Capturing problems in HDV – I think…

[Aanarav Sareen]

Joe,

Can you give us some more specifics? Such as, what preset are you using.

– Aanarav

Aanarav Sareen
premiere@asvideoproductions.com
https://www.asvideoproductions.com/techtalk

[Joe Cinquina]

Thank you for your reply. I have a 3 ghz P Dual core computer running Vista with a Direct x 10 8600 Nvidia Garphics card. I am capture via firewire from my Canon XH-A1 video camera set in HDV mode. I am using the Canon 24F HDV project setting in PP3. I have also shot footage in 60i HDV and used the HDV1080i30 project setting for capture. In the capture interface I use the the DV/HDV NTSC Canon Alt1 or ALt2 settings.

I do not see any preview when capturing. When capturing is done, I get a pretty ragged looking mpeg.

Thanks.

[Perry Cheng]

HDV capture in CS3 is very primitive. I use HDV Split to do the capturing. The quality of the video, however, has nothing to do with the capturing, it is how you had your camera set and what you view the video with. Do you have a HD TV w/ HDMI that you can see to verify if the quality is what you expect? If the quality is still like what you described, then, something might be wrong with the presets in your A1. However, if the quality is good, then, you may need to calibrate your monitor. Also, do you set your preview in Premiere to Highest quality and not draft? (I am sure you know preview is just preview).

BTW, you will also be disappointed, if you are as picky as some of us and you should, the quality of the edited HD footage via premiere, if remains in .m2t or other mpeg2 formats, will be very disappointing! Unless you buy the AspectHD or similiar 3rd party product! (i.e. #1 complaint from customers)

Hope this help.
Perry

[Joe Cinquina]

Perry – Thank you for your reply. I have verified that the camera settings are fine. I pretty much shoot in manual mode in control everything. I have a new Hi-Def projector and I hooked up my camera straight to it using a Componet cable. The quality is jaw-droping. To this end I am extremely pleased.

It is when i capture the footage into PP3 and get stuck with a crummy mpeg file. What a disappointment. I have downloaded a trial version of AspectHD which I get an intermediate AVI file. That is much better then the mpeg.

I guess my question has been refined after a couple days of expeirmenting;

When I capture HDV 60i or 24F and I get a far less quality mpeg or a slightly better AspectHD AVI to edit, when I output to DVD, what will I end up with? Will it be as good as I am seeing in the edit, or is the quality retain somehow?

A couple of side questions;

Do you know if AspectHD is fully compatiable with Vista? After capture I can not play from the timeline. It just advances to the end of the captured video stream. I can scrub, but not play.

Also, I have a HP f2105 monitor, 21″ wide screen native 1600 X 1050, is there any way to set that to hi-def?

Thank you for your time. I really want to get my head around this so I can be on my way editing in HDV. It doesn’t make sense that you can have such a great camera quality and never realize it.

Thanks.

Best Regards,

Joe

However, if the quality is good, then, you may need to calibrate your monitor. Also, do you set your preview in Premiere to Highest quality and not draft? (I am sure you know preview is just preview).

BTW, you will also be disappointed, if you are as picky as some of us and you should, the quality of the edited HD footage via premiere, if remains in .m2t or other mpeg2 formats, will be very disappointing! Unless you buy the AspectHD or similiar 3rd party product! (i.e. #1 complaint from customers)

Hope this help.
Perry

[Perry Cheng]

Joe,
It is good to know the manual control gets you what you wanted w/ your External HDTV. MPEG is more compressed, but the quality should still be super. I suspcion may be the 24P? But that usually has to do with smoothness of the play and not the jaggness of the image. Was your image clear but just jagged edges? Could it be an interlaced problem? (Try not to use the Canon 24p preset but a HD preset and import your captured footage, what do you get?) “Do you set your preview in Premiere to Highest quality and not draft?”
As far as Vista, CS3 does not support Vista. Some people were able to use it, but other have strange problems. I suspect that may be true with AspectHD as well? (I am not sure, others might chim in).

Perry

[Tim Kolb]

[Joe Cinquina] “Do you know if AspectHD is fully compatiable with Vista? After capture I can not play from the timeline. It just advances to the end of the captured video stream. I can scrub, but not play.”

I’m not sure about Vista specifically, but this timeline behavior is usually indicative of a framerate discrepancy between the timeline and the media…

Double check you clip properties and your project settings to be sure that all the properties match up. If the clips don’t match framerate (i.e. one is 24fps and the other is 23.98fps), typically changing the setting in the interpret clip dialogue you can get to by right-clicking on a clip in the project window can handle it.

TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,

Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net

[Jenny Himmelrick]

I’m experiencing the same problem. I have the same Canon XHA1 camera, but I’m using promiere pro 2.0. I’ve set my project settings to HDV 1080i preset and I shot it in 60i. My footage looks extremely grainy in the source monitor. I thought that all I would have to do is recapture it with a higher resolution setting, but i cant figure out how to do that or if its even possible.

Do i have to buy the AspectHD application also?

If you have any tips or updates on what you have done to help yours, Joe, that would be great.

~Jenny

[Tim Kolb]

Jenny,

just to make sure that what you are seeing is what is actually there…make sure you set the program panel to 100% or 50% instead of “fit” as sometimes the scaling is anything but beautiful.

Otherwise…how does the footage look if you play it off the camera to an HD monitor?

i can’t help thinking that this is most likely a circumstance of how the footage is being viewed instead of how it’s being ingested…

TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,

Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net

[Joe Cinquina]

Tim / Jenny – When I play it from my camera straight to a HDTV it is incredible. The footage looks great. If it is true what you are saying Tim about it just looking grainy in the PP3 monitor window then I am OK with that. I just want to be able to retain the best possible quality when I go out DVD. I am trying to understand how I should encode/convert (settings) to do that.

Jenny – The Cineform product is significantly better. It produces an AVI instead of a mpeg and it seems like it is easier and more quicker in response to edit. But as time runs out on my demo (13 days left), I am reminded of the $400 proce tag. I have also taken some frame outputs to comapre between the two and the Cineform is much better the the HDV mpeg.

Thanks Again.

Joe

[Perry Cheng]

As far as capturing, I don’t think CS3 does anything specific other than file transfer like with DV, I could be wrong. But, if you want, download this freeware, HDVSplit and it will capture with scene detection and previews and the final product is .m2t which can be played in VLC Media player (free). In fact, Prem CS3 captured footage also can be played in VLC media player and you can determine if it has the grain or not. (I doubt CS3 causes anything there). As far as best DVD output, it is not the captured clips you have to worry about, it is the re-encoded method/softwares. In general, Premiere is not the best as it uses MainConcept which has not have an update for a while. (I read here and there it is not the best looking encoder. But for most non-professional job, it is ok, I guess.)

P.S.: to view encoded video, if the final product requires best of the best looking, then, encode back to .m2t or H.264 and view it with an external viewer like LimHD200i (sweet!! I heard.) I ordered mine, but haven’t got it yet, hopefully next week.

Best wish,
Perry