Capped MJPEG (or DV) => H.264 widescreen full res

[raffie]

After a looong long time, I've finally started capping again (my last cap card was a iomga BUZ sooooo). Bought a PinnacleMovieboard Ultimate PCI, caps in MJPEG, DV, Divx, MPEG1 and 2. Extremely happy with the capture quality.

On to the problems. The content I cap is almost exclusively 16:9 but when I set the 16:9 mode all I get is the full screen including borders, squashed into 16:9. So I cap 4:3 and process later.

2nd problem; in Premiere Pro CS4 I export and crop to 16:9 in the export dialog. When I export to MPEG-2, I can use interlaced video without problem, but I really want to export to H.264, and using that there are 'interlacing artefacts' resulting in bad quality, this happens no matter what field order; upper or lower.
So. Am I forced to use progressive video resulting in quality loss? Or am I doing something wrong or forgetting something here?

Source


MPEG-2 interlaced


H.264 interlaced

clip

[poisondeathray]

What do you mean by "interlacing artifacts" ? Can you post a sample or screenshot to illustrate?

Do you have project, sequence and export settings matched up properly?

As for the aspect problems, I'm not familiar with that card, did you play with the settings?

[poisondeathray]

It's likely your decoder or software for MPEG2 material is set to deinterlace by default on playback

Try this test: in VLC activate deinterlacing on the h.264 encoded material

[raffie]

I've added the screenees, it's especially apparant in the logo's, but fullscreen throughout the video the artefacting is very noticeable!

Yes I've used about every option I could think of before posting here

[poisondeathray]

Your encode was interlaced? What dimensions? What format (was it DV or MJPG,et c..)

It might be from resizing interlaced material (when you resize and crop to 16:9), if Adobe's resizer isn't interlace aware (although you would expect that on the mpeg2 version ....)

Can you post a small sample of the h.264 encoded video? The green line suggests your crop values are not "legal" , or your decoder might have a problem

You can post here if <6MB or a free hosting site if larger than 6MB (e.g. mediafire.com, megaupload.com)

[raffie]

Your encode was interlaced? What dimensions? What format (was it DV or MJPG,et c..)

It might be from resizing interlaced material (when you resize and crop to 16:9), if Adobe's resizer isn't interlace aware (although you would expect that on the mpeg2 version ....)

Can you post a small sample of the h.264 encoded video?

You can post here if <6MB or a free hosting site if larger than 6MB (e.g. mediafire.com, megaupload.com)

Heres a clip H.264 encoded.

The source is interlaced MJPEG 720x576, the output clips are interlaced 720 x 396. I used the crop feature in the CS4 export dialog to crop off the borders.

(ps; i realize th eclip I linked to is 704x388 but i tried 720 x 396 also with same results)

[poisondeathray]

The crop value might not be "legal", as the green line at the bottom might indicate, or the resizing of interlaced content might be giving problems

Anyways , I would try to fix the problem from the beginning instead of using a workaround or "band aid" solution

You said:

The content I cap is almost exclusively 16:9 but when I set the 16:9 mode all I get is the full screen including borders, squashed into 16:9.

It might be the aspect flag isn't set properly, can you upload a small sample that exibits this behaviour? Try recording 16:9.

You might be able to set the flag with another application (since your software doesn't seem to do this)

Also, you can conform the file in Premiere by right clicking the asset in the clip bin

[raffie]

The green line doesnt appear when I use progressive video with the same dimensions, but you may be right still.

It's not a 'flag' issue, if I cap in 16:9 mode, the video dimensions are actually 16:9, however, instead of cropping the black borders off, it CAPS the black borders. So, the 16:9 content + black borders top and bottom all squached into 16:9 video.

Hopefully u understand what I mean because I deleted that export, would have to recreate

[poisondeathray]

The green line doesnt appear when I use progressive video with the same dimensions, but you may be right still.

It's not a 'flag' issue, if I cap in 16:9 mode, the video dimensions are actually 16:9, however, instead of cropping the black borders off, it CAPS the black borders. So, the 16:9 content + black borders top and bottom all squached into 16:9 video.

Hopefully u understand what I mean because I deleted that export, would have to recreate

I think I understand what you are saying, but it can still be a decoder issue. I've seen this before, where the content is displayed as 4:3 squashed but the frame size is 16:9, but switching decoders makes it 16:9 in 16:9. ie. it is the fault of the decoder or splitter, but the underlying stream is fine. This would be an better solution instead of your record then crop method. I would explore this first

Does it make a difference if you cap in a different format? e.g. MPEG2 or DV?

[raffie]

No matter what codec I use to cap, same result every time => when selecting 16:9, instead of cropping odd the borders, its simply resizes the complete 4:3 area.

I know the stream is NOT right because it records black banners that are being transmitted analogue, i can see the static in the black banners, that is simply data that should not be in the stream.


Seeing I'm stuck with the 16:9 capping issue (as much as I'd like to be able to cap at 16:9), I'm looking at the cropping issue again, learning about deinterlacing here: http://www.100fps.com/

[raffie]

So I've learned how to use AVISynth and used it to crop the 4:3 caps to cut off the borders and end up with 16:9 MJPEG files. From there on I can import those into Premiere, do edits where nessecary then export to H.264 with perfect quality.

If anyone has any clue why I can't cap drectly to 16:9 aspect ratio, feel free to let me know

[poisondeathray]

Have you checked for software updates / firmware revisions for the card?

[raffie]

Good idea! Gonna do that first thing in the morning

And thanks for your help man, much appreciated!

[raffie]

So I thought I had a solution, but turned out it was not...

I seem to have 2 options: either de-interlace and thus lose quality to export to H.264, or export to MPEG-2, because that produces perfect quality without de-interlacing.

Very frustrating as I had hoped to use H.264 for archiving purposes...