[quotePostId=294748]which format is the best to chose and why?[/quotePostId]
Frame rates ending in "i" are interlaced. That's the old television method of creating frames. Some DVDs and some BluRays still use it and even HDTVs can interpret it so it will look fine, but it will not look good when played on your computer. If you're going to upload your video or show it anyplace other than on a TV, you'll want to use a "p" frame rate, as in 60p or 24p.
60p and 30p (or, in the PAL TV system, 50p and 25p) use non-interlaced progressive frames, which creates a smoother viewing experience. It's the current standard for TV. The more frames per second, the smoother action will play -- although, for most TV viewing, anything over 50 or 60 is excessive.
24p is a progressive format that plays only 24 frames per second. That's the traditional film frame rate. Many people prefer using this frame rate because it makes your video look more filmic.

You should choose to output at the same frame rate as the source video that you are using.

Quote You should choose to output at the same frame rate as the source video that you are using.

Yes, I'd like to do that but I'm confused...
I'm putting together home videos from a DV tape camcorder (from the '90's or so).

That video is captured as huge AVI files at 720x480 at 30 fps and it's the "old TV" aspect ratio (4:3) and it's interlaced.

I don't want to create DVDs of these videos. That is, I don't want to burn DVDs of the AVI captures from the DV tapes. I just want a nice, high-quality MPG or MP4 (or similar) video that can be stored on disk (or on a thumb drive) and played in Windows Media Player or VLC or similar.

I want reasonable compression (compared to the AVI files, which are huge).

Ideally, I'd want a 720x480 30 fps PROGRESSIVE video to be created from the AVI files.
But that's not a choice.

So far, I don't see a way to create that format (I poked around and so far I haven't seen any way to do that).

Under H.264, I can do 640x480 30P ... but seems to be tossing/losing a fair amount of video data.
Under MPEG-2, I can do 720x480 60i - but I don't really want interlaced.
Under MPEG-2, I can do 720x480 24p - I'm not going for the "film" look and I'd rather not throw away frames that I have.
Under MPEG-2, I can do 1280x740 at 30P... but it makes little sense to me create 1280x740 video from a 720x480 source.

Am I missing something?
Is there a way to ask PowerDirector to take a 720x480 interlaced AVI file and give me an MPG or similar at 720x480 and 30p?

Maybe the 1280x740 30p is the best I can do... it uses a lot more disk, though.

I did read through the rest of this forum... I saw a discussion from 4 years ago about editing a profile.ini file (but I don't think that file exists any more).

Thanks in advance for any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions.

Don

TOMASC is correct, you do not want to change the recorded image format, it always is bad for PQ.

Use 720x480 30fps, 24fps will give you stutter. the 264 format allows custom frame settings.

Since you are not going to burn, the TV is the only criteria as to playback. Gives you far more latitude.

As to file size, storage is cheap, I would not worry about it.

Anyway , the obvious is to make some 1 minute test samples and use the one you like best.

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Just keep it as is, interlaced. Every player has a de-interlacing mode and you can try and see what's best for you. Some software might even use the hardware de-interlacing present in the video card (nVidia). Some use several software methods (VLC has some 10 different methods).
Meanwhile you have a good copy of the footage. Format sould be 720(704 active)x480 @ 60i from NTSC.

Quote

Use 720x480 30fps, 24fps will give you stutter.

Eugene

I'm not seeing any 720x480 30fps choice (exept in the WMV format and that's only 3Mpbs so lower quality).

But there's no 720x480 30p in any of the other choices.

@SoNic - you're suggesting to just use the existing 720x480 60i choice. I'll generate something at that setting and look at it.

@Eugene - you're implying that there's a way to adjust the fps? [the 264 format allows custom frame settings.] I'm not seeing that. Can you give a few "click here, click there" kind of steps to get me close? I've read through the big PowerDirector PDF docs and I'm not seeing how to do that. And I've been guessing and poking around in the program but not finding anything. If there's a way to tweak/customize the 264 stuff to configure PowerDirector to do 720x480 30p, I'd really like to try that.

I did see the various un-interleaving choices in VLC and played with them some.
Still, it seems like it would be better to de-interlace when the video is being created rather than when it's played.

Yeah, storage is cheap, but I've got about 100 hours of video here. :
Go ahead and say it: no one wants to watch all that... haha...

And thanks for the info and the discussion here. I'm new to PowerDirector... but I used "Vegas 5" 12 years ago. I'm a software engineer... It just seems like the video generation (produce) stuff has taken a subset of possible output format choices and made the rest not very acessible. Wouldn't everyone who's "salvaging" their old home camcorder tapes from an AVI format want to generate 720x480 30p video? It seems like that should be an obvious choice...

Thanks!

Don

The correct choice for the old standard definition video is MPEG-2 720 x 480/60i. You will find that at Produce > MPEG-2.

The full name is DVD HQ 720x480/60i (8 Mbps). Yes, it is interlaced. All footage in that time period were interlaced, all TV sets were interlaced.

That is the analog time of TV.

You can upgrade to MP4 1280x720/30p, if you want to, but that requires a complete re-render which may cause some loss in quality. 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.

264, pick 720x480 24fps. click + then video

It can be set to720x480x29.97P

You can also change the bit rate, that will determine your file size (and quality)

See if the TV will play that format, a pc will.

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Quote 264, pick 720x480 24fps. click + then video

It can be set to720x480x29.97P

You can also change the bit rate, that will determine your file size (and quality)

See if the TV will play that format, a pc will.

