Poor quality Hi-Def to SD

[Dave McElderry]

I have a short AVCHD video that I edited in PrEl 11 that I need to burn to DVD. Normally I'd just keep my AVCHD in Hi-Def, but the recipient(s) needs it on DVD. I didn't find a PrEl template that was appropriate, so I thought I'd burn the DVD in DVDAS. When I did the export to MPEG widescreen 720x480 and played it back again on my computer I was very disappointed in the quality. I've done a lot of DVD work using my older SD Mini-DV camcorder and have always been very pleased with the results. My HD camcorder produces even better results in AVCHD (expected), but this is the first time that I've tried to "down-convert" to SD. I also tried 2-pass and checkmarked the "render at highest quality" setting.

I've always assumed that I could produce an even better quality DVD if I started with AVCHD video, but perhaps this isn't the case. Do you think the problem is that I can't down-convert and maintain a good quality, or am I doing something else wrong in my workflow?

[Steve Grisetti]

Well, you could certainly have used Publish & Share/Disc to output a DVD directly in Premiere Elements.

But if you want to use DVD Architect Studio to output your DVD, you should output the file from Premiere Elements using Publish & Share/Computer/MPEG with the 720x480 Widescreen DVD preset.

You should get excellent results either way -- although your playback will look much better on your TV than on your computer. If you're viewing the DVD on your computer, you're looking at it at way beyond its resolution as well as seeing the interlacing (neither of which will be a problem when you play it on your TV).

[Dave McElderry]

I just burned to a DVD+RW from PrEl 11 and played it on the TV. This is not good video. I could have done much better just using my SD camcorder to begin with.

My settings for the original export were apparently correct, as you confirmed those settings. Just for the heck of it I think I'll try do the same thing out of PrEl 10 and see if the results are the same.

[Dave McElderry]

Okay. I threw the AVCHD video into PrEl 10 and, without any editing, just burned it to a DVD. My wife and I are both in agreement that there is a definite improvement in quality over the DVD produced in PrEl 11. It's still not the quality that I'm used to getting from my SD Mini-DV camcorder, and I'm still not happy with the results. However, it would appear that PrEl 11 is not handling this as well as PrEl 10 did.

[Chris B]

I would certainly expect the output from a highdef source to look considerably better than that shot on almost any SD camcorder. Is this repeatable - I.e. if you shoot the same scene (your garden or whatever) on the high def and standard def then produce the output does it look different - or does it look worse in the same way. You could also try exporting the same title or graphic or photo from an SD and an HD project to an SD disk template and see if they are wrong on the same way.

[Dave McElderry]

I would certainly expect the output from a highdef source to look considerably better than that shot on almost any SD camcorder.

It does, by far. It's only when it's down-converted to SD and compared to my native SD Mini-DV that the results become disappointing.

Is this repeatable - I.e. if you shoot the same scene (your garden or whatever) on the high def and standard def then produce the output does it look different - or does it look worse in the same way. You could also try exporting the same title or graphic or photo from an SD and an HD project to an SD disk template and see if they are wrong on the same way.

If I understand what you're saying, you're wondering about a comparison of V10 and V11 when outputting SD to DVD or outputting HD to DVD. That would be interesting, and I may very well try that experiment. But whatever the results I would still expect the down-converted HD to be as good or better than the native SD, no matter which version I was using.

[RJ Johnston]

Try applying the Sharpen effect to the AVCHD clip that you share to SD. Set the Sharpen parameter to 10.

[Dave McElderry]

Finally got back to this today. I exported the video from PrEl 11 as an HD MPEG, which I then added to a DVDAS project (opened as a new DVD project, not Blu--ray) and burned to DVD. The results were very good standard def - the kind of results that I was expecting to get from Premiere Elements but did not. At this point I can only conclude that PrEl does a poor job of outputting HD to SD, and V11 is significantly worse at it than V10.

[RJ Johnston]

Dave,

Do you have the ability to turn off de-interlacing on whatever device is used to play back the DVDs?

Using MPEG-4 AVC 1920x1080p 29.97 fps, I burned some SD DVDs to folders in PRE10 and PRE11. I noticed a slight difference between PRE10 and PRE11, with PRE10 the better, when I played the DVDs back in PowerDVD 12 with de-interlacing option turned on. Both DVDs had video that was softer than the original. When I turned de-interlacing off, the DVDs became very clear and sharp.

Is your AVCHD interlaced or progressive? When you went from AVCHD to HD MPEG, was HD MPEG interlaced?

[Dave McElderry]

Is your AVCHD interlaced or progressive? When you went from AVCHD to HD MPEG, was HD MPEG interlaced?

The original source AVCHD is 60i. Although I did originally output to MPEG 2 (from PrEl 11 and 10) for viewing on the computer, I didn't draw any hard conclusions until I had output to DVD+RW (from PrEl 11 and 10) and viewed on our HD TV. It was there that it became easy to make comparisons. For DVDAS I actually tried two separate source files output from PrEl 11 - HD 1080P 29.97 High Quality, and MPEG2 1920x1080i 30. There was no discernable difference when played on the TV, although I didn't have the luxury of seeing them side by side or to switch back and forth between them in real time. If one was better than the other it was a very small difference.

Both DVDs had video that was softer than the original

"Softer" is an excellent description, although so much so that I would characterize it as having an out-of-focus effect. Definitely lost all the nice detail. Again, more pronounced in the PrEl 11 output.

[RJ Johnston]

Looking at the stats from MediaInfo, the DVD created by Premiere Elements has a bitrate of 7800 Kbps and is interlaced. The DVD created by DVDAP is 9100 Kbps, MAX 9500 Kbps, and the interlacement matches the source.

In my case, the progressive source looks much, much better when prepared using your workflow. The DVD prepared by PRE looks good if I turn off de-interlacing on the playback device.

[Dave McElderry]

Looking at the stats from MediaInfo, the DVD created by Premiere Elements has a bitrate of 7800 Kbps and is interlaced. The DVD created by DVDAP is 9100 Kbps, MAX 9500 Kbps, and the interlacement matches the source.

If I'm understanding this correctly it would seem that the difference in bitrate might explain the differences I saw between using PrEl and DVDAS, although I'm sure there could be other variables.

In my case, the progressive source looks much, much better when prepared using your workflow. The DVD prepared by PRE looks good if I turn off de-interlacing on the playback device.

Since playback on a computer is not a priority for me, this is not going to be a deciding factor. However, I do have PowerDVD installed on my computer, and if I should decide to play back on the computer I'll make a point of playing with the interlacing settings.