Project settings for new camera.

[Jon Barrie]

I have just had a look at the specs of your camera. It would appear the SD 4:3 recordings are in MPEG-2 @ 9MB/sec.

I would think you’re quality loss is due to the fact that you are working with a heavily compressed signal in the beginning. I am sure the picture looks great when you edit, but when you export to DVD (lets say) you are compressing the compression, which is taking a signal that is about 1/5 the quality of a DV signal then compressing the blocks of broken down colour and taking it from 1/5th the quality to about 1/5 of that again. It’s very crude math here but the picture I want to paint is that you probably cannot get as clean a compressed export as what you went in with – just the nature of compression, especially MPEG-2 compression.

For editing I would probably test with a standard DV preset, make a custom preset which matches the preview format as MPEG-2 or convert the footage into DV, which again makes it compress compressed footage which will only compress again on the way out…

The best export you could expect is to have the MPEG-2 DVD compliant MB/sec run as high as possible (7.5 CBR – MAX at 8CBR, but some DVD players may not keep up) with the correct field dominance in place. Footage is upper or lower so should the editing sequence used and the export settings too. Deinterlacing or making an interlaced signal into progressive with soften or make jaggy edges, seen at its worst on text. Try a test with the maximum quality setting ticked too. It takes much longer to export, but you may find it saves the quality you feel is missing.

Didn’t mean to depress you, but there is just some truths about video that need to be told.

– Jon Barrie 🙂

Jon Barrie
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[Joe Mal]

Hi Josh
1. If you recorded in 720×576 use the same settings in PPro (check if you used 50i or 25p)
2. are you using PPro 4.2.1?

3. for better quality you should record in AVCHD settings

joe

[Josh Taylor]

Hi Jon,

Thanks so much for taking the time to write back to me. It’s very interesting to hear about that and now I can understand the process more clearly.
The quality, although not it’s best, is still good enough for the job and I have now found a decent preset for it.

Thanks again,

Josh.

[Brian Louis]

Sony has a workflow PDF for Ppro CS4 using the NX cam AVCHD/SD which should be the same
https://www.sony.co.uk/res/attachment/file/72/1237477910972.pdf

[Josh Taylor]

Thanks guys! Useful information. 🙂