Hi Franzie,

I fully agree with you. It should be up to the "user" to make the trade off between quality and speed.

When I spent a lot of time to shoot a film (not just some holiday or wedding shoot), I want to have the highest quality, both in recording and playback. Therefore, I bought a full HD 1920x1080/50i camera and shoot at the highest bitrate (16 Mbps)....but I have not found a way to keep  the quality (as close to the camera original) during the Studio11-workflow....I can only go down in resolution....or down in bitrate....or both. But can not keep both resolution and bitrate...and minimise it to 1 re-coding/rendering.

Mpingel, can you please give us some insight on Pinnacle's view on this and their future plans?

Thanks

Br

Ronny

Hi Ronny,

I cannot make definite public statements on new features or changes to products. There is also no fixed time for updates to the encoder.

So let me write around this:

We know that there are several areas in the encoder that need to be changed to allow better quality with the same bitrate. Changed encoding of I-Frames and a better bitrate control will have the biggest impact. Another point is to think about supporting the field-based encoding (the method that Sony's PMB understands). All those changes should not have a big effect on the encoding time.

I also use an AVCHD camera for my home videos (Sony HDR-UX1) and experience all the difficulties that come with a new video format. So you are not alone with wating for a new encoder

Thanks, mpingel.

Looking forward to these improvements. When can we expect these?

franzie:

I can understand what you want to say and I agree if the Encoder goal is to reduce the amount of original source data (raw camera data or others) but my professional background say me that, if I Re-Encode an AVCHD (or any other) stream with an Encoder Lossless Setting at the same or higher bitrate than the input data, then I should obtain an output stream quality equal to the input stream.

This will of course not reduce the data amount, instead in the case of a video editing software, it will let grow the data amount, as transitions, music and so on are added, but the video quality should be the same (I think).

Do you agree ?

When the encoder tries to re-encode the AVCHD stream, it starts with the decoded frame. This frame will have encoding artefacts (blocks, ringing, ...) that will most likely eat up some of the bits in the re-encoded frame. This is one point that even the same encoder would have to deal with.

When you have a different H264 encoder for reencoding, the encoder will make different decisions for quantization and the bit amount for each frame. For example, the encoder analyzes the frame content to select areas that need more bits than the rest of the frame (example: take a video that shows a blue sky in the upper half and a forest or meadow in the lower half).

So i would say: The re-encoded video could in theory have the same quality, but in reality the quality gets worse.

franzie:

But I have 3 little questions:

1. Do you think that the constant bitrate obtains better results than the variable bitrate ? I can't really distinguish the video result.

2. The same question for the progressive encoding option ?

3. I noticed a little bit better video output quality, when I use 25000 kbit/s instead of 15000 kbit/s (like the original AVCHD video stream), which I can't explain to myself clearly.

1. I guess a possible quality difference depends on the video content. The idea when using VBR is that complex scenes get a higher bitrate. But on the other hand the encoder has to limit the average bitrate so it cannot use the high bitrate for a very long time. For normal videos with a mixture of complex and easy scenes the difference between CBR and VBR shouldn't be that big.

2. If you refer to reencoding an AVCHD stream, I wouldn't expect a big difference

3. The way Studio encodes the stream needs more bits for I-frames and less bits for P- and B-frames than the camera's encoding method. If you allow a higher bitrate, the I-frames will be encoded with better quality.

If i could, i would tell you. But i honestly do not know.

Ronnys_be:

Hi Franzie,

When I spent a lot of time to shoot a film (not just some holiday or wedding shoot), I want to have the highest quality, both in recording and playback. Therefore, I bought a full HD 1920x1080/50i camera and shoot at the highest bitrate (16 Mbps)....but I have not found a way to keep  the quality (as close to the camera original) during the Studio11-workflow....I can only go down in resolution....or down in bitrate....or both. But can not keep both resolution and bitrate...and minimise it to 1 re-coding/rendering.

Ronny,

as I wrote already, the Studio MPEG2 HDV2 encoding gives much better results than it's AVCHD encoder and are almost equal to the original AVCHD input streams if you use the 25000 kbit/s (or higher) setting with your original Full HD resolution.

Of course, data amount will be almost the double than AVCHD, due to the higher bitrate (25000 instead of 17000) and due to the lower compression of MPEG2.

