properly? Any thoughts?

Cheers and a big thanks again,
David (Sydney, Aust)

Hi Dafydd,

thank you very much for responding so quickly. I like where you're coming from as I can easily automate this kind of stuff if only I could reverse engineer the .pds file sufficiently.

I did almost as you mentioned, though with two .png images added to the timeline with the Chroma Key set only on the first image. I then spent a little time looking through the resulting .pds file to locate differences that could point to candidates for copying the Chroma attributes to the non-PiP edited images.

From what I can see, the obvious location for the Chroma Key (PiP attribute) is within the <CLIP>....</CLIP> tags as this is where the PiP editing is done in PD (not in images). I then looked through all 96 tags and found the 5 or so that differed between the 2 images. Remember that only the first image has the Chroma Key applied. No other PiP attributes were set.

On the basis that all but one of the differing tags were filename specific or pointed to the image's timeline location, this left only the first tag <CLIP etc... as the potential location for the Chroma Key information.

There are 2 attributes within CLIP that seem obvious for copying over to the other files and these are: PIPPARAMSIZE and PIPPARAM. It is my guess that PIPPARAM contains the encoded values for my desirous Chroma Key value.

Simple stuff??

Not so - when I did this and opened the new resulting .pds in PD it opened OK but didn't load any image files, appearing to be a blank project. Something deeper going on here and without further "inside" knowledge, impossible to reverse engineer from what I can see. The PIPPARAM attribute is heavily coded and waaay beyond my time availability!

So this is probably a dead end I'm afraid but it was certainly worth a go.

Cheers and thanks very much indeed. At least it's been entertaining!

David (or Dafydd had I been born in lovely Cardiff!)

PS. Is it wrong to thoroughly enjoy this nerdy stuff??

Hello folks,

I have a PNG image sequence which I am overlaying onto a video clip. In it there are a number of frames (> 100) that I wish to add a Chroma Key attribute to in the PiP Designer.

Is there any way to either select/group these images and add the Chroma Key to all, or to modify one in the PiP Designer and copy to the remaining images in one go? To do this individually for any number - over 100 in this case - is going to take more time than it's worth.

It appears that PD can only treat such a sequence as a sequence of individual files which have to be individually handled rather than as a single sequence - ie. edit one, edit all. Is this correct?

I realise that I could Produce the sequence into a single file and use that instead, but then I would lose my transparent background, essential to my project.

I am relatively new to PD but have done a lot of searching, playing, hair pulling etc. with no luck so far (and I am running out of hair!). Any help will be very gratefully received.

Many thanks,
David (Sydney)

Hi KentuckyRandy,

I just had to log in and thank you for your answer to this topic. I'm in the same boat as the original poster and your instructions were perfect for me to get the results I've also been looking for in evaluating PD10.

Much lower choppiness now with fully updated BIOS, drivers etc., and I'm sure with the full package that any further quality issues will be tweakable (fingers crossed).

Cheers and thanks from Oz,
David (Sydney)