Eugene

@Eugene - THANKS! This is exactly what I was looking for! I just generated a clip doing that... It seems to still be interlaced, though. When I pause, the frame I see still has interlacing... and if I set VLC to do unconditional deinterlacing, it gets better... Would PowerDirector automatically de-interlace the AVI data if it was set to generate 30p output? I didn't see any option to specifically trigger deinterlacing of the video data itself. I'll look more closely in this area later today... But now I'm seeing more about how to do this stuff.

@Carl - yeah, I know the old interlaced history. : That's why I kinda want to get to progressive on these older videos. I generated a test on the 720x480 60i setting... it was reasonable... and interlaced... And VLC did a reasonable job of de-interlacing. So that's always an option.

One last question on this one (it's somewhat related to this subject so I think it's OK to continue on this thread).
I'll be doing multiple "batch production" runs to generate all video output files.
It seems that when I select, say, 10 "projects" for the batch, that they all default to generating using "MPEG2 720x480 60i."
This happens even if the individual projects themselves are saved with, say, my custom 720x480 30p setting.

Is there a way to set a 'default' so that it will use my new custom 720x480x30P output? Or whatever default ultimately decided to use for all these separate videos? Looking through the various options I've found, I'm not seeing anything...

Right now, I'm having to do a bunch of separate clicks and stuff to adjust each entry in the batch.
Over and over for each entry... it's kinda painful and repetitive. :
But this might just be how the batch production works... And if it is, life goes on.

Again, thanks!!!!!

Don

Quote

Quote 264, pick 720x480 24fps. click + then video

It can be set to720x480x29.97P

You can also change the bit rate, that will determine your file size (and quality)

See if the TV will play that format, a pc will.

Eugene

@Eugene - THANKS! This is exactly what I was looking for! I just generated a clip doing that... It seems to still be interlaced, though. When I pause, the frame I see still has interlacing... and if I set VLC to do unconditional deinterlacing, it gets better... Would PowerDirector automatically de-interlace the AVI data if it was set to generate 30p output? I didn't see any option to specifically trigger deinterlacing of the video data itself. I'll look more closely in this area later today... But now I'm seeing more about how to do this stuff.

@Carl - yeah, I know the old interlaced history. : That's why I kinda want to get to progressive on these older videos. I generated a test on the 720x480 60i setting... it was reasonable... and interlaced... And VLC did a reasonable job of de-interlacing. So that's always an option.

One last question on this one (it's somewhat related to this subject so I think it's OK to continue on this thread).
I'll be doing multiple "batch production" runs to generate all video output files.
It seems that when I select, say, 10 "projects" for the batch, that they all default to generating using "MPEG2 720x480 60i."
This happens even if the individual projects themselves are saved with, say, my custom 720x480 30p setting.

Is there a way to set a 'default' so that it will use my new custom 720x480x30P output? Or whatever default ultimately decided to use for all these separate videos? Looking through the various options I've found, I'm not seeing anything...

Right now, I'm having to do a bunch of separate clicks and stuff to adjust each entry in the batch.
Over and over for each entry... it's kinda painful and repetitive. :
But this might just be how the batch production works... And if it is, life goes on.

Again, thanks!!!!!

Don

You may want to download MEDIAINFO a free program that will tell you exactly what format a video is. It identifies close to 50 items, like bitrate , frame rate, P or I, etc

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In my experience, PD doesn't do a very good job at de-interlacing. But it is true that I didn't test it on this version.
I keep all my DV files as 720x480/60i - MPEG2 because that's what I had a while back when I copied them.

Maybe is time to get my DV camera out, plug in the IEEE 1394 (FireWire) in my PC and re-copy my casettes on HDD and compress them in something more modern (H265 for example), higher bitrate... Hmm.

Quote In my experience, PD doesn't do a very good job at de-interlacing. But it is true that I didn't test it on this version.
I keep all my DV files as 720x480/60i - MPEG2 because that's what I had a while back when I copied them.

Maybe is time to get my DV camera out, plug in the IEEE 1394 (FireWire) in my PC and re-copy my casettes on HDD and compress them in something more modern (H265 for example), higher bitrate... Hmm.

That's basically what I'm doing... Getting the videos off of the tapes (where they'll die as the tapes become unreadable the the old camcorders themselves die) and putting them on the computer where they're more accessible to us and where I can "clean them up." But choosing a good format to compress them into is a challenge. I'm gonna keep all the raw/captured AVIs on a couple of 1TB SSDs so that I can easily re-do the "production" into something better as time goes on.

I've generated multiple versions of a test clip using custom MPEG-2, H.264, and H.265 profiles set to 29.97 (30) FPS and progressive.
The frames still seem to have significant interlaced things going on.
I suspect PD just doesn't do too much "cleanup" when it changes interlaced input to progressive output (as @SoNic suggested).
I did see that the MPEG-2 profile had a "smoothing" option in the profile... specifying that made the interlaced things much less apparent. I'm still looking at it, but I also suspect it's made the whole clip "softer". Nothing's ever free. Tradeoffs... :

ANYWAY... at this point, I think I understand what's going on for the most part and how to create the custom profiles in PD.
I'll still be looking at the various clips I've generated... not sure what output format I'm going end up using.
It may be that leaving it interlaced (as per @SoNic) and letting VLC do the on-the-fly de-interlacing is the current path of least resistance and may be a good solution (even though I wanted to generate the output as progressive and avoid depending upon the video viewer to handle the de-interlacing).

You guys have been VERY helpful on this one...
I appreciate it.

Don

Quote ...
The frames still seem to have significant interlaced things going on... .

if you're still interested in producing interlaced M2TS, then as a reference PowerDirector de-interlace at Produce always, even when asked profile is interlaced


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That is interesting about de-interlacing always,I did not know. Likely good idea.

Nothing is gained by storing videos on a SSD, a external regular HD will do just as well, just as fast for a lot less, better yet, use two for insurance.

Eugene 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
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4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A