Exporting HD files

[fat fish]

Ive finally managed to capture HDV footage onto my PC using adobe premiere pro. Now usually I capture everything that I film and then mess with the file on the computer. Then when I edit my footage into shots for my footage library. Doing it this way rather than batch capturing saves wear and tear on my heads, by half, but Ive hit a problem.

Adobe captures in mpeg but it will not allow me to save my editted file in the same format, or at least I can't figure it out. Ive fiddled with the codecs and messed with all the export settings but can't solve the problem. It will allow me to save an mpeg file but at a horribly low quality level. I want to save my footage as best quality as possible. I know on tape is the best but I always try and save it on different formats just in case of flooding, house burning down, hurricane, blah blah.

Help, please!!

 

[marshallkarp]

Now, unless I am mistaken, the way I understand digital video, when you video to a DV tape, it is saved as AVI. When you capture into your computer, you want to capture as an AVI, as it is the same quality as the DV tape. Editing and outputting to your computer as a AVI is still the same quality as the DV tape. It is burning to DVD where the compression causes quality loss.

I am not sure about how HD and Adobe work, but wouldn't our want to capture as an AVI? However, I'm sure someone else knows more about this. IMHO

 

[rjsimp]

Now, unless I am mistaken, the way I understand digital video, when you video to a DV tape, it is saved as AVI. When you capture into your computer, you want to capture as an AVI, as it is the same quality as the DV tape. Editing and outputting to your computer as a AVI is still the same quality as the DV tape. It is burning to DVD where the compression causes quality loss.

I am not sure about how HD and Adobe work, but wouldn't our want to capture as an AVI? However, I'm sure someone else knows more about this. IMHO

The MPEG file that Adobe dumps from tape is an exact bit copy of the data on the tape. Since HDV is stored as an MPEG file on a DV tape. AVI files are just a container for some sort of media file (similar to Apple's Quictime MOV files). The quality can be anything really because it is based on the codec used to create the file. It can be anything from un-compressed video to DV video to simple animated bitmaps.

I have not explored Premiere enough to know how to save an edited version back out to an MPEG file that is HDV quality. I am interested in that answer also, so I may have to poke around in there. I actually do my editing in Final Cut Pro on the Mac and then save it back to the Tape. I then can dump the edited version to the PC with Premiere to create my MPEG file that I then view on my HDTV though my XBox 360. Kind of an odd deal, but Apple didn't provide a codec for their HDV quicktime movies for the PC and Apple also doesn't give me the option to go to a nice clean MPEG file that will play on the XBox 360 like Premiere does.

 

[ScubaBob92651]

Adobe captures in mpeg but it will not allow me to save my editted file in the same format, or at least I can't figure it out. Ive fiddled with the codecs and messed with all the export settings but can't solve the problem. It will allow me to save an mpeg file but at a horribly low quality level. I want to save my footage as best quality as possible. I know on tape is the best but I always try and save it on different formats just in case of flooding, house burning down, hurricane, blah blah.

Help, please!!

I use AspectHD, and keep everything in their codec, so I could be wrong, but I believe you use the Adobe Media Encoder (File -> Export -> Adobe Media Encoder) to export back to transport stream (select mpeg-2 and the proper preset.) Hopefully someone else who uses Adobe in the same way you are can help if I'm wrong here.

 

[Utila Simon]

Thanks for all the help, its drivin me crazy. Ive downloaded The Aspect HD codec and will play with that today. If you see a computer flying through the air though It'l be mine!!!

fatfish

 

[wags]

Hi guys
Glad you are having fun with HDV but you don't use Adobe Media Encoder to make the m2t file....give me a couple days and I will write up a how to do that you can and read.

Aspect HD plugin for Premire Pro is very good to use but it does not do good colour correction nor make the best m2t files however there is ways around those two problems.

More soon
Paul Wags
www.hdvunderwater.com

 

[ScubaBob92651]

Hi guys
Glad you are having fun with HDV but you don't use Adobe Media Encoder to make the m2t file....give me a couple days and I will write up a how to do that you can and read.

Aspect HD plugin for Premire Pro is very good to use but it does not do good colour correction nor make the best m2t files however there is ways around those two problems.

More soon
Paul Wags
www.hdvunderwater.com

Thanks Paul, look forward to your write-up (also any Aspect HD tips, especially CC. I have a workflow that seems to give me pretty good results when I need to do CC, but I'd love to here what you've done.) I've only exported back to m2t once or twice, and I believe it was using the cineform tool.

Btw - I've got a whole slew of Coral Sea & Yongala footage from last year shot with my HD10U, I'll try to post some soon.

 

[fat fish]

Cheers Wags,

Are you putting your whale shark encounters into www.ecocean.org website? I'm guessing you know about it. Its an on-line data base for shark identification. Brad Norman and a guy called Jason Holmberg set it up.

I've been sticking a load in from here, Utila, Honduras.

Hopefully one of ours will turn up in Oz one day or vice versa.

 

[wags]

Hi guys
Should have some details up very soon.

Here is a new review I did on the Phenom
www.pcwags.com/phenom.pdf
or
www.hdvunderwater.com/review.html

Brad Norman, I know him in fact for over 10 years and have given him many pics over the years. He was staying with me last week for 3 days.

Anyhow it would be cool to start getting matches from other parts of the world.

Scubabod, looking forward to seeing some of you clips from the Coral Sea & Yongala.

Wags

 

[larsdennert]

You may want to mention which version of PP 1.51 or 2.0. Sounds like 2 since you are able to capture to m2t. You can export to regular MPEG2 using one of the HD templates but you have to mess with the settings to increase the bit rate or, as you say, it looks bad. Evidently you are wanting to archive it. The intermediate Cineform formats are twice as large and only PP seems to read them so they are a dead end in my mind. WMV makes a good play back medium IMO. Again mess with the bitrate and templates... m2t with no (little) rendering would be ideal as an archive format. Compressed but editable. Currently I store only the finished file and the unedited tape.