fuzzy previews and exporting troubles...

hikari-sama · Post by **hikari-sama** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 1:28 am

okay, i asked this in the wrong forum yesterday, so i thought i would try getting it in the right one and maybe i can get this problem fixed. i'm one of those stupid newbies who *isn't* a comp sci genius, so i'm hoping one of you regulars who know a little more about this stuff can give me a hand. this is the only snag in my editing...i've gotten the hang of effects and so on, it's just the rendering that seems to not want to cooperate...

the footage i'm working from is dvd qual, it's pristine and nearabout perfect as you can get. great, right? ::sigh:: great, until i try and preview my effects and export the video. the quality is totally degraded, it looks like something i taped off TV. i've tried using just about every codec in the arsenal premiere (6.0) has given me, and all my "quality" settings are maxed...so what am i still doing wrong?

my setting defaulted to the "cinepak codec by radius", but along with that i have also tried the three DivX codecs available in my pulldown menus, and those just throw the whole picture halfway off the screen.

what i'm hoping someone can tell me is simply what the optimal settings are to use when previewing and exporting so that my picture is not all squared and fuzzylike.

my current settings are as follows (mind you...i actually have no idea what most of these mean, so please don't laugh *too* hard if i'm totally going about this the wrong way):

editing mode: video for windows
timebase: i've tried all the available ones, currently at 30
compresser: cinepak, but i've also tried DivX with no luck
framesize: 320x240 in a 4:3 aspect
framerate: 30, square pixels and 100% quality

what am i missing or doing wrong that screws up the picture? my export settings have been as above, and several different combinations of other options... i've read through many of the suggested guides and all the FAQ listed, but nothing i do helps. is there another codec i need to download to make this work? i already have TMPGEnc...but the link about Huffyuv in A&E's guide doesn't work...

tasukete kudasai ne! >_<
~~hikari

q_Malkavian_p · Post by **q_Malkavian_p** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 1:33 am

Is the source footage 352x240? Cause if not and you're watching full screen, that might explain it. Try a higher res (your best bet would be to use the res of the original clip). You also might try encoding in Huffyuv, which is a lossless codec. If it looks bad at that point, it's more than likely the res, or some other setting, and not a codec problem.

q_Malkavian_p · Post by **q_Malkavian_p** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 1:36 am

Oops, I meant 320x240, my bad.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 1:39 am

Cinepack is the problem. Export uncompressed, or with huffyuv. Note that the video wont playback smoothly then, but you can see the actual quality of the video.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 1:58 am

Is your framerate actually 30fps, or it is 29.97fps?

If it's the latter, you can use DV for previewing, provided you bump your render size up to 720x480. It's fast enough to be decompressed in real-time on most modern systems*, and it looks pretty good to boot.

* My Athlon clunker can do it.

q_Malkavian_p · Post by **q_Malkavian_p** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 2:00 am

The official Huffyuv site is down for some reason. You can get the file from me though on my FTP site. Here's the stats:

address - 68.118.40.228
user name - you
password - flonk

You need to use an FTP client though like WSFTP or CuteFTP, cause it won't allow anon connections.

Just unzip the 3 files, right click on the one with the .inf extension and choose "install". BOOM! That's all there is to it.

Or you can wait for the official site to come back up (don't ask me when).

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 2:30 am

Or you could pick it up from just about any respectable video editing site

HuffYUV is also included in the AMVApp pack, which you should install anyways.

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 4:59 am

Yeah, and stay away from cinepak, it has teh gay. Very badly. Its evil incarnate, the tool of the devil, used to corrupt n00bs. Stick with huffYUV or even uncompressed, like they said, for the first export, then recompress in a "third party" program like TMPEGenc, VirtualDub or Flask. For distribution use somethin like DivX, XviD (whick kicks DivX's ass clear out of the stadium) or an MPEG-2 compression.

And guys, if im wrong, correct me nicely please.

Ashyukun · Post by **Ashyukun** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 8:12 am

Also, unless I'm mistaken that codec that you have Premiere set to work/preview in will also have an effect on the preview- mine is normally set to MJPEG for speed, so the previews that it has to render look a bit fuzzier than the final output does even when I'm dealing directly with the .vobs (through AVS).

Actually Bebi, though it's entirely a personal preference, I think it's better to distro in MPEG-1 if you're going to go with MPEG. There are still enough people out there using older computers that don't have an MPEG-2 decoder on their system that I think it's worth the slight quality hit to do it in MPEG-1 instead of -2. And I think if you tweak things right, you can get a distro-sized -1 looking close to as good as a -2. Not to say I didn't accidentally put up MPEG-2 distro encodes of a few of my videos... something I need to fix once we can replace things on the 'carrot/donut. And again, this is pure personal preference- most people will likely be able to play an MPEG-2 without any problems.

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 8:10 pm

Ashyukun wrote:Also, unless I'm mistaken that codec that you have Premiere set to work/preview in will also have an effect on the preview- mine is normally set to MJPEG for speed, so the previews that it has to render look a bit fuzzier than the final output does even when I'm dealing directly with the .vobs (through AVS).

Actually Bebi, though it's entirely a personal preference, I think it's better to distro in MPEG-1 if you're going to go with MPEG. There are still enough people out there using older computers that don't have an MPEG-2 decoder on their system that I think it's worth the slight quality hit to do it in MPEG-1 instead of -2. And I think if you tweak things right, you can get a distro-sized -1 looking close to as good as a -2. Not to say I didn't accidentally put up MPEG-2 distro encodes of a few of my videos... something I need to fix once we can replace things on the 'carrot/donut. And again, this is pure personal preference- most people will likely be able to play an MPEG-2 without any problems.

This is true, but then again with MPEG-2, you can make SVCD's!! Although I'm not sure if thats worth crowing about, but....

I have a tonne of MPEG AMV's, this is a bit embarrasing, I'm not sure how to determine if they are MPEG-1 or MPEG-2. I like burning all my AMV's to a CD and watchin em on my DVD player. Beats the shit out of wathcing them on my TV-out card, coz the top of the video bends in slightle on the outside edges on it.