Need some help with export settings....

[Gerlinde]

I'm capturing from a HV30 camera into PE7 using the HD 1440x1080i 30 preset. My goal is to save my footage on my hard drive for viewing on our 46" HDTV (don't have a blueray player) but also want to send the file via "Yousendit" to my family overseas. The first time I did this I shared the edited clip of about 6min. duration with the WMV HD 1080i 30 preset. It turned out beautifully and looked great when watched on the HDTV.
So this time I got sassy and tried out the instand movie feature. To my surprise it did a nice job and I really liked the result. So I shared the movie again with the WMV HD 1080i 30 preset. But this time it looks quite crappy when I play it back with Windows Media Player. It shows lots of interlacing.
I don't know if I made any changes the first time I used it and what I could have possibly changed.
I tried all kind of modifications with the advanced settings tab on a shortened 1min piece of the clip, without knowing what I'm doing. After a lot of trial and error, I found the following settings to work: WMV Video 9 advanced profile, Bitrate: variable constant, 2 passes, frame W 1440, frame H 1080, frame rate 30, Pixel aspect: same as project.
All was well until I tried to encode the 4min clip. Every time it reaches 50 to 60% of the 2. pass the program crashes.
I exported with the H.264 1440 x 1080i 30 preset successfully. It plays on my computer but most everybody else can't play it back, so that does not help. Also the file is rather large too.
Does anyone have a suggestion regarding the WMV HD settings? Or could you point me to some info about all the available presets. I red everything Adobe offers in the help files, but I'm only more confused than enlightened.

[Gerlinde]

I'm just bumping this up again....hoping one of the high def. experts might see it.

Gerlinde

PS: Happy father's day!

[Bobby]

First I would isolate whether it is a problem with Instant Movie or not. Try the same length of movie with and without it and see if in fact IM is the problem. If so, we need to figure out why, what settings it changed. If not and now all your stuff has a problem, we need to look elsewhere.

Start and let's go from there.

[Steve Grisetti]

I would also not recommend making a WMV as large as the one you're creating. There's no point in creating a 1440x1080 WMV if you're going to load it to a web site because no one will be able to see it! It's too large to stream.

For your WMV, try using the default settings for output. WMVs are, after all, designed primarily as a web streaming format.

[Gerlinde]

Thanks Bobby, I will do that and report back in a little while.

There is one more observation that I would like to add. To compare different render settings side by side I re-imported the clip in question into my PE7 project and played it back there. It did not show any interlacing at all. So I tried a different player than WM player, like VLC player, but no joy there either.

Gerlinde

[Gerlinde]

Hi Steve,
I used the default settings for WMV HD. That's where I'm seing the interlacing when I play it back on my computer. I'm not trying to post my video to a website. I try to save it conserving the high def quality and getting it into a smaller file size at the same time. I distribute it to my family in that format. The 4min clip ends up to be 800mb, which I can send with "Yousendit" easily over the internet for downloading by my family in Germany.

Gerlinde

[Gerlinde]

So here is an update on my issue:

I tried what Bobby suggested earlier. I rendered a short section of my clip without any effects applied, using the WMV HD preset as is. The clip shows the same problems as before. So it has nothing to do with the IM. I also imported my footage into Windows Movie Maker (as it comes from the camera) and I exported a short section from there and that looks great.

I than remembered, that I most likely did the same thing with my first clips and that is why they look so much better. The render time is also only a fraction of the time that PE7 needs to do the same thing. So the question is now, how do get my little movie into Movie Maker. Movie Maker does not see the HD mpeg files PE is rendering.

Gerlinde

[Gerlinde]

I'm very happy to report back that I solved my problem.
It is actually very easy to import a m2t file into Windows Movie Maker. You only need to change the m2t extension to mpeg and now Movie Maker can import it. I than publish from there to my PC with the <best quality> preset. The resulting HD file is of excellent quality and looks just awesome. The file size shrunk from 1gb for a 4min clip to 400mb.

[Bobby]

Great! and thanks for the information

[Chuck Engels]

Yes, thanks Gerlinde. That information will most likely help others, excellent

[Gerlinde]

Bobby and Chuck,

I'm happy to share the little knowledge I have so far about hi def editing. I have learned here so much so it's nice to give something back that might be useful for someone else.

As more and more people are getting into hi def editing, I think it would be great to have all the great tips and the basic knowledge, that people have shared so far, in one place. Could we start a collection of <How to...> for hi def as a sticky or FAQ page? I have always a hard time to find the information again when I need it.

Chuck, do you think this could be done?

Gerlinde

[Ron Hunter]

+1 on the need for a HD area with tips and tricks!

[Chuck Engels]

This is the High Def area of the forum, everything should be here. The searches can sometimes be a little difficult I know, especially as we continue to grow and add posts. I'm not sure about a general FAQ kind of post, maybe Paul or one of the other HDV folks can comment about what that might contain.

Anyone that would like to help put something together would be welcome to help do so.

[Gerlinde]

Hi Chuck,
You are right, there is the hi def section, but there is also hd related stuff in Tips and tricks, other editors or the PE7 section. I was thinking down the line of having a hd get started guide on the top of the hi def section. Than we could also have a tips and tricks sticky for a collection of things that are handy to know. I have bookmarked some of the threads, but most of the time I remember having red something somewhere and than I can't find it anymore. We could ask members to maybe help compile the things that they have contributed.
I would be happy to help to copy and paste from the threads that I have bookmarked.

Gerlinde

[Chuck Engels]

If you could give me the links to the topics I could easily copy the posts to a new HD Getting Started topic.
Give me what you have and I will see what we can do to put something together.