DV to DivX step by step

[Soaring]

Hi! :)

I know it was probably discussed here thousands of times, but as it's my first week as a digital editor I need step by step procedure. I am not dumb, so I will learn quickly, but I just need to know where to start..

I have a DV camcoder and I need to put my videos on CDs. Now, I have Adobe premiere and I captured video on my HD with it. First question: it saved my video in some dvsd comressed format, was any quality lost?

Now, as far as I understood the best compressor is DivX5.0.2? Is it so? Then the question is what parameters should I use to compress my video (resolution,bitrate, etc)? Now its 720x480 NTSC. Then my video is interlaced and as far as I understood I need to do something about it, so that it looks good, what should I do?

Finally, will it be possible to edit compressed video later or the quality will be too low? I want to do some editing, but right now I just don't have time for it and I need to free my tapes as I am planning to do some shooting.

Please don't send me to any FAQs as I've read them all. I just need to know that I do everything right, because there is some really important video.

And is Premiere the best thing to work with?

Thanks!

[Soaring]

Subj,

I wanted to compress audio with LAME as I heard it's the best mp3 codec but premiere doesn't have it as an option somehow, what's wrong? what should I do about it? I have lame installed on my pc and it works fine in other applications

[bb]

Originally posted by Soaring
I have a DV camcoder and I need to put my videos on CDs. Now, I have Adobe premiere and I captured video on my HD with it. First question: it saved my video in some dvsd comressed format, was any quality lost?
dvsd is (one of the) DV four character codes. DV is indeed a compressed format (5:1 compression ratio), but there's no quality loss when you capture your DV video from your camcorder to your PC through firewire, because there's no format conversion or re-encoding.
Now, as far as I understood the best compressor is DivX5.0.2? Is it so? Then the question is what parameters should I use to compress my video (resolution,bitrate, etc)? Now its 720x480 NTSC. Then my video is interlaced and as far as I understood I need to do something about it, so that it looks good, what should I do?
Well, that depends on what you intend to do. If you'd like to play your video on a standard DVD player, then DVD MPEG-2 were the recommended format. For DivX5 there's the guide, which mentions the deinterlace topic as well.
Finally, will it be possible to edit compressed video later or the quality will be too low? I want to do some editing, but right now I just don't have time for it and I need to free my tapes as I am planning to do some shooting.
Keep your DV file as long as you are going to edit. You can edit compressed video, but you'll experience a considerable quality loss.
And is Premiere the best thing to work with?
Many people use it. I don't think it's bad - my favourite is Ulead MediaStudio Pro. For some encoding and filtering steps VirtualDub (in conjunction with AviSynth) is the way to go.

bb

[bb]

Originally posted by Soaring
Subj,

I wanted to compress audio with LAME as I heard it's the best mp3 codec but premiere doesn't have it as an option somehow, what's wrong? what should I do about it? I have lame installed on my pc and it works fine in other applications
Lame is a standalone encoder, so you have to extract your audio to a WAV file first, then squeeze it through the encoder. You can use BeSweet as well, which has Lame integrated, and there's a GUI available. I know there's a Lame ACM codec, too, but it never worked for me, and it has limited capabilities. So you better don't use that one.

May I point you to the Ogg Vorbis codec? It produces better quality than MP3 even at lower bitrates, and it's used in a better media container (OGM instead of AVI). Use VirtualDubMod to create your OGM files.

bb

[ulfschack]

I agree with bb that dvd is the ultimate solution for DV. But if you wanna wiev it on your computer (a fast one at that) you should keep as much information as possible. Which is to say: Do not deinterlace! Granted it looks crappy playing interlaced frames at 25 fps. That's why you should separate the frames into half height/double framerate and use a real-time resizer when viewing on the computer.

Just import into VirtualDub, split the frames, do a "bob" (one quarter pixel each way ... trial and error depending on field dominance) and encode.

If you're looking to clean the source before encoding you'll run into some problems since all temporal cleaners seem to be deviced for progressive streams thus not taking into account the upp-down shift in pixels for the odd-even fields that are separated. I've solved it by using an avisynth script developed in this thread
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33007
(disregard the resize and addBorders if your not making mpeg2 for TV)
... THEN do the VirtualDub thing above.

But beware decoding a 50 fps 288x720 divX movie with bi-directional frames and GMC along with the RT resizing takes it's toll on the processor. 2GHz and up will do fine tho, and since we're archiving for the future I see little point in designating the movies for todays "slow" computers.

As an example I can mention that I once lost a mpeg2 DVD home video stream due to computer troubles and had to reconstruct it from my 50 fps backup avi. After reversing the process (unbobbing and weaving) the end result was very impressive considering.

Btw, if you want to edit your films in the future you could do this without any loss as long as your just cutting away. Any fancy transitions or music mixes will of course affect the video or the audio respectively.

cheers

[Soaring]

I didn't get the idea of not deinterlacing. Won't the quality be better if I deinterlace? and why make the image smaller and fps higher? I started using Gknot recently and it transfers dvds with fps of 29.97 to 24 or smth like that... shouldn't I do the same with my home video? I am really confused...

[ulfschack]

I understand your confusion. With deinterlace you'll get blurring and miscoloration to some degree no matter what method you're using. Some methods are vastly better than others, but they all share two major issues: 1) take away information from the movie, and 2) interpolate (make up information for the movie).

Doing it my way will give you an exeptionally fluent video, a treat to the eye. The downside will be some blurring from the RT resizing and the bigger space required for encoding 50 fps (typ. 30%).

Don't take my word for it. Make a few sample tests for yourself. You might arrive to another opinion than I ... allthough I doubt it :)

You can forget about Gknot for advanced home video projects. To do stuff like above you'll need some manual tweaks. Gknot is exellent for Hollywood tho.

For a more newbie friendly approach go to www.100fps.com and read up on what it's all about. Very informative yet graspable.

cheers

[Soaring]

thanks for the link! :)

I've read most of the stuff there and at this page:

http://www.100fps.com/filesizes_of_deinterlaced_video.htm

he says that the best are 9, 15, 16... I am still not sure what method should I use... As far as I understood you suggest something different from all of those three. Why do you think your method is better then those?

I know I probably should start encoding by this time, but I want to make sure I understand what I am doing :)

And one other thing, I am planning to burn everything on a CD so please take that into consideration :) DVD is too expensive for me at the moment :)

Sincerely..

[ulfschack]

Well, in amongst those I guess "my" method is #1 (not as in the the best ... but method number one in the table :) )

As you can see he's added a sharpen to compensate for the blurring of "bob" in VD, but I like to fiddle as little as possible with filters beleiving that it's all gonna be possible to do this realTime sometimes soon.

It's of no consequence that you're using CD instead of DVD. Your standalone player is not going to play it anyways as long as you use DivX. Simply use less playtime and maintain the quality. Also you see that #1 takes half the space compared to #15, and I do believe that he strongly recommends #1 as well

cheers

[Soaring]

Oh, I am sorry I just missed that he recommends #1 as well :)

So this is what you think is the best:

Just import into VirtualDub, split the frames, do a "bob" (one quarter pixel each way ... trial and error depending on field dominance) and encode.

Right? and no filters?

Now, can you tell me what exactly should I do in VD to reach these results? I never used it and I am kind of lost in all the menus there.. (that's where the name of the thread comes into play :))

Thanks for your patience :) It's kind of hard to start from the scratch :)

Sincerely

[ulfschack]

Sure, we're all newbies at one point :)

1)Install Avisynth.
2)write a textfile and name it "clip.avs". The content should be something like:

AviSource("C:\clip.avi")
AssumeFrameBased
SeparateFields

3)Open VD and drag the avs-file to it.
4)Go Video->filters->add->field bob. For me it's even-quarter down, and quarter up for odd.
5) Then go video->compression and select your CODEC and set it.
6) press F7 (encode)

Audio can be handled seperately and be interleaved with VD at a later stage. To view (full vertical size) you'll need a more sofisticated player than WMP or have a directshow resizer registered (get one here at dooms)

Actually I think you can skip the Avisynth if you have a saved avi-file from the start (and not like me who frameserve directly from Premiere via IPC source). You just have to enable the "pop up exented options" in VD when opening files. To do this don't drag the file but do it through the open file menue in VD and check the box for it. After you've browsed to the file you'll find a number of options one of which is splitting the fields. Then resume from 4)

good luck

[Soaring]

Ok, I am trying to split the fieldslike you recommended, but there are two options in advance options:

split into two fields (unswapped)
split into two fields (swapped)

What does swapped mean and which one should I use?

