Help: Vimeo HD Workflow on a Mac

[Stephen]

Hey all- I would greatly appreciate your help and insight on this one! I'm looking to create the simplest HD workflow that does not sacrifice quality for two different outputs. One output will be to Vimeo, the other output will be to HD Telvision or a digital projector. I am going to be developing a series of short films (3-10 minutes) as well as some short documentary bits (2-5 minutes) which I will be posting on my blog via Vimeo. The goal is to drive users to the Vimeo site so that they can watch the footage in full HD. Thus enters my first hurdle...

Last night I uploaded my first attempt at getting HD footage from the HV20 to Vimeo. You can view my result here: http://www.vimeo.com/732900 Please download the full clip from Vimeo to see what my final export footage looks like if you wouldn't mind.

There are some obvious areas that need improvement, but I am stumped as to how to make this look better. I used iMovie to edit this in (I use iMovie for quick edits... for example, I will use this to edit my documentary bits... I use Premier Pro CS3 for my short films). The original footage is all shot using the 24p mode on the HV20. I know that iMovie HD doesn't truely edit 24p footage, but then again, I didn't ever eliminate pulldown from this so I'm wondering if that even matters. I just pulled in the footage through iMovie, made some quick edits, and spit it out using the export feature. I tried to exactly follow all the settings that Vimeo lists for HD quicktime exporting to the 'T'. I'm unsure as to why I'm getting a decent amount of artifacting and 'lines' in my footage. This is especially apparent in the footage of my wife in the grocery store. Any suggestions? Any obvious reasons why some of these things are happening? Any Mac users willing and able to post their own NTSC documented workflow process along with samples of what their stuff turns out like when posted to Vimeo? This is my first attempt so I'm totally open to suggestions- I just want to have my footage look as pristine, perfect as possible. Once I have a workflow I'll stick to it.

I want to get my HV20 footage to look as good as this guy's video: http://www.vimeo.com/422269 That footage looks amazing! How do I get there with a Mac, iMovie HD, and Premier Pro CS3 at my disposal?

I see that Eugenia has a new pulldown method at: http://www.hv20.com/showthread.php?t=5091&highlight=vimeo+settings Might this help me in my search to elimniate the artifcating and lines I'm currently experiencing or is this a different problem altogether? I also have been to Eugenia's site tutorial for exporting to 720p at: http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2007/12/08/exporting-with-quicktime-in-720p/ I am able to make full use of iMovie's exporting options and it seems, in theory, that I am setting everything correctly using her first listed option.

So in a nutshell- any thoughts on Mac workflow I can use to get amazing looking Vimeo videos from my footage? My piece flows great without any visible lines or artifacting in iMovie natively but is less then satisfactory when put on Vimeo. If I can get my footage to look like the second video link I listed ('Dogstar'), I would be elated!

SECONDLY... I am interesting in finding out what HD Workflows you guys and girls use to import and export your footage into and out of Premier Pro CS3 on the Mac for your short films. I'm a creature of habit and once I have a recipe for success I'll stick to it. Just trying to do all of this right in the first place before I create bad habits. Thank you so much for your help! This forum is amazingly helpful and I am very, VERY grateful!

Thanks,

[daci]

I notice that the original movie is 1280x720 and the vimeo video has interlacing so I assume you did not deinterlace (or remove the pulldown) before making 1280x720 movie. If you shoot in 24p mode you'll need to remove pulldown (aka inverse telecine) and if 60i deinterlace your footage. I'm sure there is a way to do it in premier pro but the cheapest way is to use JES deinterlacer which has many fans among us mac-hv20 users. http://www.xs4all.nl/~jeschot/home.html

But personally I'm a big fan of quarter HD size. (960x540) It doesn't look inferior to full HD on HD monitor and I save so much storage space

I use iMovie 08 to import the footage at 960x540. iMovie deinterlaces your movie in the process by discarding one field, which doesn't look as bad as it sounds, except for maybe fast moving shots. This way I don't have to deal with deinterlacing and just import and cut the movie.
Here's the video I uploaded to vimeo using the the process. http://www.vimeo.com/717680

[kbrafford]

...discarding one field, which doesn't look as bad as it sounds, except for maybe fast moving shots.