Does your Playstation not play back MPEG2 data ?

This would be a solution until Studio will be "really" a valid AVCHD compliant software ... (sorry mpingel)

I like that mpingel is also a AVCHD user and with similar problems than ours.

Mpingel, what do you do with your AVCHD data and which quality option you use ?

Frank

franzie:

 

What do you do with your AVCHD data and which quality option you use ?

Frank

I use the AVCHD input to create either HD-DVD on a DVD or a Bluray Disc. Both with MPEG2 (25Mbps).

 

Mpingel,

thanx for your clarifying information !

mpingel:

1. I guess a possible quality difference depends on the video content. The idea when using VBR is that complex scenes get a higher bitrate. But on the other hand the encoder has to limit the average bitrate so it cannot use the high bitrate for a very long time. For normal videos with a mixture of complex and easy scenes the difference between CBR and VBR shouldn't be that big.

But the VBR in complex scenes goes over the the choosen encoding bitrate (i.e. 25000) or is maximum anyway that setting ? And if there is even a little difference, which one should have better quality ?

mpingel:

2. If you refer to reencoding an AVCHD stream, I wouldn't expect a big difference

But a little difference ? Wich one should be better ?

mpingel:

3. The way Studio encodes the stream needs more bits for I-frames and less bits for P- and B-frames than the camera's encoding method. If you allow a higher bitrate, the I-frames will be encoded with better quality.

Ok, that makes clear the better quality when using a higher bitrate setting than the original clip bitrate is.

Thanx

Frank

franzie:

But the VBR in complex scenes goes over the the choosen encoding bitrate (i.e. 25000) or is maximum anyway that setting ? And if there is even a little difference, which one should have better quality ?

If i look at the bitrate distribution for an AVCHD stream i would say it is the "average maximum" setting: The bitrate can be a bit higher than that value for a short time as long as the buffer model for AVCHD is not violated. I would say: Go for interlaced.

franzie:

But a little difference ? Wich one should be better ?

For AVCHD export interlaced should be better. An AVCHD stream with resolution 1920x1080 or 1440x1080 must have 24Hz or 23.976Hz if it is progressive. The camera records interlaced with 25Hz or 29.97Hz. So a progressive export would also have to change the frame rate. That doesn't help improving the quality.

Hi Frank,

I will definitly try out the Studio MPEG2 HDV2 the next couple of days and compare the output quality.

From this very interesting exchange of information, I also came to the conclusion that Studio's AVCHD implementation is not mature yet (BUT ALREADY A BIG STEP AHEAD ON HIS COMPETITORS). From what I read here, the biggest issue comes from the fact that Sony (and PMB) uses 1080/50i. If it is not 1080/50i, then the camera and PMB does not recognize it (I also read it in the camera manual yesterday)......and unfortunate Studio does not use interlace, but progressive....and does not support 1920 at the native bitrate. The puzzel is much more clear for me now. I also think the workflow I described in the first post of this thread, is a workaround, but a BAD one as this one goes from interlaced (camera) --> progressive (Studio) --> interlaced (Nero) (and even back to progressive as I think the Sony Playstation output is progressive)...and it does at least 2 re-codings. This workflow need a lot of optimisation in the next weeks/months.....but we need Pinnacle for that.

I can only advise Pinnacle (who am I ;-))) ) to keep the competitive edge they have against their competitors and fix these issues very quickly in a patch. From mpingels replies, I do understand they recognise the issues and are working very hard on it.

Thanks for all the good input, guys. Really appreciated.

Br

Ronny

 

mpingel (& the others),

thanx very much for all your very importnat information, which let me understand many things.

Since some weeks I have an open support contact with Pinnacle for the AVCHD problems, but even after many contacts and work on both sides, there is still no result and no information from Pinnacle which explain the problems at all.

Therefore, thanx to you and to the other Forum partecipants, which resolved my problems or better, let me understand that the problems can't be solved by the user, but choosing another encoding option until Studio will have a better AVCHD encoding quality.

Frank

Hi Frank,

I tried your suggestion on using Studio HDV2-encoder....it works wel (and can play it on the PS3).....but unfortunate I can not keep the 1920x1080 and the Dolby surround...and I  can not say that the image quality has improved (because of the resolution downgrade ??)....and the file size became hugh. So I will stick with AVCHD and keep my projects online so that I can easily re-render once Pinnacle came with some patches.  

