Hello all,

It's been sometime since I've been here. Maybe some of you remember me?

Anyhow, I'm finding myself having my first unsolveable issues with Studio and it's at the worst time. I'm in the middle of working a project for pay of a wedding that I shot in HD with a Canon HV30. (first major project with HD and this camera which probably wasn't the smartest time to test this out.)

I recorded the footage in HDV 60i and captured a 1440X1080 60i file using Studio 11. I edited in a same aspect timeline and for the most part that went well. (I could use some more horsepower from my PC, but it worked OK) When previewing the project it looks good. Here's where things go downhill fast. When trying to make a standard def DVD the result is the worst. The best I can tell it's been stomped on with compression and exihbiting all kinds of artifacts. Mainly everything blurring, looking out of focus and unsharp. I've tried burning short clips with no transistions or effects and get the same results. Also, when viewing the footage from the camera via HDMI to a HD display the footage looks great.

I know I have read people getting excellent results from your HD cameras. So what am I doing wrong? Any help would greatly be appreciated. Any tips and tricks are very welcome too.

Thanks.........

The best I can tell it's been stomped on with compression and exihbiting all kinds of artifacts. Mainly everything blurring, looking out of focus and unsharp.

Do you see this in the final rendered file or from the preview?

What is the bitrate of the HDV source and what rate do you select when burning the standard definition DVD image?  Might you reduce the problem by boosting the output bitrate to 9 mbps?

Have you changed your display to an HD one since buying your HDV Canon?  Might standard definition videos you created using earlier videocams also look blurry when you display them on the new screen?  My experience is that 720x480 that looked great on a VGA display can look fair, poor, or abominable when presented on a large HDTV.  Hollywood-type SD DVDs seem to suffer the least.  Personal projects in SD I thought looked OK two years ago on a 42" VGA are a disappointment when seen on a 37" 1920x1080p.

Just out of curiosity, did you try burning the same HDV project to an AVCHD-DVD (or even a BD) to see what quality you obtain on a large HD display?  If time is running short, and the choice is between: a)  a crummy video and a ruined reputation, or b) an HD video and little profit, consider testing an HD version of your project on a "starter" BD player (some SK ones sell for about $250) and give both the player and the BD of the wedding to your client.  Anyway, that's just a last resort idea.  Good luck.

Thanks for posting guys,

Well, I've been doing some research since writing and JKoch, you're on the right track. First, I have been viewing on a 50" 1920X1080p plasma. I'm sadly realizing this is part of the problem. Second, I've been experiementing with getting the HDV down to SD properly. I downloaded a trial of Sony Vegas and also using some freeware programs to experiment with initially rendering the footage with a good codec and as little loss as possible to SD. I'm somewhat knowledgeable about this stuff, but I'm getting a crash course now.

I have made a short AVCHD DVD and it looked great. Unfortunately, my system is not going to do this very fast at all. Actually the client has a Blu-Ray player. I was going to try to give them a small amount of footage in AVCHD on regular DVD as some point. I've been pricing a Blu-Ray burner, but this project will be distributed to more people with standard DVD players connected to varying displays. I figure mostly HD with a fair amount of CRT's. So getting the best quality at SD is a must. I already gotten the project to look much better with Vegas, and plan on doing some more testing today with some other utilities. I think ultimately I will still be able to use Studio and get the results I want. We'll see.

Thanks again!