Grainy results with Premiere /Encore. Plz help

[roblobster]

I captured my home videos from a Sony DV camcorder through firewire with Adobe Premiere Pro. Then I export them into small clips. Authored and burned with Encore but the quality seems grainy. It's definitely not as clear as the camcorder playback. There were no compression needed coz it didn't fill up 4 gigs worth of video. Does anyone know how to improve the quality.

Thanks all

[edDV]

"Authored and burned with Encore but the quality seems grainy. "

More details please. What were the encoder settings?

[edDV]

edit

[guns1inger]

Yes, there was compression. DV and mpeg2 compress differently. Any re-encoding would have entailed some recompression, even if minor.

[jtoolman2000]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that you will always loose quality from DV to MPGs by virtue of the encoding process. So anyone expecting the quality of the play back when comparing transfered ( NOT CAPTURED ) DV and encoded MPGs to be the same is fooling themselves. There ways to preserve as much so called quality as possible but you will always loose some.

[edDV]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that you will always loose quality from VD to MPGs by virtue of the encoding process. So anyone expecting the quality of the play back when comparing transfered ( NOT CAPTURED ) DV and encoded MPGs to be the same is fooling themselves. There ways to preserve as much so called quality as possible but you will always loose some.

Sure, you are taking a 25Mb/s 5x intraframe compressed DV file and compressing it to at least 9Mb/s CBR MPeg2 by adding additional intraframe plus interframe compression based on motion detection.

9Mb/s CBR will give good results but MPeg2 compression losses will occur.
A fact of life or at least a fact of DVD.

[NoodleMaps]

I would check your transcoding setting within Encore. Be sure they are set for automatic. better yet, don't use Encore to do your encoding. Take your edited clips from premiere and use another third party encoder. CCE, Procoder, or TMpeg. The only time I let Encore do any encoding is for motion menus. Don't let it touch your videos.

[edDV]

I would check your transcoding setting within Encore. Be sure they are set for automatic. better yet, don't use Encore to do your encoding. Take your edited clips from premiere and use another third party encoder. CCE, Procoder, or TMpeg. The only time I let Encore do any encoding is for motion menus. Don't let it touch your videos.

I don't have Encore but I'm curoius about your experience vs. CCE and Procoder.

[NoodleMaps]

It depends on the project that I am working on. On which one I use, CCE is very advanced and can be tweaked for hours. More than I even know how. I use it when I have video longer than 2 hours and want to do more than 2 passes on the video. Procoder is very easy to use and creates great results. Hope that answers the question. Price wise, Go with Procoder. I paid for that. CCE, work paid for that.

[edDV]

It depends on the project that I am working on. On which one I use, CCE is very advanced and can be tweaked for hours. More than I even know how. I use it when I have video longer than 2 hours and want to do more than 2 passes on the video. Procoder is very easy to use and creates great results. Hope that answers the question. Price wise, Go with Procoder. I paid for that. CCE, work paid for that.

Ahh, the full pro versions.

[roblobster]

The transcodes were set to automatic. But since the video was relatively short in that it didn't get close to the DVD capacity I thought there was no compression, which is why I was expecting quality close to the original.

[edDV]

The transcodes were set to automatic. But since the video was relatively short in that it didn't get close to the DVD capacity I thought there was no compression, which is why I was expecting quality close to the original.

Try 8500Mb/s CBR for high quality test.

[NoodleMaps]

Well, there is going to be some compression. It hasa to be compressed to the MPEG2 format for DVD. So compression has to take place. 8500 CBR would be a good TEST, but I wouldn't use it for a disc I would use normally, or give out to a client. I've had issues with skipping, encoding higher than 7000 as an Average. But it should be a good test to see if the footage looks grainy after it is placed on the disc.

Also, a good question to ask is. What are your settings for capturing within Premiere or your setting when you are exporting from premiere?

[roblobster]

I couldn't select "Don't Transcode" coz that option is grayed out.
The videos are .avi captured with Premiere Pro via the firewire from a DV camera. So I don't understand why I can't choose not to transcode. I wish Encore can tell me the uncompressed size of the dvd project or how much compression must be done to fit the project into a disc like some of the other "cheaper" programs do. Or maybe I'm not looking in the right place. Does anyone know how to display those info in Encore?
Thank you.

[edDV]

I couldn't select "Don't Transcode" coz that option is grayed out.
The videos are .avi captured with Premiere Pro via the firewire from a DV camera. So I don't understand why I can't choose not to transcode. I wish Encore can tell me the uncompressed size of the dvd project or how much compression must be done to fit the project into a disc like some of the other "cheaper" programs do. Or maybe I'm not looking in the right place. Does anyone know how to display those info in Encore?
Thank you.

So, assuming project setting is DV, if you want to save as DV-AVI, then use "Export Timeline", Movie saving in 20 min increments for a backup to a DVDR. This is a backup and won't be playable on a DVD player or computer. Alternative is to "Export Timeline", then "Print to Tape" to save back to tape with no further compression. The tape will be playable on the camcorder.

If you are encoding to MPeg2 in Premiere, choose the compression settings that will fit a DVD, such as 1hr @8Mb/s, CBR for high quality*. This should give you a MPeg2 file that can be directly authored in Encore or another program.

If you want to encode in Encore, normal procedure would be to open your DV project in Encore and make encoding settings there. I don't have Encore so I can't go further.

* the tradeoff with using high CBR bitrates to DVD is some players may struggle to keep up as said above, but all players are supposed to be able to play up to 9+Mb/s. If this is for your own use, check test DVD playback on your player.