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compression artifacts (I think)
Greetings,
I have an issue that is causing me to lose what’s left of my hair. I’m using PP CS6 to edit video footage shot at 1080p 23.976 fps. I’m editing and exporting using those same settings.My exported files look great when played back on my computer. However, when watching them on my LED tv compression artifacts appear around some characters. I say in the title of my post that I think that’s what they are because I’m really not sure. They appear like ghostly squiggles around the edges of some actors some of the time. Mostly when people are moving quickly side to side. As I say none of the artifacts appear when viewing on my computer and none are visible when viewing the original footage on the computer or tv.
I’ve been working on this movie project for over a year. I was planning to submit it to festivals starting next week but I can’t send it if people are going to be seeing these artifacts when they view it. Any ideas what may be causing this? I’ve tried many different export settings and everything else I can think of to get around this, even resorted to cutting some shots where I was seeing these artifacts. But I can’t do that for every problem shot. It’s doubly hard to get a handle on this when everything looks great on the computer. Could it be the tv? And if so, does that mean every selection committee at every festival will be seeing these artifacts if they view the movie on a tv? How can I be sure they will or won’t? ARGHHH!
I’ve been wrestling with this for weeks, searching everywhere for possible solutions with no luck. I’m out of ideas. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
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6 Replies
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Hey there,
What codec and bitrate settings have you tried and what are the delivery requirements set out by the film festival(s)? Perhaps trying a higher bitrate and ensuring 2-pass encoding could do the trick?
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Hey Bryan,
I’ve tried every 1080p 23.976 preset PP CS6 offers trying to get a handle on this and every bitrate from 4mbs to 100mbs. I’ve tried CBR, 1 pass and 2 pass. Low bitrate results wouldn’t be good enough for a film festival and at the high bitrates everything is fine but for these ghostly artifacts. But I can’t figure out why I would see these artifacts only on the tv.the festivals have pretty simple requirements. Just send them a DVD or bluray disc coded NTSC 0 or 1. But I won’t stand a chance if they’re seeing what I’m seeing on the tv.
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I did some experiments with the tv that yielded some head scratching results. No matter how small the bitrate I publish at I get these squiggly artifacts. However, if I slow down playback they disappear and, when I freeze the playback on any frame in the problem areas there is not a visible artifact anywhere. Everything looks great.
I’ve tried playing the files directly off several different usb sticks, through the bluray player and directly from the pc via hdmi cable. Always the same. Looks beautiful on the computer, artifacts on the TV. Artifacts not visible on TV when pausing video or playing slow. This seems to indicate that the tv just can’t keep up. But if its a matter of the tv being overwhelmed by large files then there should be no problem when publishing at a lower bitrate, yes? But nothing changes. Help.
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There are many potential causes, but it sounds like the TV or possibly the video player or playback device.
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It doesn’t sound like your TV is having trouble handling the playback of large file sizes or any kind of buffering issue, but it does sound like there is a problem with the way it’s handling motion. There might be a some settings you can play with relating to the refresh rate. Or it might be trying to apply its own kind of ‘frame blending’ or smoothing. I have all ‘smoothing’ settings turned off my TV because I like that film ‘flicker’ you get when watching movies in the cinema. But when I go someone else’s place, they have screens which have the smoothing turned on, which is great for sports and games, but looks horrible when viewing films (I think). This video explains it in more detail- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acFRnyQ2rEQ.
In in all, it definitely sounds like a TV problem and not a codec issue. Do you get the same effect on other TV screens?
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Thanks for your input.
I went to a friend’s house the other night and watched the film on his 4 year old sony flat screen and it looked perfect. Not an artifact to be found anywhere. His tv is older but definitely a step or two up from my 2 year old LG flat screen which is called a ‘smart’ tv but gives that word a bad rep.
I’m encouraged to see the film on his tv the way it’s intended to look but I think more testing on different tvs is in order. Could be one of the things you mention (refresh rate, smoothing) or it could be that my tv is just a piece of….
Thanks again. If I find out what’s really going on I’ll post it.
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