Mpingel,

I also had a closer look to the progressive versus interlaced "issue" you described as a underlaying reason for some of our problems....so I run a video analyzer on both the native .m2ts-file coming out of the Sony camera and the .m2ts-file in the stream folder of the Studio AVCHD-disk-image. They are both reported as "interlaced"......the only difference I noticed is that the profile of the camera-file is "High:4:0" and the Studio-file is "Main:4:0"...Isn't that the reason why we can not re-import the file back into PMB??? It seem the profile in the Studio-file indicate this is not an high definition file.

By the way, both files shows an average bitrate of 16Mbps....so it seems that Studio has retained the bitrate....

The puzzle has become a bit unclear again for me....

 Br

Ronny

Ronnys_be:

I also had a closer look to the progressive versus interlaced "issue" you described as a underlaying reason for some of our problems....so I run a video analyzer on both the native .m2ts-file coming out of the Sony camera and the .m2ts-file in the stream folder of the Studio AVCHD-disk-image. They are both reported as "interlaced"......the only difference I noticed is that the profile of the camera-file is "High:4:0" and the Studio-file is "Main:4:0"...Isn't that the reason why we can not re-import the file back into PMB??? It seem the profile in the Studio-file indicate this is not an high definition file.

By the way, both files shows an average bitrate of 16Mbps....so it seems that Studio has retained the bitrate....

Both stream types are interlaced. The camera uses field based interlaced encoding (PAFF), and Studio uses "MBAFF interlaced" encoding. (MBAFF is Macroblock-Adaptive Frame/Field Coding).

It seems the best encoding quality is achived by using PAFF for the I-frames and MBAFF for P and B frames. But I guess Sony's PMB supports only PAFF for all frames.

 

 

Ronnys_be:

Hi Frank,

I tried your suggestion on using Studio HDV2-encoder....it works wel (and can play it on the PS3).....but unfortunate I can not keep the 1920x1080 and the Dolby surround...and I  can not say that the image quality has improved (because of the resolution downgrade ??)....and the file size became hugh. So I will stick with AVCHD and keep my projects online so that I can easily re-render once Pinnacle came with some patches.  

Ronny

Oh sorry, to keep the 1920x1080 you can not use the HDV2 setting (which is 1440x1080).

Instead you must use the Full HD setting in the MPEG2 encoder wich is equal to your resolution.

I see big improvements with the MPEG2 encoder at the original resolution in "difficult" video scenes only, i.e. fast movements and dark scenes.

Anyway you can not keep the Dolby Surround but I do not know if you need to keep it really. Make a test !

On my high quality 5.1 audio home system with very big and powerful speakers the original clips of the SR7 with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is exactly the same as the Studio stereo MPEG2 sound with 48Khz and 224bit.

I have the the output anyway on all 6 speakers and I can not notice any difference in sound quality or sound distribution !

I think this is due to the litte and only one microphone of the camcorder, which shall capture or divide 5.1 sound ... in my opinion really impossible.

About the file size you're right, I reencoded some 1 hour AVCHD projects now as MPEG2 25mbps files at same resolution and the output files are about 11GB instead of the AVCHD 7GB files but the quality is much better is "difficult" scenes, which make the bigger files for me acceptable.

Frank

Frank,

 You may be interested in this link where with the help of Iain, we went through and explored what Studio does to the DD5.1 encoding of the AVCHD camcorders on output. There should definitelty be some difference.

Hi Frank,

yes, I tried make the full HD (instead of HDV2) to keep the 1920-resolution, but then I end up with a seperate "video-only"-file and seperate audio-files.......I guess I must multiplex them toghether again in some way. Any suggestion on how to do that?

To be honest, Dolby 5.1 is not on my priority list either and I have not been looking into it closer (yet).......but I find it always a pitty to give up things again that came with the new developments in my hobby-world (like 1920-resolution and Dolby surround......and professional and smooth editing with Adobe Premiere Pro ;-))) )

Greetings

Ronny 

Hi ronnie, very nice work!

But i think that each more passages did after final pinnacle exportation (so if you follow the option to get your file also in Nero) will be bring to a progressive video quality loss, since you will do the compression of the compression...

