I'll post this in a new thread since it's a slightly different issue, and this is now an SD project.
Fi I am unable to get rid of jagged lines on some diagonals, and interlacing artifacts once it's on the DVD. And flickering and crawling edges on some. Right now I"m looking at a frame paused on the DVD that has interlace lines only in certain areas. It would be better not to deinterlace as some of these files are already very thin, and some are progressive. But it adds artifacts to them also. As far as I can tell the interlacing is not baked into the original.
I have worked very hard, sometimes around the clock, over the last few months to learn to build this project in Avid and have so greatly appreciated this board. It's been a bit rough but I am getting around and even liking some things about it. I committed to myself that I would conquer the Avid no matter what this time. But I'm at an impasse and am wondering if it's time to abandon Avid and rebuild this two hour project in some other program and see if it yields better results.
Every. single. export. spits out interlace artifacts and jagged lines and just, well, crap. I spent the day reading up on field order and troubleshooting and have learned a lot, but am still having issues. I wish I could afford to book someone locally to help but can't. Esp. since I can't collect on this project until it's delivered.
30i project, 720x486 fully AMA,16x9 with 4x3 content within. Various AMA'd quicktime formats, some were progressive m4vs, most are Mpeg 2s pulled from DVD and transcoded to Avid DV, lower field.
The field motion settings have been checked and set properly for interlaced or progressive. It is notable though that a large portion of the clips are 720x480 Avid DV, and I've changed the source settings and field motion settings to interlaced, but Avid sets the raster dimension to 720x480p and applies a frameflex. I can not change this setting. The "video" column lists it as DV50p NTSC? Could this be contributing?
Here is what I have experimented with to no avail:
Exporting quicktime movie DV50. Exporting quicktime reference. Exporting DV stream. All with and without qt deinterlace, and with and without mixdowns. Mixdowns seem to make things worse.
Exporting to 480 and to 486.
Deinterlacing in Compressor, Adobe Media Encoder, and Sorenson Squeeze.
Stepping through the field motion on some of the Avid DV (formerly mpeg 2) clips to find that it did seem that the field order in one was reversed, so I set the field order to upper which caused flicker havoc, so I set it back, since Avid DV is lower.
Deinterlacing with Timewarp fluid motion. Which took eons and still had artifacts in some areas.
The one thing I have not done yet is to move the clips down one pixel to offset the field order. Just have to figure out which clips would need it-?
The project is being viewed after being burned to DVD, on a HDTV. (I have a little interlaced monitor but have not gotten it working with Avid yet).
This is due to be delivered on Monday unless she postpones. But I can't give her this as is. Hate to ask her for to postpone so I can rebuild it in another program.
If you tyhink you can rebuild it in another programme for Monday then I'd go that route.
DV is a nightmare and I'd avoid it if possible.
I'd pick an avid resolution that won't have field issues like DV can. something like 3:1 or 2:1 is good for DVD content.
You need to pick a workflow that produces most of the content looking ok and then resolve the clips that have issues.
I don't think the issue is with the output process although using a scatter gun approach an varying many options every time isn't helpful.
I work in PAL land so NTSC isn't that common for me. But there should be (and you may already have been given this advice) an accepted export process from avid for DVD creation.
If that process is producing some shots with isues then its the handling of those shots that needs resolving.
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Thank you Pat
Update: It's looking better regarding the interlacing. I redid some tests and need to examine them - however at first glance I think the improved files may be the ones exported at 720x480 rather than 486. Will also experiment with your suggestions.
More troubleshooting to go, but the one test just done has some promise.
Will post back.
And you are right, DV is indeed a nightmare. Yikes.
Speaking of nightmares, my dream the other night had field interlacing issues. Is that bad? lol
SR555: peaking of nightmares, my dream the other night had field interlacing issues. Is that bad? lol
peaking of nightmares, my dream the other night had field interlacing issues. Is that bad? lol
Dave S.
Ha... lol yeah get with the times! How about 4k while we're at it?
I think my earlier 480 vs 486 theory may have been wrong. Looking at the tests now and trying to make some sense out of them. Except for the aspect ratio, Toast direct burn handled the originals very well. Interlacing is not visible, it looked good. However when those files were brought into Squeeze, terrible. Interlaced, flashing artifacts, jumping. Now I have to find out why.
Can't do it in Toast because it doesn't allow you to customize the menus, and the DVD is built as an Encore project.
SR555:Toast direct burn handled the originals very well
If m2v & ac3 you can use these files as source media in Encore.
If VOB you will have to find a program that rip your Toast DVD into these two files. (It will not have copy protection to worry about.) A Google search should reveal a variety DVD ripping software.
SR555:Squeeze, terrible. Interlaced,
SR555:flashing artifacts, jumping.
A dual layer DVD would be a minimum I would use. With the duration of your program I would be tempted however to split the program into 3 parts and make 3 DVD's with a full quality data rate. With the quality of your source I would also use Constant Bit Rate (cbr) encoding rather than Variable Bit Rate (vbr). You can then use a bitrate calculator (there are free online ones) with the duration of each part to calculate the maximum bitrate that you can fit on each disk. I always aimed at 7500kbs for video and 256kbs for ac3 audio.