[bb]

This refers to different field orders ("field dominance", "top field first" vs. "bottom field first", etc.) you might get depending on your source. Try a short clip with both options; one will result in a smooth video, the other one will be "jumpy". You'll notice the difference if there's movement in a scene.

bb

[Soaring]

ok, then what is quater up/down and how do I figure whuch one to use? trial and error?

another question is what is the optimal options for divx5 when compressing dv (resolution, bitrate, etc)? and is it possible to set VD to go through both passes automatically?

[stax76]

another question is what is the optimal options for divx5 when compressing dv (resolution, bitrate, etc)? and is it possible to set VD to go through both passes automatically?

don't matter if DV or not, if you are't very experienced, I suggest to use about 200000 pixel for resolution and compressibility test about 70%, both passes automatically should be no problem with the joblist

[bootj]

Hi to all, thanks for this incredible and beautiful forum and site.


As I told this is my first post, after two months I'm trying to finish my first DV project started with premiere.

I'll explain very shortly my situation:

The project I've created is about 40 min lenght, in PAL 720*576 and was taken from two cameras, ( a sony Mini DV quite old in long play mode, and a newer panasonic MiniDV ).
Since I've captured the dv in september, I didn't take care very much about setting: the audio is always 32k, the video is for the sony normal 720*576 , and for the panasonic a fake 16:9..always 720*576 but with two black bar Up and Down).
The movie was created mixing that 2 sources, using mp3 converted @ 32khz wav and some other little mpeg converted (like the Universal intro).

Well, my video is interlaced, so at the beginning of the project I've used many short clip with different speed from original ( some up some down ) so It needed to be deinterlaced and I've done with premiere 6.5.

My problem now is that I've to produce a final version of my summer movie, but after months spent in finding the right compressor, I would like some help in deinterlacing with premiere 6.5 and other problems.

- Should I transform the clip with other tool before adding them to project ( deinterlacing and slow motioning for example, to get a great result as on www.100fps.com I like very much the smooth result on some exaples !!!) ???

- How can set up the fields with different camera sources... don't know now the field setting on each clip.

- Should I "resize" or add some black bar to the movie to get a 16:9 aspect ( because now it alternates normal clip with fake19:9 ones ) and how can I resize... for getting the best result...

- I've created some output with canopus ( SVCD and VCD ) but don't know if export first in canopus DV for example and then compress with divx5 or use instead the divx5 compressor directly from premiere.

- For the audio sync, I've solved my awesome problems with Virtuadub mp3 encoding, is the only way?



Any other suggestion is very very appreciated.


Thanks again for patience, for my dummy questions, for my ugly english and for any eventual reply...

sincerely

Marco

[ulfschack]

That was a lot of questions :)

Let me try to answer a few. First off I agree that it seems to be the general opinion that Premiere screws up the interlacing when applying slo-mo or speed-ups. I however have never experienced this. I don't deinterlace either. For DVDs I keep the interlacing and encode high bitarates of mpeg-2, and for DivX I just seperate the fields.

As for the fake 16:9 being mixed with ordinary 4:3 I dont see an easy solution. You've allready made the edit I take it (and you dont wanna do it again). And the clips are mixed. That will complicate any post processign taking care of it. One idea would be to import the "fake" in an avisynth script, where you'd remove the black bars and do a proper interlaced resize. Drag that into Virtualdub and reencode to DV, rename the resulting avi and fool premiere into use that new clip instead.

As regards to encoding of the final movie I would suggest you get a premiere video server (videotools.com) -> avisynth -> VirtualDub -> DivX. So that you don't have to do an intermediate encode.

Deinterlacing would take place in avisynth or VD using GreedyHMA, tomsMoComp, decomb, interpolation or whatever you find yields the best result. Or you can simply do like me ... split the fields and "bob" them much like method #1 on 100fps.com

cheers

[bootj]

Well, I tought about posting new reply many times, since first I wanted to try your suggestions.... but now I am really in trouble..

Well, let's explain my movie...

It was taken this summer in Formentera ( spain ) a little island near ibiza. Me and my friends took a "steve-o like" movie, with two cameras as I said, one panasonic miniDV and the other an old sony MiniDV lo quality mode.
I've used a notebook of my friend with the firewire port, to capture the DV, don't remember the setting, since in august I didn't know field problems!!!
But here's the setting of my project in premiere 6.5 ( settings were the same since I've created it ) Settings (http://www.bootj.com/settings.jpg)

The movie is 40 minutes long as I said, with a short intro with thx promo and universal promo ( see frames THX (http://www.bootj.com/thx.jpg) Universal (http://www.bootj.com/universal.jpg) . They were taken from some divx I've, using VirtualDUB converted to 25 FPS pal.

The movie continues with a intro, black screen and added some after effects title, Title (http://www.bootj.com/title.jpg) and then under speed music I present all the actors with same effect ( see (http://www.bootj.com/actor.jpg) ) and here I had to SLOW down the video speed ( down to 30% or less ). Well, without deinterlacing here I've my first problem, since the output video is jumping a lot. Then the movie goes to the beach, and here too, there are some speed down scene... but also speed up. ( Frame1 (http://www.bootj.com/frame1.jpg) Frame2 (http://www.bootj.com/frame2.jpg) Frame3 (http://www.bootj.com/frame3.jpg) Frame4 (http://www.bootj.com/frame4.jpg) )
Then we go to the HOT part of the movie, the night scenes with stunts... done by SONY old camera, without fake 16:9 aspect, recorded in long palying mode... ( see Frame5 (http://www.bootj.com/frame5.jpg) Frame6 (http://www.bootj.com/frame6.jpg) ) here the quality is very poor, and there is much "snow" on movie...
The final part, is clear again, with panasonic MiniDV ( see Frame7 (http://www.bootj.com/frame7.jpg) Frame8 (http://www.bootj.com/frame8.jpg) ) and ends with again fake 16:9 (see Frame9 (http://www.bootj.com/frame9.jpg) ) and titles ( Frame12 (http://www.bootj.com/frame12.jpg) ).

well, I've tried many times with Premiere video server, avisinth and virtualbub with method 4b, but the output is jumping a lot...

well, after seeing this material you can ( I hope ) better understand what I'm doing, so you can suggest me the optimal way to finish the job,...... SORRY if I bore, but I'm getting desperate since almost 100 of my friends are waiting for this movie almost since 2 months... and I want to give them on christmas!!!!

try to understand my desperation...

sincerely

bOOtJ

[ulfschack]

I will try to help you, but first we need to get a few things clear.

Are you putting the final production on divX, SVDC or DVD? That is are you gonna use TV, Computer or both for viewing?

What is "jumping"? Where is it jumping? ... on your computer or in your stand-alone DVD-player.

(I take it you are aware why the pictures you provided are combed. These are interlace lines and are really a composit of two (half vertical resolution) frames separated in time by 1/50 th of a second. If not treated correctly this will cause jumping on a TV that expects everything to be interlaced)

Do you have the original files on your computer (the ones used to do the edit) Or have you erased them and rendered your project allready?

BTW Long play has nothing to do with the poor quality on your night shots, it's (of course) the low lighting that provokes higher gain in the ccd thus making it more sensitive to everything (especially noise).

Write back and we'll pobably sort it out.

cheers

[bootj]

Well, I will not finish to thank you for the time you spend with me...

First: the final production should be in DivX format for people that use the computer, but also in SVCD or DVD for people who don't have a a cpu or have an old one... ( that don't support very well divx @ high bitrate..) so there would be more than one format.
I've already produced some output with canopus procoder for example, like svcd directly from Premiere, with good result ( at least the playback on Xbox console with xboxmediaplayer is good on tv ) but after reading the 100fps site I was astonished from the result you can get, so I decided to improve the quality through other formats.
So, I've understood that de interlacing is for computer playbck ( we don't need at least for TV ) but I prefer to have at the end three kind of format:

- the best quality for TV (I assume DVD for DVDdisc and SVCD for CDR)
- the best quality for Computer (I assume Divx5)
- the best quality for both (some format that will work for both)

(I know I'm asking too much, but because I'm here to explain my whishes, I'm doing it :)



- the jumping problem appears on computer playback ( with my last experiment with virtualdub with divx exporting) when a clip is speeded down ( when I present the actors.. ).... is like frames blink...


- Yes, ofcourse I've the whole project opened, with all original files... There are a mess of Gigabytes on my hdd...!!!!!


thanks again...
If I can make you understand what I'm ging wrong, I'll be happy to answer to all your questions...

sincerely

bOOtJ




p.s. Few days ago I've installed the premiere video server. I'm using it in export timeline --> movie --> with the avisynth option. Well, when I load the avs file in virtualdub, there's no problem, but when I add the line separatefields ,Virtualdub tells that can't recognize that command. ( I add the separate command just before the line return video )

I would like to create output similar to examples of 100fps if possible, like brit.avi turtle.avi...

last thing... the 50fps is because we separe fields, isn't it? but don't know how to get them....

risincerely

bOOtJ


!!!!!!!!LAST UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry but I used bad configuration for videoserver. I'm now compressing with virtualdub divx5.01 1pass quality based 73% and audio mp3 32khz stereo the whole thing. Now I can see the movie is 50 fps, I use the 4b method with Alternate field order. Don't know the result on slow speed clip, let's see in some houres!!!

!!!!!!DEFINITIVE UPDATE!!!!!! While I'm looking the great result when Virtualdub with 4b method process the movie, I've noticed the slow motion frames( done with premiere decreasing speed ) are analyzed by virtualdub like this...

Imagine we have frame 1 before 2 that is before 3 etc...
they're processed as

1 2 3 2 3 4 5 4 5 6 5 6 7 8 7 8 9 and I think this is because the jumping problem I've noticed ...


hope this will be the last edit to this post...

bOOtJ

p.s. THE QUALITY WITH FIELDS SPLITTING IS AMAZING!!!!

ok. I want to save more post, so this would be very comprehensive of all my problem. This early morning, the encoding has finished. Even if I mistake the audio bitrate, the filesize is quite good (660Mb ) but with higher audio bitrate it will reach 700mb I think, the perfect for cd..

So.. the problems...
When I saw the right window od virtualDub, that was the preview frame ( as I told with amazing quality ) but without divx compression... so the final result is lower quality , ( like not focused ) .. but after all now I consider that there is different qualities of DV sources... and mine are quite poor ( especially the sony one.. )

Since I kept the divx configuration as is ( I've only choosed the bitrate of 1 pass quality based @ 73% ), would like if it's possible to improve the quality with some divx settings..( maybe I'll post some frames, so you can see if it's possible )
About the audio I've noticed that the keyframe maybe is too long ( each 300 ) because it seems sometimes the movie looses the sync.

The ver real problem is the "jumping" of frames when slowspeeded with premiere ( and I've noticed that problem also in two effect applied with Hollywood FX studios, like slide doors... )


hope now you've cleared the situation.... :D

waiting for your precious reply

bOOtJ

[ulfschack]

Could you post your avisynth script here, please? Check the version of avisynth (just write a script containing nothing but the word "version" and drag it to WMP) and tell us.

In Premiere have you checked under Clip > Video Options > Field Options to make sure that it deinterlaces for clips below 100% speed? Also note that these options are clip-related meaning that if you cut a scene to peices with the razor you can assign different field behaviour to each one of them on export. Anyways, play around with the settings for a while and see if you notice anything different.

1-pass q 73% wouldn't make me very happy. Use 2-pass and get size control while your at it. Also use B-frames (for the more powerful computers, lest it you'll see stuttering) Oh, and playback complexity has very little to do with bitrate as you mentioned before. It's mainly resolution and to some extent B-frames, Q-pel, GMC or in-codec-deinterlacing (which you shouldn't use anyways). Maybe 300 is a tab to much for DV try lowering to 100 and judge for yourself.

A note on resolution. If your going to use field-splitting you should defenitily use full res as it were. If your deinterlacing for DivX for computer viewing you could basically resize to whatever you want. Hint: My 2GHz P4 512 RDRAM just barely manages full res field-splitting with B-frames. (but I don't care, since I'm archiving for the future where even wrist whatches are going to play stuff like that whitout breaking a sweat :) )

Be sure to tell us if your luck improves some :)

Cheers