[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Johannes,

I noticed you mentioned .mpa and .mpg files. Those could cause issues – if multiplexing the audio and video into an .mpg file, the audio and video lengths may not match in Encore, this is a known issue. The best course of action will be to create the default .m2v and .wav files from AME, and import those assets into Encore, and Encore will transcode the audio to .ac3 and should leave the video alone then.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Victor,

A lot more info is needed to address your problem.

PC or Mac?

Video source/format and sequence settings?

Video card, and how is it connected to “TV” ?

How does the video look bad – poor resolution, soft, grainy?

Thank you

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

The opposite of this effect first appeared several years ago in the music video of a popular female performer, forget who though. She was lip-syncing to the song, but all her movements appeared in slow motion.

I believe they simply played the song at 2x speed and she lip sang to that, then when the video is slowed to 50%, the video then syncs with the normal speed song.

In your example, they must have slowed the song to half speed and had the performers lip sync to it, and then sped up the video playback to 2x speed in the NLE, along with the normal-speed song.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Scott,

If you want “backups” of your miniDV tapes, the best way is to simply connect TWO miniDV cameras with a 1394 cable. This will make an exact copy of the original footage, with zero quality loss. Ebay for cheap?

As another poster mentioned, your captured clips on the hard drive are still the SAME quality as what came from the tape, so rather than re-encode to another format that will result in some loss, just SAVE those captured clips! Those are a “backup” of the tape, same quality. Capture using “scene detect” so that you can easily delete “junk” clips and just keep the good scenes.

Of course, hard drives can and will fail, so tape seems a better long-term solution, although they require a functioning camera for playback. Lacking a second camera, put your raw clips on the timeline and “Export to Tape” to make a good tape backup to your DV camera.

Funny, I can still “play” the 60-year-old 8mm films inherited from my grandparents (using the vintage Kodak Brownie projector), but can’t play the 8mm videos of my own kids from 15 years ago, for lack of a functioning 8mm camcorder. I saw a post yesterday from a guy that was researching the best format to save his digital stills for long term, and his final conclusion was to make prints of them! They can last a 100+ years and don’t need a player or codec or anything. Anyhow…

Forget about “uncompressed” video, that is not a realistic option. Your footage was compressed to start with, so there is no advantage to saving an uncompressed copy. If you were leaning that way, there are free “visually lossless” codecs such as Lagarith or UT, but they will take up more drive space than the originals (but a lot less than uncompressed). And they won’t LOOK any better than the original, so we are back to just saving the DV .avi clips.

H.264 can look excellent with the right settings and makes small files for archiving, but – it is not the best choice for EDITING. Great delivery format, but not so great for editing. First, already very highly compressed, second is it takes more processing power to edit that codec, versus .avi for instance. So if you want to keep a copy that might later be re-edited, that would be the .avi that you captured the first time.

So we keep coming back to just keeping the captured DV .avi files (or I guess they are .mov on a Mac?). As for viewing, go nuts with the H.264, that’s what it’s for – delivery. I would not use the QuickTime wrapper, just go straight H.264 which gives you the MP4 files. Google “QuickTime Gamma Shift” and you will see why to avoid .mov files.

Hope this helps and doesn’t add to the confusion. For what it’s worth, I’ve been in video professionally for 21 years, early adopter of miniDV and NLE editing in the 90s, and have NEVER used uncompressed video, ever, if that says anything.

Best,

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

I find it ironic that PC users don’t have to buy, or do, anything really for ProRes support, as long as the free QuickTime is installed. Just an observation

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Nobody likes work-arounds and extra steps, but obviously the combo of effects applied don’t play well together. If none of the other suggestions resolve the issue, it might be easiest to do this – apply WS to the clips in question, and then EXPORT that area of the timeline to a new clip. Import that clip and drop it over the originals, THEN apply your other effects to that.

Others may chime in and say “Yes, but the generational loss and recompression….”. Probably not a Hollywood production and no one will notice. Been doing this kind of workflow for years for various reasons.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Maarten,

I can’t tell you exactly which format to use, as different players offer different format compatibility. Also, I don’t know what you are working with – SD, 720p, 1080?

But in general for the newer players, H.264 should work well.

You’ll have to experiment with YOUR gear to see what works for you

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Samuel,

I hope you got your issue resolved and made the deadline. Your post did not say how you were proofing the Blu-ray disc – where were you trying to play it?

Most newer set-top Blu-ray players should work, but not guaranteed with burn-your-own discs. A firmware update may resolve this with some units. A Sony PS3 will work well.

I don’t know about Macs, but PCs will not play Blu-ray movies without purchasing a third-party software player.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Brannon,

Most DVD duplication/replication companies will now accept a DVD-R as a master. Verify with them if that is what they are looking for – a finished playbable DVD.

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Alberto,

You need to find out exactly what the broadcaster is looking for. Your source material is obviously 16:9 widescreen, but you are delivering in SD. That means your video will either be letterboxed (black bars top and bottom), or may need to be cropped to fill the 4:3 screen. Which do they want? Or might they want widescreen SD? In which case it is still 720×480, but using a 1.2 pixel aspect ratio.

Also, rather than manually scaling the video down, you can enable “Scale to Frame Size” in Preferences, or right-click a clip on the timeline and “Scale to Frame”, rather than using Adobe Motion settings.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers