Edius 4.52: HDV to SD DVD workflow suggestions
 

Hi Grass Valley fans,

I am new to this awesome editor, basically just testing Edius at the moment. I have some HDV material, previously captured (m2t files) which I transcoded to the Canopus HQ format and loaded into Edius. Smooth editing, no problems there, but I'm not too terribly happy with the result.

My final product in this case is a standard def DVD. Encoding to SD mpeg2 directly from the timeline yields a fairly poor, very soft picture. I tried various workarounds, like exporting in Canopus HQ format and resizing with Virtualdub to uncompressed RGB, then encoding that to mpeg2 - much better results... but a lot of work.

So I was wondering what are you guys doing to output a crisp clean DVD from an HDV Edius project?

Thanks,

I've just editing my first job in HD and exported through Procoder in Edius and struck the same thing, soft images.

I'm trying a couple of different things now, but I had no problem when I just imported HDV footage into a SD project and then edited and exported. It was much sharper.

I don't really want to have to change this project to SD now as I've got titles and PIP's and layout all used in a wedding highlight edit, and I'd have to re-edit all those things in an SD timeline.

So my suggestion is just use your HDV footage in SD project, edit it and then render out.

I don't have much time to experiment at the moment, so I'll throw the BD making on the back burner for a little while longer.

Cheers Vaughan

I suggest this workflow.
Use an hd preset that fits your material. If you have 720P then use that preset on edius.

I then export a master in HD using an HQ codec.
At this point check the quality of your master, if its a go. open a new HD preset(depending on your master, 720 or 1080, )

then when you export to dvd via procoder choose mpeg 2 program stream--CBR (constant bit rate)

if your material is short, say below 30 min, like corporate or TVCs use the 60 minute template when asked 60,90 or 120.

The 60 min has lesser compression.

I take the program stream in an authoring program to burn to DVD. In my case i use encore.

Ted

Test results
 

OK, I had the time to do some tests and the results are as follows:

- Best quality: 1. Edit on HDV timeline, export using the Canopus HQ codec. 2. Start new SD project, import the file resulted in step 1, then output it as Canopus HQ (this is the step where it gets resized to 720x480). 3. Encode using Procoder 2 (I don't have version 3, and the dumbed down Express version that comes with Edius is limited in settings).

- Good quality: 1. As step 1 above. 2. Start new SD project, import the file resulted in step 1, output directly from timeline using C P Express.

- Bad quality: 1. As step 1 above. 2. Encode using Procoder 2.0.

- Worse quality: Export directly from timeline using C P Express.

These results seem to be in line with earlier tests, see http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=70792.

It looks like most NLEs have a better resizing algorithm than their corresponding companion encoder, and this did not change over the last two years or so.

Depending on the camera you use, usually the best result is to edit in a HDV preset and then change it to a SD one for exporting. Check any titles or graphics elements. Use Layout to change.

However it seems that the throughout the industry the better the footage and the better the encoder, the more this becomes a problem.

This has really become apparent with the shipping of the Sony EX. This link http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/fo...?t=5141&page=3 provides some very good discussion and probably the best solution so far.

Read that info and got puzzled... what is the role of Avisynth in the mix? I have been doing the resize in VDub for a long time and VDub reads the Canopus HQ files no problem...

Ervin...

You can frameserve directly into VirtualDub from Procoder. Saves a step from doing it manually.

You mean from Edius, right?

or Edius via procoder, yes
look here:

http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/fo...ead.php?t=5141