Compression & deinterlace

[Guy Godwin]

OK guy's I am very frustrated and not sure where to turn.

I see these great clips from others that are very clear and smooth
almost like an HD tv and the file size is pretty small.

I have been trying to create similar files of my own and having a terrible time.
I have been using Pinnacle and Virtual Dub for all of my editing needs and quite frankly neither is working the way I would like.

I have been considering getting Adobe Premire with hopes that it can solve all of my needs from Compression, deinterlace and rendering for web applications.

I know that using 60i footage makes this tougher and I would be better served just starting with progressive footage. I will be doing more of this. But really I want to know can Adobe Premire Pro accomplish this for me. I am not worried about the money, I just want good results.

[Russ Holland]

You won't go far wrong with Premiere Pro.

It comfortably handles DV and HDV, has powerful editing tools, colour correction, and can export footage as the most common types for web, including flash, quicktime, windows media.

It is fairly expensive, but if the cost doesn't bother you then go for it - you'll not regret it. You could try visiting Adobe.com and download a 30 day trial of the program, to see if it does exactly what you want it to though, as it is a lot of money to spend if it isn't good for you.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Progressive scan or de-interlacing is what makes for the added quality and better compression. If you have interlaced footage then use something like Re:Vision's FieldsKit to de-interlace it. Premiere is one of the hosted platforms for that plugin and it is a great NLE. In several ways I prefer it to FCP, although I edited on FCP for years. The Adobe Media Encodere included will allow you to output your footage in QT H.264 just fine.

[Sherman Wing]

If I can make a suggestion for any web stuff, I'd say invest in a program like Sorenson Squeeze. It's a program dedicated to nothing but compressing video.

60i is seen as 30f in adobe premiere on the timeline and Premiere handles it quite nicely. If you've been using Pinnacle and Virtual Dub there is a steep learning curve to learn how to get the most out of Premiere but it's worth every penny. Premiere and after effects can do what everything the pros do except 3D

[Guy Godwin]

It sounds like I need to follow my instinct and get going with it.

RE: Learning curve
What do you recommend the best way to shorten this curve. Just dive in on my own or are there some resources out there better than others?

[Graham Hickling]

Hi Guy - you need to clarify (for yourself and for us) whether you are happy with your edited footage, but unhappy with how they look after compression. Or whether you are dissatisfied with your editing capability as well.

If its just the compression step that's the problem, then as Sherman says Soreson Squeeze or Procoder or TMPGEnc Xpress - all standalone encoders - may be your solution.

Premiere is great for editing, but IMHO not quite as good as any of the 3 above for encoding for delivery.

But... I suspect you want better editing capability too, yes?

[Guy Godwin]

Here is the background.
I have a sports website that has evolved from several of my interest. Not until last fall did I ever consider that my XL2 could find it's way onto my website stuff. But to make a long story short. As I was learning my XL2 I had some local Highschools (Basketball) & Colleges(Hockey) ask me to record some games.

As it turns out, two of the players that were on an opposing team are two of the biggest college recruits for the 2010 class. One of which is already going to Kentucky. I have been contacted by several Kentucky fans that are wanting to see the game that I have of this player and another player on the same team.

Through some not so scientific market studies I am expecting that I can sell games as a PPV through my website. ( These basketball fans are crazy about recruiting!!)

To answer the above question^^^
I will do very little editing. Basically cutting out stuff that is not needed. My current files are 60i but I expect to change to 30p. I may look at adding a 2nd camera and would like to sink them as much as possible. (Mainly just for some replay's, close ups etc..)

I really don't like the quality after compression and I am not sure if it is me of the methods I have been attempting. I see much better work elswere.

The reason I chose Adobe Premire as a possible solution.
1.) I read it can sink two camera's footage realively easily. ( I don't have to worry about sinking a person talking or singing...It does not have to be perfect)
2.) I figured with Flash and Premire both being Adobe there would be some overlap and hopefully be able to handle all my needs.
3.) I am fairly familiar with other Adobe products.
4.) I have read that it is one of the better software for editing in general. I can use it for more than just this application.

The key points for me will be compression (because it would be about 60 mins of footage) and website deployment. Since this would be a Pay Per view type thing I want the quality to be better than what you can get from other sites. But most of all, I want a software that has support in all areas.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Guy, Premiere's multi-camera editing is one of the best in the business. For synching your cameras you can use a slate or, if that is impractical you can use the trick that I describe in this tutorial: http://paolociccone.com/blog/?p=36
When you get Premiere with Encore, encore can output the entire DVD project as a Flash program, which means that with one single project you create the DVD and the Web delivery, which is, AFAIK, the only solution in the market to do this.
Again, unless you acquire your footage in progressive scan, your best option for quality improvement is to de-interlace your footage. Then use QuickTime with H.264 for web delivery. This will require a bit of experimentation in order to get familiar with all the parameters but it does lead to excellent quality with moderate files size.

