I did a comparison between what my HD 720P video looked like before and after adding any Video Effect and found a major quality issue. I used RGB Color Balance and had the settings set to 0 so there would be no alteration to the original video just that a video effect had been applied. The project setting matched the HD 720P video.

1. Any Video Effect that you add to a video clip in the timeline will cause some major stair-stepping artifacts to appear with certain colors and edges in the video. I found red to be the problem color in the video I tested.

2. If you don't add any Video Effect and Make Movie using the MPEG-2 HD 720p Preset there will be no stair-stepping artifacts on your video when exported.

3. This stair-stepping artifact is also created when using Magic Bullet Looks even when just loading the Effect before going into the Looks interface which doesn't alter the video.

Here are some frame grabs of the Stair-Stepping Artifact and some pics before a Video Effect is added so you can see the difference:

No Video Effect on video clip - Zoomed-in Crop of video frame

http://www.randywheeler.com/images/No_Correction_zoom.jpg

Added Video Effect RGB Color Balance with everything set to 0 - Zoomed-in Crop of video frame

http://www.randywheeler.com/images/RGB_Color_Balance_zoom.jpg

No Video Effect on video clip - Crop of video frame

http://www.randywheeler.com/images/No_Correction_crop.jpg

Added Video Effect RGB Color Balance with everything set to 0 - Crop of video frame

http://www.randywheeler.com/images/RGB_Color_Balance_crop.jpg

This is Stair-Stepping Artifact is what you would typically see in DV video and is what makes DV video hard to ChromaKey. What compression is Pinnacle using to process the Video Effects in the Timeline for HD 720P MPEG-2 Video? 

Randy

Thank you for submitting what you have found out. Can you also post your system information. Please see this thread on how to.

In the mean time, can you change the project format to HD 1920 and then create a new project then test again? I am looking for more information about this case.

Ok, I added my system info and also found a "workaround" solution but it's not what I would prefer doing with this software.

I tried turning off the background rendering since this generated the Stair-Stepping artifact in the preview and it could easily be seen when watching the preview screen at full screen. This artifact appeared whether I had "Enable full-resolution preview" on or off. Now I didn't think that this would make much difference when I actually went to the Make Movie tab and rendered out the final movie since I would assume it would rerender a higher quality file even with Background Rendering on. So I tried it both ways, one with Background Rendering on and one with it off. I even tried it with the Background Rendering on but didn't give it a chance to render in the timeline by jumping quickly to the Make Movie tab where I then had it render out a movie file.

The result was, as long as I had Background Rendering on and I added a Video Effect to the video clip, it was going to have the Stair-Stepping artifact on the exported movie no matter what other project or video settings were changed. Also, like I said in the first post, if no Video Effect is added to the clip then no artifact shows up even with Background Rendering on. But rememeber this is only on video clips in the format that is the same as the Project Format thus nothing to trigger the Background Rendering.

The interesting thing about when the Background Rendering is on is that the Stair-Stepping Artifact doesn't show up as long as the video has the initial darker green bar, when it changes to the lighter green and you play that part back while the other parts are still rendering you can see the Stair-Stepping artifact. Of course when the bar turns orange it's there also. At any point during the background rendering, if you try and export the movie using Make Movie it will have the Stair-Stepping artifact in that exported video.

So in conclusion, if you could have a setting for Background Rendering that doesn't add that artifact in the timeline while editing and previewing or when the final movie is exported it would be great since I like the Background Rendering feature but right now I can't use it because of what it does to the final exported video.

Also, since all I shoot is 1280x720 or 720P video and also DV (which I haven't tested yet) I don't have any video to test at 1080 30i or 60i and I don't want to mess with interlaced HD.

Randy

Forgot to add this last part,

It also didn't matter what settings I used under Video and Audio Preferences tab in the Background rendering section. I tried to "Set Codec Automatically" and manually set it by selecting "Use this codec for background rendering" both "MPEG-2: best for output to disc" and "MPEG-2: best for preview" and nothing worked to fix the Stair-Stepping artifact on the exported movie. 

Randy

Found a better "workaround" that allows me to leave Background Rendering on. After you finish all your editing and you are going to Make  Movie, go to Delete Auxiliary Files and delete all those files for your current project. After deleting those files quickly click Create File so it stops the Background Rendering from starting again. This gets rid of all the files that have the Stair-Stepping artifact. Now Make Movie and that exported file will be free of any artifacts.

So from what I can gather on how this program is currently working is that it is using the files created from the background rendering even though those files are below the quality that you would want to output/export from this program. I think the main problem is that the background rendered files that are created even when choosing "MPEG-2: best for output to disc" is that these files are still not good enough for export. So unless you deleted these auxiliary files and rerender the entire project when you in the Make Movie section you will have video with Stair-Stepping artifacts when you export it using Create File.

Randy