In my experience, discarding a field looks better for fast action, but you pay for it in scenes with vertical or diagonal lines that become jagged.

[Stephen]

Daci- thanks for your help and quick response. A couple more questions for you:

1) What does 'discarding a field' refer to or mean? Sorry if this is a newbie question...

2) In your example video - is that 24p or 60i footage originally?

3) Does iMovie handle your 24p inverse telecine footage okay? I thought iMovie was unable to handle this 24p footage correctly. I have the iMove HD just before the newest version- does this make a difference?


Let me know- thanks so much for your time! Anyone else have MAC vimeo or HD workflows that they find yields amazing results? I'd love to hear more- thanks!

[daci]

Discarding one field means that you simply throw away one field to reduce the number of lines in half, instead of blending two fields with simple or advanced algorithm. iMovie just do that to make video quarter size. (You shouldn't use iMovie08 to edit DV footage. Although it imports DV in full raster it ignores one field for editing and exporting)

I shot the video in 24p mode and I didn't have time to inverse telecine each shot. Which means that I imported 1920x1080 60i as 960x540 30p footage in iMovie.
This is not an ideal process because the 24p embedded in 60i stream would be damaged and you end up with 30p footage with repeating frames, but I had no choice because of time constraint. The result in my case was ok, at least to me, because most shots are static.

In my experience, discarding a field looks better for fast action, but you pay for it in scenes with vertical or diagonal lines that become jagged.

I assume you like it better because you don't get the sawtooth pattern of interlacing (and me neither ), but you sacrifice the temporal resolution by half and your footage may look jerky depending on your sensitivity.
I guess you could get pseudo 30p result by shooting 60i with 1/60 shutter speed and import footage in 960x540. But in this case your original footage will be only good for that 30p quarter HD size and not the full HD process.

[Stephen]

So let me just clarify... I think a lightbulb just went on in my head...

When I shoot 24p on my HV20, it is actually being created in a 60i wrapper. When you run an inverse telecine, that essentially removes the wrapper and you are left with true 24p footage. Correct? Conversely, 60i is an interlaced format that must be deinterlaced for the web and other digital formats (effectively you are merging the lines), so that the lines are not visual.

Okay if thats correct then, is this what is happening to me...

iMovie cannot effectively interpret 24p footage as true 24p. It is instead bringing the footage from the DV tape in as 60i and interlacing it for me. When I export out of iMovie, I must deinterlace the footage. This is because it is now interlaced because a progressive stream was never brought in in the first place. Does that sound right?

How can I improve the quality of my footage with the JES deinterlacer? Do I capture the footage with iMovie and then run the inverse telecine? Should I capture the footage through Premiere Pro instead (are there better options with this?)?

What is the best way to workflow this for Maximum possible quality in conjunction with Vimeo postings?


Sorry for all the questions- thank you so much for your answers thus far- this is exceedingly helpful to me! I'm trying to wrap my brain around all this jargon and I think its starting click.

[Stephen]

Just found this response in another forum regarding workflow with PDF for MAC by IndyFX. Is this what I should do? Use iMovie or Premier Pro CS3 to capture footage and then drag and drop it onto the JES deinterlacer before editing in Premier Pro CS3 in a HDV 24p project preset? Let me know- thanks!

Yes, (you need to get the pulldown out) is that the question?
After you shoot in 24p and capture you will need to remove the 3:2 pulldown that the camera adds (there are a number of ways to do this) to extract the pure 24p content. Once you have your 24p content you are good to go you can edit and upload to web (after compression) and to DVD mastering (staying within the 24p workflow)
Actually very straightforward once you get the pulldown removed. (the Free tool JES deinterlacer is the simplest. You can drag and drop captured clips onto it and hit ok (the defaults will get you there at least to start)

[daci]

I think you got it now.

And yes, editing the inverse telecined footage in 24p timeline editor is the way to go for the best quality. Good luck.

[John Painter]

I'm using iMovie and FCE, with my HV30 and realized I didn't actually save my video in HDV per se, so I looked at the Apple web site to try and figure out what I was doing wrong, if you use a Mac take a look at this http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303177
saving in HD is important for me too, so I'm looking for any other posts on this subject.