Eric Vinyard
Forum Replies Created
-
Forgive me for starting to sound irate. This is a frustrating problem to have in the first place and is proving even more difficult to explain.
Open the following images in two seperate tabs and then switch between them. Examine them closely. The first is what a fullscreen preview screenshot looks like in Premiere CS5. The second is from Vegas.
I hope that you can see the difference in quality. Premiere, like Windows Media Player, smooths the image as it enlarges it for the preview. Vegas does this as well, but only in a window and not in fullscreen mode.
-
Are both these shots from the same monitor screen? If so, then you are simply looking at the resizing of the frame to fit the window dimensions.
Yes they are, but you’re wrong; the artifacts are the result of Vegas stretching the image with a mechanism entirely different than the one it uses to stretch it in a window. If you’ve ever used Photoshop to resize an image, think “bilinear” vs “nearest neighbor.”
If I were to take a screenshot of this same scene in Adobe Premiere, you would not see the same artifacting.
I really wish I were getting help with this problem instead of having to prove that this issue exists. I’ve uninstalled Vegas for the time being, but if it makes you happy I can post a comparison screenshot between the two programs tomorrow and hopefully you will see what I’m talking about.
-
Perhaps these enlargements will better illustrate the problem.
Fullscreen preview:
Windowed preview:
Look closely at the silver balls in the middle of Guyver’s head. Notice the grid in the second image? And the jagged edges of what would otherwise be curves within his helmet? It’s the result of the pixellation and artifacting that I’m talking about. Trust me, the images are not the same, and the problem is even more obvious in full-motion video.
If you play a video full-screen in something like Windows Media Player, it stretches it out with something akin to a bilinear filter which results in a smooth image. Premiere pro’s external preview does this as well. It’s as if Vegas previews the video with no filter at all, merely stretching the pixels resulting in a blocky image even at the highest quality settings. Up until now I had used a television monitor to preview video in Vegas but now that I’m using a VGA monitor, I can see the difference and it’s very distracting. I don’t know if this is an issue new to Vegas 10 or not.
If someone else is using a digital external monitor and does not see this blockiness, please let me know. Screenshots might help.
-
Unfortunately, I get the same results whether or not “Adjust size and quality for optimal playback” is selected.
-
No worries.
I seem to have gotten around the problem by dropping the .mpg into Vegas and re-rendering as a DVD .mpg with the same settings. It stretched the video out to its proper length, and then I was able to record a commentary track over top of it. Not sure why, but it worked.
-
Interesting. I didn’t know Vegas had a ripping function at all. I’ll give it a whirl and see if it works.
I can understand your concern, but the DVD isn’t being ripped for distribution purposes; we have to have the original .mpg stream on file so that we can record our commentary track in real time. We’re only rendering out the first thirty minutes of the film for uploading to YouTube for preview purposes, which is protected by the Fair Use doctrine, which puts certain limitations on copyright in situations where the material is used for commentary and/or criticism. What we’re doing is legal.
-
Eh, I’ve tried that and it only adds that event to my current selction, which means I also have to deselect any already selected events using the same method. This is a bit cumbersome for the speed at which I work. It also means that if I have other clips selected that I can’t see, they remain selected. It’s just not quick enough for me.
The closest thing I’ve found so far is just to zoom way in and to click on the event I want where the marker already is, that way it doesn’t move. That still adds in all sorts of extra steps that I don’t need or want.
-
It appears that 1.5 and CS3 render Microsoft Uncompressed AVI exactly the same, and that the way 1.5 renders the Cedocida codec is pretty close to that.
So, in terms of quality, we now have:
MS Uncompressed in 1.5 or CS3 > Cedocida 1.5 > MS DV CS3 and 1.5 > Cedocida CS3.
I suppose the next step would be to add CS4 and CS5 into the mix, but I would imagine that if you’re capable of running either of those, you don’t need to downconvert in the first place. However, it seems if you do need to work in SD, going with the Cedocida codec in Premiere 1.5 is the better deal without going fully uncompressed.
Surprisingly, it produces files smaller in size than MS DV.
-
Actually, I just found out that the differences are because I’m using the open-source Cedocida DV codec to downconvert the footage. Apparently Premiere 1.5 and CS3 handle Microsoft DV AVI very similarly – CS3 possibly slightly better – but they process a Cedocida .avi both differently than they do a Microsoft DV .avi, and also very differently from one another in that respect.
It seems that Premiere 1.5 likes the open-source codec and works well with it, but CS3 absolutely hates it. So in terms of quality:
Cedocida 1.5 > Microsoft DV CS3 > Microsoft DV 1.5 > Cedocida CS3
Then again, this is pretty subjective, but the Cedocida in 1.5 seems to produce a more crisp end result, which is what I think I prefer.
I have yet to test how any of these compare to how either program handles uncompressed .avi. Perhaps I’ll try that next.
Stills from each version can be found here:
https://fileshare.chinagreenelvis.com/images/premiere