[Guy Godwin]

Paolo,
Thanks for the information.

However, I am not sure I understand what you are saying.
RE: Interlaced footage:
You are saying that onced it is interlaced I should then use Quick Time? with H264 (Is this the codec for compression?)

However, if the footage is already progressive I should use Encore?

Either I don't understand what you are saying or I don't understand the various footage types? I thought the interlace footage would be considered progressive and could then use Premire for the web delivery?

Please clarify.

Also, does Premire/Encore deinterlace good?

Is Encore a part of Adobe Premire CS3? Not an extra software?

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Guy Godwin

You are saying that onced it is interlaced I should then use Quick Time? with H264 (Is this the codec for compression?)

No, I'm suggesting to de-interlace the footage when editing because getting rid of the fields makes the image better, gets rid of the "jaggies" and ultimately will compress better. H.264 is a relatively new codec supported by several players, part of the BluRay spec and it delivers stunning quality with small files size. In fact it's smaller than Flash's On2 encoder while delivering higher quality. Note that Flash 9 supports H.264, non QT, encoded files as well.

However, if the footage is already progressive I should use Encore?

No, Encore is the DVD authoring tool part of the Production Studion CS3. With it you can author a DVD-like menu that plays all your videos based on chapters. Premiere allows you to set the chapter markers so that you can generate Encore projects from the NLE. Once you have an Encore project setup, you can output the project as a Flash application, without having to know anything about Flash. That allows you to do professional Web delivery using the familiar DVD authoring interface.

I thought the interlace footage would be considered progressive and could then use Premire for the web delivery?

Interlaced footage needs to be converted to progressive through the de-interlace process otherwise Premiere and any other NLE will interpret it correctly as being split in fields each one the duration of 1/2 second. You need to use a plugin like Re:Vision FieldsKit in order to de-interlace.

Also, does Premire/Encore deinterlace good?

No, there is no built-in system, you need separate plugin, see above.

Take care.

[Harm Millaard]

Originally Posted by Paolo Ciccone

Interlaced footage needs to be converted to progressive through the de-interlace process otherwise Premiere and any other NLE will interpret it correctly as being split in fields each one the duration of 1/2 second.

Strange time. Or are you using 2FPS material?

[Paolo Ciccone]

That was a mistake on my side, I should not write when it's that late :) What I meant was, interlace is the encoding of SD TV. On NTSC footage you have 30fps, each frame is split in two "fields", the set of odd-numbered lines and even-numbered lines. Each set is shown on the screen at an interval of 1/60th of a second or 1/2 the interval of the frame rate. With PAL that would be a 1/50th of a second for 25fps.

[Giroud Francois]

if your target is making video for the web there are few rules to follow.

1) keep it small: HDV is far too big for any regular computer screen.
by keeping the size (in pixel) smaller you will solve several problems (size of the file, bandwidth needed, playability, deinterlacing)
if you cut an HDV (1920x1080 in square pixel) by half , you still got a 960x540 window, can supress a field (no more deinterlacing needed if interlaced).
important thing is , as soon as you need to resize video it needs to be deinterlaced first.

2) apply filters: virtualdub has a lot of filters that can smooth pixel for better encoding. This will not make your video look better at first, it will minimize the artifact at compression, so it will look better after compression.

3) do not use flash based websites as youtube since they are not giving quality, use quicktime, windows media codes or divx.

[Ervin Farkas]

Number 3) is arguable... some of the best quality I have achieved so far is with the Flash player as Flash now supports mp4/H.264.

So I would rewrite 3): Make a distinction between Flash, the player, and Flash, the video. Do not use Flash video; it is weak compared to WMV. But DO USE Flash player, without question Flash is the most popular player on the web, and an mp4 file playing inside the Flash player will combine the best of both worlds.

And I would add 4) - do not use QuickTime or you will limit your viewer base to the Mac people plus those few that can enjoy a bug-free implementation of the QT player on PC.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Well, Ervin, while I agree on your correction about Flash, point 4) is not really correct. QuickTime has a large installed base on PC and many of those QT installations are working just fine. I would say that the rate of problems of QT on a PC is consistent with the rate of problems with PC apps in general.

About HD resolution, I just wanted to add that HDV is either 720p or 1080i and I shot a lot of 720p multicamera footage for the web. Reduced it to 1/2 the resolution, 640x360 and it delivered on QuickTime or Flash perfectly fine. A 40minute interview would generally deliver for 60-80Mb with pretty quick playback.