I need help encoding hdv footage in Cleaner XL1.5 for web delivery!

[Daniel Low]

You might find the answer in the support pages of Cineforms website.

Maybe an upgrade to both Prem 2.0 and Aspect HD 4.0 would be wise?

https://www.cineform.com/products/FAQ.htm#Aspect1.

You’ll hate me for saying this, but for a few hundred dollars more you could get a Mac that does what you want, out-of-the-box (and runs your (investment in) Windows apps).

[Jim Gunn]

Danny, I appreciate your help so far. I already have Aspect HD 4.0 working fine with Premiere Pro 1.5.1 for editing and outputting and encoding into wmv formats. It’s Cleaner XL that cannot handle the exported HDV AVI files to make Real or Quicktime outputs and Procoder that cannot handle them at all! I find it hard to believe what you ssay that Procoder can handle these hdv files either as you suggest. There is no mention of it in their documentation either and it won’t even accept my unedited hdv footage. I cannot imagine that upgrading to Premiere Pro 2.0 would make any substantial change in the output of an edited CF AVI file that would suddenly make them work in Cleaner or Procoder. Why would it? There has to be another simple explanation.

I have multiple pc workstations and literally thousands of dollars in pc software that would never run right on a Mac. Switching to Mac now would be impossible and I cannot afford it anyway right now.

Aren’t there hundreds of people right here on this forum that are encoding hdv videos for the web with pcs? Someone else must have some idea, maybe I am missing the forest for the trees here? I am super frustrated and questioning everything I thought I knew. If I can’t figure this out soon my newest clients will drop me and I am screwed professionally.

[Daniel Low]

Jim,

I understand your frustration, but the fact of the matter is that Procoder can and does work well with HDV and has been able to for a long time:

https://www.canopus.com/products/EDIUSPro/speedencoderforHDV_closeup.php

https://www.videoguys.com/procoder.html
“HD and HDV Support
ProCoder 2.0 fully supports HD (720p and 1080i) and can transcode between HD and SD seamlessly. It can also encode HD resolutions and frame rates between formats, including MPEG, DivX, Windows Media 9 and QuickTime. ProCoder 2.0 is fully compliant with HDV MPEG Transport streams captured from HDV cameras and decks.”

Just google for “encoding HDV in Procoder”

What I can’t find anywhere is whether it supports the Cineform intermediate AVI wrapper but it’ appears from your trial that it doesn’t

Anyway, if you can ger cleanerXL to read your files in, and you can encode to Windows Media, then why not create a very high quality intermediate Windows Media file and use that to create the QuickTime & Real files? It’s a long winded workaround, but at least it should work until you get to the bottom on the problems you are having.

[Rich Rubasch]

I’m jumping in late but I agree with Danny. It almost seems like the intermediary clip you are using is not going to work with cleaner. However, once you have that intermediary, you might be able to run a pretty quick transcode to a different format, like the WMV Danny suggested, and bring that into cleaner. sometimes it is knowing how your encoding software likes to work and then accommodating it in your workflow. Since Procoder does’t like the intermediary you are using either, I think that’s the place to start.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Jim Gunn]

Danny, thanks for the suggestion. As a matter of fact I tried import the Cineform AVIs I exported from Premiere Pro 1.5.1 with Aspect HD into the Procoder 1.25 trial demo and it did not accept them as a source, nor did the full version of Sorenson Squeeze 4.3 that a friend let me try. That is really, really disappointing. The last thing I need is another step in the process.

And I still feel that somehow I am lacking a critical piece of knowledge. I have asked ten people and gotten all kinds of answers. Assuming I get these to encode, should these resulting files as viewed in WIndows Media Player under File-Properties, should these videos be be 1440 x 1080 with a 16:9 aspect ratio like the CF AVI files say that they are in WMP or should they say 1920 x 1080 in WMP. I know that the 1.33 pixel aspect ratio of the 1440 x 1080 frame size is supposed to be equivalent to 1920 x 1080 frame size, but none of the resulting files ever look right or play right in Windows Media Player like the end users are going to be using. Even when I make wmvs in Cleaner XL from the CF AVIs they are the same width as my CF AVIs but taller and say that they a aspct ratio of “4:3 actual 1.71 displayed” in WMP.

