HDV to DV, Premier Elements, some help

[Volstag]

Bought the HV20 and an HDTV within the past two weeks. So far I have been loving the camera, and the TV. It's quite mind blowing what this little camera is capable of.

Unfortunately, I keep having a persistent problem when converting HDV to standard DV, and I feel like I'm missing a step, or there's something I don't fully understand yet. And, for those who are curious, I'm a relative newbie at this.

So here's the problem / situation:

Every time I convert HDV to standard DV, the DV conversion always exhibits some amount of "jaggedness", and it's especially noticeable when panning the camera, or during "action" segments. I should note that the original HDV footage looks spectacular, and when I shoot in standard DV -- while not as pretty -- it still looks fine.

I've tried various tactics to get past this problem, but I've been met with fairly limited success.

I capture the HDV footage via HDVSplit (since Elements, for whatever reason, will not "recognize" my camera while it's in HDV mode). From there, I load the m2t file into Elements -- first ensuring that my project settings are correct (1080i). No matter how I export this bugger, the resulting DV footage will show this strange "artifacting" / jaggedness as described above.

Do I need to convert the m2t to something else before loading it into Elements? Should I be doing something different on the export? Should I use some 3rd party application to do my conversions? Does this have something to do with the interlacing (it sure looks like it to me)?

It's a shame, since the downcoverted DV picture looks pretty danged good (better than if I had shot in straight DV)... but I can't get rid of those damnable jaggies.

Any thoughts, suggestions, opinions appreciated -- especially if anyone out there is using Elements and a HV20.

Thanks in advance,
V

[Mal]

Any chance you can simply DEINTERLACE the footage before you downvonvert to DV>

Loooks like your steps are all fine, so maybe the deinterlacing is all you need to do.

Good luck...

[Volstag]

Dumb question: how does one go about de-interlacing? Is this an option inside the camera, or in Elements.

Thanks in advance,
V

[Lunchbox]

There are a few ways to deinterlace in Premiere Pro (not sure about Premiere Element)

(1) right click on the clip, choose "Field options" and select one of the deinterlaced method

(2) during the export to movie dialog box, under the "Keyframe and Randering" tab, check the "Deinterlace footage" checkbox.

Or you can use VirtualDub (free) to apply the deinterlace filter.

I found out to downsize HDV interlaced video to smaller size, the Deinterlaced option is a must. Otherwise, you will see those interlaced lines during motion of the clip.

[Volstag]

Thanks Taky, I'll give that a shot and see how it looks.

Right now I get the best performance by converting the m2t file into avi, then exporting. There's very little (if any) "jaggedness", which is definitely an improvement... but I'm still seeing a minor, yet noticeable, amount of ghosting / tracers

Thanks again,
V

[Lunchbox]

What did you do to convert the m2t to avi? Also, which codec you use in the AVI you exported?

[frenadolman]

Sorry for my english , im from Spain:
Thank

Only i want to know if the Black magic intensity card can do downconvert , hvd to dv when we are capturing , so we can work better in dv with less effort in the cpu. or there is another way to capture the hdv footage to dv directly in a program as Vegas 7 or premier pro?
be cause editing in hdv( i have vegas 7) it looks slow and whit image Jumps.
Do you undertand me.
Thanks

[Lunchbox]

You can capture from HDV to DV by locking the DV output in HV20 itself through firewire. You do not need to have the Black Magic Intensity card.

[Volstag]

What did you do to convert the m2t to avi? Also, which codec you use in the AVI you exported?

Capture the m2t via HDVSplit. Load m2t into Elements. Convert to AVI via File -> Movie -> Export (I think). As for which codec... I have no idea. Is there a particular codec I should be using?

-V

[Lunchbox]

Not sure Premiere ELements. I use Premiere Pro that I can export to MS-DV AVI. No need to specify other codec.

There is also some free DV AVI codec you can get such as the Panasonic DV codec.

[Volstag]

Thanks for the help guys.

Unfortunately I'm starting to get a little confused. There's a thread somewhere on these forums that state converting after the capture will yield the best HDV to SD quality -- whereas on Adobe's Elements forum, most people are claiming that I'll get the best results by shooting in HDV, then setting DV locked, and then capturing from the camera (all the down-converting is done in-camera). Does anyone here have any experience with this?

If the former yields better results, what codecs and formats should I be using? I guess what makes this all the more confusing is the bewildering array of codes/formats that can be used. I was under the impression that AVI's are a single unique codec/format... but it turns out that's not a correct at all. How does someone find out what specific brand of AVI they're using? What's the difference between a *.mpg and a *.mpeg?

I have a lot more reading to do :)

Thanks,
V

[Lunchbox]

For any AVI files, you can check the file properties by right clicking and choose Properties. Then you should be able to see what's the codec is behind.

AVI itself is just a container. It can be different codecs compressing/decompressing the video.

However, for MS DV-AVI, it's in a specific format. When you export to MS DV-AVI, it'll be that DV codec with the only one data rate (25mpbs), only frame size (720x480 in NTSC).

.mpg and .mpeg are the same. It could be mpeg-1 or mpeg-2. .m2t is also just a form (transport stream) of mpeg-2.

Regarding the difference between downsizing in HV20 or in NLE, I think it's better do a test yourself to judge the quality by yourself. I would believe downsizing in NLE is better because it's non-realtime.