Video Techniques

[shimer]

I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to share their techniques for creating videos that others can download. I've done some experimenting, but I can't seem to get the quality that I want.

I've downloaded many of the WMV's on popkid's ftp site, and they are all of pretty good quality for their relatively small size. I've tried to do a conversion and it didn't quite givce me the quality I wanted.

Here's the process I used.

I have a Sony Digital Handycam DCR-TRV30. I've pulled video off this using both firewire and VideoWave 5.0 (unfortunatly the video is captured using the DV format, and the files are WAY too big - about 1Gig for 4 minutes). So then I plugged the analog ports of my camera into my Dazzle Digital Video Creator (model DVC-USB) and captured video using the Movie Maker software that came with it. I used the TV Quality settings, which is what I'm looking for (I want to be able to play these on a TV without distortion, which means you need a pretty good data rate).

Next I produced the video into MPEG again using the TV Quality.

The test video is of the 100 years kisosk at AK, and is 10:16 long. At the quality I wanted, the file is 104.8 Meg, or 10.21Meg/minute. Obviously far too big for downloading, but good for TVs and storage.

Next I fired up Windows Movie Maker and imported the file. I then saved it using the 'Video for e-mail and dual channel ISDN (128Kbps)' WMV format, and there was noticable distortion. I then used the 'Video for broadband (256kbps)' setting, and again the distortion was noticeable.

So what processes do others use? I'd like to upload some of the 30+ hours of ride and park video I have, but I want it to be of acceptable quality (I'm a stickler for that).

Thanks!

 

[popkid]

hey shimer,

i'm kinda new at this video stuff myself, but maybe i can offer some help...

capturing the video to your pc is just the first step, and you want that quality to be as high as possible - so don't worry about the huge file size.

once you're done editing your video in videowave you need to click the produce button to render your clip - that's where you can pick different options for outputting your video. i think i uded the mpeg-1 settings, but i'm not sure since i've been playing around with a few different programs to find the one i like best.

here's the trick though, after i rendered my video i then used a program called media cleaner (or just cleaner now i guess) to compress the video to a .wmv

some of the other guys used divx compression, but i haven't gotten around to experimenting with that yet - but the quality vs file size is great! i'm sure they'll pop up here to help, since we'd all like to see your videos (we can get into the sharing part later).

since you have videowave and a digicam, i would recommend putting dazzle away for now and using videowave for better quality. i use my dazzle to capture from my vcr and that's pretty much it...

 

[shimer]

Originally posted by popkid
capturing the video to your pc is just the first step, and you want that quality to be as high as possible - so don't worry about the huge file size.

Thanks for the info!

Unfortunatly, the huge file size is an issue because I can only get about 30 minutes of video before I fill up my hard drive.

Do you know if VideoWave allows you to capture at a lesser format? The format it uses is uncompressed full DV resolution, and I will never have a need for that much.

I guess I could buy another hard drive but that seems like a drastic step.

Anyway, I'll try your techniques for WMV's and see what happens

John

 

[NowInc]

My old job was multimedia director for a internet/CD based company that dealt with movie trailers and commercials...so perhaps I can be of some help...

Sadly, there is no "quick one step" way to do good compression...but there IS an easy way..and there is of course...a hard way..

the HARD way..would be going basically frame by frame and adapting the compression values using something like permier or after FX to preserve the best quality for every individual frame..now remember.30 frames a second...so as you know..this takes a loooooooooong time..but it yields the BEST results (This is actually what most of the movie trailers on the internet are done..and you see that they are awesome quality with dealable file size)

The EASY way..as popkid knows..is to use MediaCleaner. What that program does is it tries to automate the above process for you...which gives you pretty decent results but requires massive tweaking to get it "just right".

 

[DisneyJedi]

Hi John! I am new to the video editing stuff too, but learned a bunch from spagmoid on this forum. He knows a bunch about DIVX compression for making nice looking videos. I am still trying to develop a good technique to use myself. Because hardware varies so much from one person to the next, you need to figure out the best way to get what you want from the equipment you have. I am not too sure myself. I also had a problem with not much space to work with high quality video until last week an incredible deal at Best Buy happened.. so I got an 80GB 7200rpm harddrive for $75 after rebate. Some guys got it for $50 because they have an AMEX Blue credit card that allows pricematching after a sale. Check the forums at Fat Wallet if you are looking for a good deal on harddrives and stuff. Someone usually knows something about an upcoming deal or one in progress and how to go about getting it.

Anyway with my new harddrive, I can now grab higher quality/bigger captures. I am trying to optimize my new harddrive, so I don't drop frames on my big captures. I'd say a good thing to do is capture at the best quality you can afford and then do post-processing/compression with
VirtualDub (free) (you can use DIVX here)
Media Cleaner 5 (for those great WMV's Popkid churns out)

Hopefully I will be able to play around this weekend and optimize my system to get the best setup.

 

[shimer]

Ack! Cleaner 5 is $599! Hmmm. I'll try VirtualDub first

 

[NowInc]

Originally posted by shimer
Ack! Cleaner 5 is $599! Hmmm. I'll try VirtualDub first

LoL..yah..forgot to mention that tiny detail...lol

...and people wonder why us media artists/video people charge so much

 

[popkid]

damn! i wasn't away that cleaner was so much... sheesh, it's nice to work for a company that picks up the tab for all this stuff

 

[NowInc]

Originally posted by popkid
damn! i wasn't away that cleaner was so much... sheesh, it's nice to work for a company that picks up the tab for all this stuff

LoL..i bet. All the copies of the software I use are technically out of my own pocket (licenced thru my freelance company)..thankfully media cleaner is one of the few that diesnt need to be "renewed" every year (XSI, and Maya have that...eww)

 

[spagmoid]

Another thing about capturing, make sure you set up the capture card's video settings BEFORE you capture (brightness/contrast/hue/saturation)

Think of good data (like brightness) as between 0 and 100.
Your capture card's default setting for brightness may be low, so the data coming in is -20 to 80 and it gets truncated when you capture.

Or if your contrast is too high the data coming in could be -50 to 150 but you're only capturing 0 to 100 so you get "washed out" areas that are pure white or black.

This can also happen with each color channel separately - Oversaturation is a common problem because old videos tend to fade certain colors. The Project Florida video is a good example of this, the red and blue are badly faded, but a lot of yellow is still there.

Ideally Red Green & Blue would each have close to 0-100 for perfect picture, but with fade and oversaturation your Reds may be 0-75 and your Blues 20-150. If you can reduce the blues so they aren't getting clipped, by lowering saturation contrast or brightness, you will actually be rescuing some blue picture data (at the expense of red & green, it's a tradeoff). Then later you can increase red to match blue via Color Balance.

If you could adjust Color Balance before capture that would be much better but I don't know if any cards let you do that.

Color Balance basically stretches what color data you have to cover the whole 0-100, and the bigger range you start with, the better the quality. You can't see these numbers of course (unless you're using Photoshop), so it's pretty much a guessing game. You get better with experience, I can pretty much tell by looking now if an image can be improved by color balance etc or if there's just not enough data there.

 

[shimer]

Darn. VirtualDUB is too confusing and Cleaner is too expensive. I guess Movie Maker is my best solution now for reasonable sized video. Too bad the video looks so grainy.