What am I doing wrong to get output like this?

V1v10

Newbie Joined: Oct 17, 2015 20:46 Messages: 25 Offline

Solved by

Mar 24, 2019 22:45

I have been using PD14 mostly with crummy older clips from a tiny 720p camera, so I thought my past less-than-excellent movies were a result of that camera's limitations. However, using a newer gopro hero 7, I know the original clips to be pretty good.

I did a quick hyperlAPSE (uh, not nyperloop... late night...) project today for a test, and the original was in 4k, recorded in h.264 by the camera, 30fps, 60Mbps.

I just added some music tracks and then output it at 1080, once using h.264 at 15Mbps, another using HEVC at 16Mbps, just to compare. I was not impressed with what I got out. (I'm assuming I'm screwing something up.) The difference in quality is really noticeable. True, the original's in 4k, but the downsampled output looks really bad to me, and I'd love to know how to improve it.

Original:

h.264:

h.265:

larger pics and output settings attached.


Filename	original hyperloop.JPG	Download
Description
Filesize	460 Kbytes
Downloaded:	4 time(s)


Filename	h.265 hyperloop.JPG	Download
Description
Filesize	374 Kbytes
Downloaded:	4 time(s)


Filename	h.264 15mbs hyperloop.JPG	Download
Description
Filesize	363 Kbytes
Downloaded:	3 time(s)

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 24. 2019 23:00

V1v10

Newbie Joined: Oct 17, 2015 20:46 Messages: 25 Offline

Mar 24, 2019 22:49

Forgot to add the production settings.

The h.264 was done using hardware acceleration, and took about 24 minutes. The h.265 took an hour and ten, used just CPU I guess.


Filename	h.265 encoding details.JPG	Download
Description
Filesize	34 Kbytes
Downloaded:	2 time(s)


Filename	h.264 encoding details.JPG	Download
Description
Filesize	32 Kbytes
Downloaded:	3 time(s)

tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Mar 24, 2019 23:37

Your original GoPro clips are recorded at a much higher bitrate. You are producing to a bit rate of about ¼ of the original. The produced ones can be very sharp if there is little movement in the videos. It does look like that you are traveling on a bike following another one. This constant movement is what is causing the tree limbs to be blurred. You need to increase the bit rate to say 28 Mbps and then produce and check say 10 seconds of material to see if it is acceptable to you.

BTW: svrt works on the 4k 30 fps GoPro videos if you want original quality after editing.

V1v10

Newbie Joined: Oct 17, 2015 20:46 Messages: 25 Offline

Mar 25, 2019 06:41

I'll try some experiments, thanks. I know the quality won't be the same since it's 1/4 the bitrate, but it's also 1/4 the resolution, and the blockiness and strange patterns produced are really, really noticeably bad.

As for SVRT, I cannot get PD to ever offer this as an option, even on a timeline with nothing but the original clip, and the output profile the same as the original (h.264, 4k, 30fps). All I get is the red bar.

Roland vl

Newbie Joined: Nov 23, 2017 03:44 Messages: 39 Offline

Mar 25, 2019 12:15

You are converting videos: from 4K to HD or even 720p. The bad experience about quality, I have also. Not only with PowerDirector but also with other video editors (like VideoStudio). I use a specific tool to convert: Handbrake or Megui; then you can fine-tune your settings and the encoder x264 is very good.