With dual-layer discs, a 2 hour video using AC3 at 384Kb/s and CBR, the video encodes at 8.6Mb/s, which is perfectly acceptable. With PCM (.WAV) audio, it encodes at 7.5Mb/s, which should also be pretty reasonable. There's always been some question about bitrates and the point of diminishing returns for additional quality. You can try it both ways and view the results (no need to burn to disc till you're satisfied).
Thanks guys,
The file was only a short test file, so I just burned a full file and am going to check it. Due to the length the rate may be much lower.
I was just wondering about splitting the toast files. It should be possible to split into the VOB files. Maybe Mpeg Streamclip or Handbrake might be able to do that.
I took the deinterlace filter off of Squeeze, thinking that interlaced was best. However, looking at the settings of the two files burned to Toast of one of the originals burned to Toast and a matching M2v encoded in Squeeze (attached), it lists what I assume is the Toast one, as progressive. I've made some marks next to the lines that differed. The squeeze tests were mostly just to assess the interlacing issue, so these were done mostly at default with a few changes for spaect ratio and maybe noise, not sure.
The goal right now is 1) get something to deliver by whatever means, then 2) make sure I fully understand what's happening in those settings to be able to make custom encoding choices in the future.
(from earlier thread)>>>a GOP of 18 and an IPB of 1/17/0. You could also try an IPB of 3/5/0 and see if that helps<<<
I was not able to find how to get a constant bit rate in Squeeze, how is that done? ALso, it did not let me set the custom IPB numbers you recommended - there was just a dropdown.
Going to review the full DVD just burned straight in toast. And praying to the Video Gods to distract my customer from getting back to me with a meeting date/time which is now tentatively Monday for lunch. Will update.
Attached image from Sorenson Squeeze 9 Pro Squeeze lite or standard may not have some of the options seen here.
From the presets menu (left) I choose the highlighted DVD_Disk_Burn_ES_NTSC. If you do not have this template there are sites that allow you to find and download appropriate Sorenson templates. You can also save and name templatesas you use them. Then just keep keep just the one that worked for you.
Clicked on that and selected Edit and get the Right image of options. As you can see I was able to select CBR in the Metod box and set the data rate to 7500 Kbps in the target box. Clicking on the Audio Tab lets you set up 256 or 384 as a data rate for the AC3 encode.
From those 2 media info screen grabs the one on the left is 11 Mbps too high for DVD (needs to be around 7.5 Mbps max)
And its also progressive not interlaced.
DVDs can be interlaced or PSF (progressive in an interlaced wrapper) So interlaced content is fine as lonmg as the filed order is correct. So you shouldn't need to be de-interlacing. If you do deinterlace then you are making progressive content which is ok but you are lowering the quality slightly.
Personally I'd avoid PCM audio on a DVD becauseit uses 1.5Mbps of datarate that can be better used for video. Compressed audio as AC3 or mpeg is smaller.
SR555:I was not able to find how to get a constant bit rate in Squeeze, how is that done? ALso, it did not let me set the custom IPB numbers you recommended - there was just a dropdown.
In any case, the Method dropdown for selecting CBR should be there.
Hello everyone,
I am pleased to report that the Video Gods granted favor upon me and I was able, through some creative scheduling, to get a little more time and we will meet next weekend.
I was able to pull the m2v file from Toast, and get Encore to accept it, but the quality was diminished there so that's a work in progress.
Meanwhile, I'll be analyzing all this info regarding encoding, and doing burn tests. As well as doing some project troubleshooting regarding washed out AMA black levels, color correction effects issues and also some artifacting that does not appear to be in the source mpeg2 files. As mentioned, it's also possible those woes may be a bit rate issue.
Will update soon. Please stand by...
Washed out AMA black levels is due to missing or incorrect color adapter under source settings on affected clips. the histogram in that tab shows the levels and you expect them to be between the two small markers shown.
I suspect you have a full scale to video levels adapter that you need to delete. then apply then ok. You will then have to refresh the sequence to ripple that change into the timeline.
Encore should be able to work with an m2v without re-encoding and if so the quality should be unchanged.
Source mpeg files that you ingest into Avid and then have to re-encode as mpeg again will suffer its not a good source to work from so expect compromises.
What is the final runtime of the content? I avoid dual layer burns as compatability on players isn't great. Single layer burns are much better (but still not perfect)
With a single layer burn 60 mins of content should look good. 90 mins you are pushing it 120 mins and more and it will suck.
edited
Thanks - yes I spent the day troubleshooting color levels and learning more about colorspaces. So far what seemed to work the bset was to export RGB. Unfortunately I don't yet have a properly calibrated monitor or an external scope. What i did do was look at the original files and even though it was washed out in Avid, the original files appeared to be well-exposed for the most part. So in a separate sequence, I deleted all the color color correction except for some obvious clips, and am exporting a test run now.
Still determining where the artifacts live. I did scrap some motion jpeg files and relinked them to some Avid DV files which should help. The color there was much richer.
Runtime is almost two hours straight on the nose.
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