Stephen Mann
Forum Replies Created
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Your question(s) kind of ramble, but I’ll make it simple for you. Quality and filesize are directly related to bitrate. Higher bitrate = bigger file and better quality.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
“I test rendered smaller clips multiple times on different settings and in different formats”
Have you tried only changing one variable at a time? How about just a few minutes of the problem video with all the same settings?
“Since I can’t just give him the benefit of me synchronizing them in the timeline, I figured I’d render them all synchronized with empty sections where the camera operator stopped recording.”
Huh? Get PluralEyes – it works magic to sync multi-cameras tracks.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
“I always have to record all the way through new tapes to put timecode on them before using them in a project.”
You shouldn’t have to. My Sony cameras always remembered the TC at the end of each take, and when I load a previously used tape they back up enough to read the last timecode. Also, since there is only one head that records everything (it is digital streams of data, after all) the TC is written anew anyway.
Steve Mann
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
I’ve been using an ADVC-100 for years, but if I had to do it again I would buy the ADVC-300 with the Time-Base corrector.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
I have never seen either issue, but you are describing a possible codec problem. Have you installed a codec-pack?
Also, media on the timeline are events, not clips.
Steve Mann
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
You don’t say what your source video is, but you should realize tat MPEG is a DELIVERY format and really problematic for editing. I would look for capture hardware that will produce AVI. (An old DV camera, for example, can be used as a pass-thru capture device).
Steve Mann
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Changing the media could certainly do it.
Who Really Makes the Disc?
Realize that most media is produced by a relatively small number of factories, located in several different places. These factories are mostly present in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, China and India. There are more, but those are the largest ones. The best media generally comes from Japan, Taiwan and Singapore. The worst typically comes from China and Malaysia.
The blank disc brand name on the package means almost nothing. Apple is a great brand, but they do not make their own discs, instead outsourcing to a company like Mitsubishi Chemicals. Common companies like Memorex, Maxell and Imation all outsource to media vendors. Mitsubishi also makes the discs for Verbatim, etc.
It is the media ID that is important, as it reveals the disc manufacturer. Unfortunately, this is not written on packaging or anywhere else. Companies want consumers to be oblivious to this sort of behind-the-scenes information. The Media ID is also used by your DVD burner to determine the burn parameters which includes the maximum burn speed. Never, ever burn your DVD’s at the maximum burn rate. (You will make a lot of coasters if you do). Pick a speed in the middle; 4X or 6X is my personal limit.
I recommend that you use the freeware “DVD Identifier” to read the media ID to learn who *really* made the discs in your box:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/cd_dvd/dvd_tools/dvd_identifier.cfmDVD Identifier has it’s own database to interpret the media ID into the manufacturer name and write parameters. Likewise, your DVD burner has a similar lookup table in its firmware. If your burner is relatively old, then newer DVD manufacturer’s codes won’t be found. The tipoff to this is when your DVD burner falls back to “safe” parameters, like a maximum burn speed of 2X. Some older burners revert to their max burn speed, like 24X, which almost never works. If this happens to you, then you need a firmware update or a new DVD burner.
Steve Mann
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
“Oddly when I took two of these and replayed them they did better the second time, and then the third time almost as they had healed themselves and played perfectly.”
I’ll bet that you burned the DVD’s at the highest speed available.
Random pixellation on playback almost always indicates that your DVD player can’t read *and correct the errors* fast enough. Try burning them at a 4X rate.
If this doesn’t describe your problem, try a lower MAX Bitrate.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
White balance and exposure are not the same. You can white balance on any color of white… Thinking 8-bit, white is 255,255,255 in the RGB channels. Black is 0,0,0. Everything in-between, as long as the R=G=B, is ashade of gray. All that color balancing on the camera does is to adjust the offset of each channel (usually just Red and Blue because DV cameras usually take their luminosity from th Green channel)so that what you told it is white, has the same value in R,G and Blue. So if you are looking at a 127,127,127 gray card and tell the camera to WB on it, then it will come pretty close to setting the outputs to 127,127,127 – and for that lighting situation, you are “balanced”.
Photographers use an 18% gray card for exposure because the light reflected by an 18% gray card is very close to the light reflected by the average caucasion face.
Hope this helps.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -