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Blurry image when converting HDV to DV-AVI

Specific to Premiere Elements Version 10.

Blurry image when converting HDV to DV-AVI

Postby Tysesson » Sat Sep 21, 2013 4:07 am

My first post here - greetings to the Muvipix community. I bought Steve's PE 10 book which is GREAT and am following suggestions there, but right now I'm hitting a brick wall, and I've tried searching the forum for similar posts. My goal is to edit AVCHD files in a PE10 project to a 16:9 widescreen DV format, then add a 4:3 .wmv video file to the end of that and burn both of those to a DVD as 2 separate scenes. What I've done so far is:

1. Used PE10 to convert 1920 x 1080 60i AVCHD files to HDV MPEG 1440 x 1080i for easier editing. These HDV's looked very sharp in the monitor panel as I edited them.
2. Converted the finished HDV project to a 16:9 Standard DV-AVI file for smoother burning later.
3. Imported this DV-AVI into a new Standard DV project and the video was letterboxed in a 4:3 frame as I had wanted, but it was very blurry, compared to the much crisper looking standard DVD disc playback of the laptop. Quite disheartening.
4. I used MediaInfo to look at the files and saw that both the AVCHDs and HDVs were interlaced with the upper field first, but that the DV-AVI preset expected the lower field first, so I reversed the field order on the DV-AVI file, but it looked even worse.

Am I missing something obvious here? Assuming I ever solve this blurry image problem, I'll add a .wmv file (that I'll first convert to DV-AVI) to the end of this DV project to burn to a 2-scene DVD.

Would it be beneficial to change the field order to progressive and add a sharpen effect with a value of 9 to each clip before "sharing" to the DV-AVI format, as I read in another post?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Re: Blurry image when converting HDV to DV-AVI

Postby Steve Grisetti » Sat Sep 21, 2013 9:05 am

So you converted from AVCHD to HDV to DV? That's a lot of conversion, Tysseson. Most of it probably unnecessary.

Version 10 is actually very good at working with AVCHD, as long as your project is set up for Full AVCHD 1920x1080. (If you've set up your project to match your video specs, you WON'T see red lines above the clips on your timeline in Timeline mode.) And you can just output your DVD right from this project.

Sorry if my book wasn't clearn on this. I've streamlined this process in later versions of the book.

So try just going directly from your AVCHD project to Share/To Disc/DVD and see what you think of the results.

Now naturally your DVD isn't going to be nearly as detailed as your AVHCD. It only has about one-fifth the resolution. But it should still look excellent when you play the disc on your TV.

You can also play your DVD on your computer. But if you do, I recommend you use the excellent free VLC Media Player, which does an excellent job of softening the interlacing.

And, when you're checking your video for quality, remember to watch it at 100% actual size and NOT at full-screen. A DVD is only 720x480 pixels, while your computer monitor is likely 1280x1024 or larger -- so no DVD is going to look crystal clear when it's blown up to full screen.

Hope that helps! Thanks for supporting the book and welcome to our Muvipix community!
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Re: Blurry image when converting HDV to DV-AVI

Postby Tysesson » Sun Sep 22, 2013 12:23 pm

Thanks Steve. It does look noticeably better skipping the DV-AVI conversion in the middle. I tried burning both a clip from my original AVCHD to DVD, and from my edited HDV to DVD, and they both looked about the same, so I'll just go ahead and burn my edited HDV to DVD.

It was interesting though, that the part of these clips that had a still frame grab of text I had shot (so the text could stay up longer), looked noticeably sharper on both DVDs than the same text before the still frame. Even though I was using a tripod and thought I was really still, the single frame grab sharpened up this interlaced DVD image noticeably.

As for the other part of my goal, I'd like to include a 4:3 .wmv file (that a friend made) in the final DVD as a separate selectable scene. Media Info says that this is a 640 x 480, WMV3 codec, 8-bit depth, progressive scan. I assume that:

* since PE10 doesn't seem to allow importing a .wmv file, I should find a conversion program.

* To insert it on the same PE10 timeline as my HDV video, shouldn't I convert it to HDV?

* If I convert this 4:3 image to 16:9 HDV it will be "pillarboxed," appearing full-height but with black mattes on the left and right sides.

* When PE10 converts this already "pillarboxed" image to a 4:3 DVD, it will be further "letterboxed," shrinking down that entire image so the (presumed) 16:9 content width will fit a 4:3 aspect ratio, resulting in a "windowbox" or "postage stamp" effect where a small square of 4:3 content appears with black mattes on all 4 sides.

* If I just converted it to a standard DV-AVI it wouldn't be "pillorboxed," but I couldn't include it on my HVD timeline to give it a DVD menu marker. I want to keep my edited project in HDV because that looks sharper when converting to DVD than doing an interim DV-AVI conversion of it to burn to DVD.

* I could always burn a separate DVD of just the .wmf video to keep it full frame I guess, but is there any way to show this as a full frame 4:3 on the same DVD disc as my letterboxed HDV content?

Thanks for any suggestions.
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Re: Blurry image when converting HDV to DV-AVI

Postby Steve Grisetti » Sun Sep 22, 2013 6:35 pm

Technically, you can use a WMV in a Premiere Elements project. The results are just sometimes iffy. But give it a try, render your timeline and see what you think of the results.

The bigger challeng is that you're putting a 4:3 standard definition video into a 1920x1080 project. So it will be "pillorboxed". Nothing you can do about that. But whether or not you'll be satisfied with the finished results is something only you can decide.

I'd recommend you output a test video of your finished project using Share/Computer/AVCHD with the project preset for YouTube SD. Play it at 100% actual size (NOT full screen) and see what you think of the results -- particularly the difference in the results you're getting from your AVCHD and the WMV. If it looks good enough on this video, it will also look good on your DVD.
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Re: Blurry image when converting HDV to DV-AVI

Postby Tysesson » Mon Sep 23, 2013 12:51 pm

Thanks a bunch. I had no idea you could insert different format clips on your timeline. Maybe I haven't read far enough in your book. This 640 x 480 progressive WMV brought into an HDV 1440 x 1080i timeline looks perfectly acceptable to me when I play back the outputted "YouTube" SD clip on my laptop as you suggested. I'm quite prepared to accept the 4:3 "pillorbox," since I don't have to squish it down any further than that. Thanks again.
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Re: Blurry image when converting HDV to DV-AVI

Postby Steve Grisetti » Mon Sep 23, 2013 1:01 pm

Glad we could help, Tysesson.

I don't talk much about mixing formats in the book because that's something Premiere Elements didn't do well until fairly recently. So I always recommend doing a test output to see if you're satisfied with the results before you put too much time and effort into a mixed media project.
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