 So, wanting to do other passages in nero vision, i believe it is better to create a loseless file (cineform,huffyuv,mjpeg...) between the following chain:

m2ts shot-> dgavc (very powerful free software) -> avisynth-> avi loseless (mjpeg, cineform, huffyuv or other) -> pinnacle (edit, cut, music, effect, what you want) -> export from pinnacle to avi loseless (mjpeg,...) -> avi loseless to nero vision -> create your avchd or avc file or what you desire.

Could you pls upload some 'raw' video from your nice camera in some different situations: low light, very good light and a shot with many movement.

Beacause it seems that the best avchd camcorder of this "second" avchd generation are your 12e (and 11e) and the canon hf10/100. So i would like to get more informations as possible about them.

 Thank you very much!

ciao!

Hello again Ronny,

I have the Playstation 3 (PS3) now and have been doing more work based on your excellent research as explained in this post. 

I think we need to rethink our approach to this.  There are two separate issues:

1.   Preparing AVCHD disks for playing in PS3 and other Blu-Ray players. 

           Your method as outlined in your post still looks good.

2.  Preparing video material for playing from a PS3 HDD.

             IMO the simplest way to do this is to "Make Movie" as MPEG2 - HiDef 1080i in Studio 11, then move that file onto the PS3 HDD, or just play it on the PS3 from an external drive.

PS3 can play a range of file formats from HDD or external HDD, and files produced by Studio 11 play well without need for further modification.

Hi, Ronny

I followed the workflow 100% and it certainly did help me out off the editing jungle and enabling me to transfer it back to my HDR-SR12, thank you.

Question: In the "Make Movie / Setting" step, we can select the Kbits/sec parameter, e.g. from 13,000 to 17,000Kbits and the max length / disc will be changed from 46 to 35 min respectively.

This is to accomodate the edited footage to the 4.7 GB disc limitation. It shows also that the AVCHD file output quality will be increased from 76% to 100%, so I thought it is worth to try.

I did try with a 34 min edited file set to 17,000 Kbits/sec, but it seems that the this workflow automatically gave me a result of 4.0 GB file / 14,000Kbits/sec / Quality 82%.

To me, it looks like it is a good idea to set the Kbits/sec to the max 17,000 Kbits/sec and let the system choose the for best possible quality result, pls. advice.

Winsindo

 

Hi mpingel,

 after the long wait for V12, I was very hopefull that this release would have fixed the issues we discussed before on this forum. Unfortunate, I 'm still not able to create an AVCHD-file that can be directly imported back into to the SOny camera using "Picture Motion Browser". You previously said the problem was because of the PAFF versus MBAFF coding. Has that not been addressed in V12?

Thanks for a quick answer

Br

Ronny

Ronnys_be:

After the long wait for V12, I was very hopefull that this release would have fixed the issues we discussed before on this forum. Unfortunate, I 'm still not able to create an AVCHD-file that can be directly imported back into to the SOny camera using "Picture Motion Browser". You previously said the problem was because of the PAFF versus MBAFF coding. Has that not been addressed in V12?

Short answer: No, sorry.

Without giving away too much of internal decisions: The PAFF encoding mode will not be integrated into Studio until it has at least the same speed and quality of the current version. Part of the encoder is 3rd party stuff, so just like you we are waiting and I do not have a date for an update.

 

 

Thanks for the quick answer, mpingel. It is not the answer I hoped for, but appreciate your to-the-point answer.

Thanks

Ronny

Very interesting thread about AVCHD compatibility. I too was hoping to take footage from my Sony SR12 in full high def (16MBPS) and archive the m2ts files on my hard drive. When I want to watch any archived video on my plasma TV, I would upload the file back to the camcorder and watch via HDMI cable. However, to save space on my hard drive, I was looking for editing software so that I could simply clip out the interesting footage and discard the rest. I used Sony's PMB to trim out 2 clips that were 1.5minutes each. Then using Pinnacle Studio 11.1.2 I was hoping to join them together to make a 3 minute video. This took 35 minutes (3-6 frames per sec) to render on my Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz, 1gig RAM, 256 Nvidia GPU runnin on XP SP2. The resultant output file had choppy frame rate and jagged edges(motion blur), even though I can run original AVCHD footage from the camcorder smoothly in PMB.

I really don't care about fancy menus or even transitions at