I thought that I knew a lot about video encoding with SD vide, but I still have zero confidence that I know what I am doing here with hdv. There are so many settings in all the encoding apps. Assuming that my edited movies are 1440 x 1080 with a 1.33 par -which should I make these wmva nd reals and qts? 1440 x 1080 or 1920 x 1080? And should I specifically tell the encoding app to make the pixel aspect ratio 16:9 or as Cleaner XL calls it 40:33?

[Daniel Low]

What a mess.

One thing you’ll have to come to terms with is that if three of the leading encoding applications can’t work with your files, then there is 99% chance that something wrong with them.

I think that your problem lies in whatever is going on when Premiere/Aspect takes the HDV MPEG-2 and wraps it into an AVI. (Why does it fo this – AVI’s are an unknown bastard file format at the best of times)

Don’t rely on WMP to display (or report) anything properly, don’t forget, it wasn’t until XP SP2 that WMP could display even MPEG-1 properly!

I’m guessing that you need to tell cleanerXL that you have an HDV source of 1.33, you encode that to an intermediate high quality WM at 1920×1080 1.00 (1:1) PAR, then re-import that with an input profile of 1.00 (Square) PAR and encode to QT and Real

I’m guessing, as I don’t use either Premiere, Aspect or CleanerXL. You can guess why!

See if you can get better reporting results from VLC, and maybe MPEG Streamclip can help you out of this mess.

MPEG streamclip – https://www.squared5.com/
VLC – https://www.videolan.org/vlc/

[Jim Gunn]

Danny:

Premiere with the Aspect HD plugin converts the hdv footage on a mini-DVtape when captured to an intermediate format using the AVI extension to make it easy, faster and less processor intensive to edit with. Everyone on line raves about this solution. I thought it was going to be ideal to use. The editing part works great. The issue is exporting and I guess that you are right- the CF AVI movie that I export looks great in WMP at 1440 x 1080 and properly displays to my eye at 16:9 (since the par is 1.33). But this pixel aspect ratio means that no 3rd party encoding apps except for Cleaner XL can use it properly encode all the other finished formats I need. They all choke on either the AVI format or the 1.33 par or both.

Of course I am incensed now. How can this be? What a lack of foresight on Cineform’s part! You suggest that I make two intermediate formats, and what you said makes sense but I wonder if it would be possible to save one step and just export directly from P Pro the hi quality 1920 x 100 wmv in a square pixel aspect ratio instead of to an 1.33 par 1440 x 1080 avi first and then use that 1920 x 1080 wmv to encode to a 1920 x 1080 Real and Quicktime file and smaller versions

[Rich Rubasch]

wonder if it would be possible to save one step and just export directly from P Pro the hi quality 1920 x 100 wmv in a square pixel aspect ratio instead of to an 1.33 par 1440 x 1080 avi first and then use that 1920 x 1080 wmv to encode to a 1920 x 1080 Real and Quicktime file and smaller versions

That could also work…it is like making an acceptable intermediary. I do this many times through AfterEffects. I bring the file there and scale it, deinterlace etc to the size I want to send to the encoder. It is usually compressed, like PhotoJpeg etc, so it is easy to save etc. Then it goes to the encoder. Do this a lot.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Steve Young]

I am experiencing exactly the same problems, albeit from a PAL perspective?

So is there any work around in getting decent web HD movies from an Aspect HD timeline?

I have created a trailer that I now want to distribute online in the same way that Apple host their HD trailers – such as this one: https://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_atomic/28weekslater/

Has anyone out there got a detailed workflow or can help me out here as im sure others would like to host their work in the same manner as the link supplied using the same methods.

The footage was captured in 1080i HDV on a Sony FX1, now have a Aspect HDV 1080i timeline in Premier Pro approx 1min30 long.

[Ben Waggoner]

The ProCoder demo verison is ancinet at this point, and predates HDV. The current released version does HDV just fine.

I honestly don’t know if I even have a copy of Cleaner XL installed anywhere anymore. Other tools have long since replaced it as my go-to products. My current suite of general compression tools are ProCoder/Carbon, Squeeze, and Episode. Although I only wind up doing the hard stuff these days, so a sad portion of my work winds up being in After Effects, VirtualDub, and WMcmd.vbs :).

Also, you’re missing a great upgrade in Premiere Pro 2.0 from 1.5.1.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html