exporting DV from premiere pro and encoding with CCE

[ivanski]

Hello!
After several years of using Premiere and CCE I am seriously confused. I have just bought Matrox parhelia and finally can see the results of my encoding on TV and dont really like it.
Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong.
I captured a DV footage in Premiere, did some editing and exported again as DV. I set the following parameters for the file

Export as Microsoft DV.avi
compressor: DV (PAL)
pixel aspect ratio: D1/DV Pal(1.067)
recompress (is ticked)-maintain data rate
Lower Fields first

This produces a DV file, when played on TV is ok
Once I encode in CCe using following settings, I get jerky movements when the camera pans or there is any fast movement

CCe settings:
------------------
multipass VBR 3 pass, MPEG2 ES
AVG 3800 min 2000 max 5500
Aspect ratio 4:3

Vido settings (CCE)
---------------------
M=3, N/M=4
SEQ header every 1 gop
ADD sequence end code -ticked
Close all gops -ticked
Luminenece 16 to 235 -ticked
Offset line -set to 1 (it should be DV Bff right, therefore shifting 1 line)
the rest I leave as default

Quality settngs
---------------
quantizer characteristics set to 28
Intra block DC precision set to 10
block scanning order set to alternate
I dont use any filters, as well as progressive frame flag (it is DV bff right?)

This produces an MPEG2 of reasonable quality and size. I would only point out that it leaves some strange artifacts around sharp edges. In another words, they are not sharp...I dont know how to describe it.
Nevertheless, this setting also produces a jerky movement as I mentioned before.
I think the setting of CCE and Adobe is right, if I set in CCE offset line to 0 (not shifting by 1 line), than the jerky movements dissapears, but it also contradicts what is mentioned in CCE forum. The resulting MPEG also creates ugly lines when watched on PC monitor.

Can someone point me out what I am doing wrong or what is the correct procedure? I simply want to capture in DV, edit in DV and compress to MPEG2 for DVD use. I think outputting captured DV as progressive from Adobe premiere is nonsense, as it will become intelaced fotage anyway during MPEG2 compression.

thanx for any answer

[Video Dude]

1) Change your your Premiere settings. If you are editing DV to DV then untick the recompress box. Why recompress when you don't have to. Premiere can "smart render" your edited DV file without losing any quality. By recompressing it you are losing quality.

2) The average bitrate 3800 is much too low for interlaced DV @ 720x576 (D1). DV can be really hard to compress and good results can be expected if you increase the average bitrate to 6000. The low bitrate explains the artifacts.

3) Newer versions of CCE support bottom field (bff) output, so you no longer need to convert it with the offset line. If 0 is not jerky, then that is the setting you use. The guides were written when CCE only outputted TFF. A light filter can help if your video has noise (but most people say AviSynth filters are better). If your DV file is interlaced do not set the progressive frame. Leave it unticked.


Originally posted by ivanski
I think outputting captured DV as progressive from Adobe premiere is nonsense, as it will become intelaced fotage anyway during MPEG2 compression.Since you want the final result to be interlaced you want to leave the DV interlaced.

Originally posted by ivanski
The resulting MPEG also creates ugly lines when watched on PC monitor. Those are interlaced lines. If you use a software dvd player to playback your MPEG-2 files it should deinterlace it on the fly during playback.

[ivanski]

Hi
thanx for your answer

1) what version of cce does bff? I am using 2.67.00.27

2) if I set the ofset line to 0 and dont tick zigzag as well as progressive the footage is again jerky.



this really makes me wonder?

thnax for any answer

[Séamus]

I know CCE is a quality tool but so far I've used the MPEG-2 Encoder in Premiere and always had good quality video.
Is the difference so big when passing the video through CCE ?

[Xesdeeni]

CCE also provides a plugin for Premiere. With this, there is no recompression on pieces of the video that you processed (like transitions, etc.).

Xesdeeni