Canon DSLR HD Video Problems

[Judah1]

Hey everyone, I have tried everything and I am so stumped!!! I am getting some weird stuttering and ghosting of movement when I export my movies from Premiere Pro CS4 and I have no idea how to fix it!

Set up:

Canon 550D T2i with 1080 Video (Both at 24p and 30p)
Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
Prism Video Converter (to change the footage from H.264 to Avi/Mpeg before editing)
A computer that can handle it!


Problem:
SO I have done what everyone has been saying and have been pre-converting the H264 footage to something more manageable (tried both avi and mpeg) BEFORE bringing it in to Premiere. I have kept all the framerates the same (i.e. matching my new sequence framerate with my capture framerate) and have been doing just a little color correction here and there - nothing major.

Then I export it with the same settings, and have tried numerous different combinations of formats and codecs, and they all give me this same weird ghosting when there is movement!!!!!! I have added an example of what I have been getting and really hope that someone can help me out! The footage looks INCREDIBLE coming off the camera, and even after I preconvert it with Prism before bringing it into premiere..it just seems to be when I export the thing!

Please help! Ask as many questions as you need to diagnose the problem, I will try my best to answer all of them. I have been working with video for quite a few years now and have never had this kind of problem with any other video format...just Canon HD video from my new DSLR!

(p.s. I posted this and uploaded the vid simultaneously so there may be a delay while it pends approval?)

[Judah1]

P.s. Watch the hands to really see what I mean...

[poisondeathray]

this is evident in the export? (i.e. before youtube touches it? so it's not youtube's fault?)

What were your sequence settings, and footage characteristics? use mediainfo on the footage if you don' t know (you can use view=>text and copy & paste the text back here)

Are you certain that prism didn't cause the issue? use mediainfo on that footage

what were your export settings?

Did you do any time speed changes in Premiere? was clip blend on?

[Judah1]

this is evident in the export? (i.e. before youtube touches it? so it's not youtube's fault?) Absolutely, this is evident right out of premiere.

What were your sequence settings, and footage characteristics? use mediainfo on the footage if you don' t know (you can use view=>text and copy & paste the text back here)


Are you certain that prism didn't cause the issue? use mediainfo on that footage
Yep, when I view the footage after having edited it in Prism, it looks just as good as the footage straight from the camera, it is just easier to edit in Premiere. Converting the video with Prism has helped greatly in reducing the amount of Ghosting, but not eradicated it.


what were your export settings?
Quicktime Format
H.264 Codec
24FPS
Anamorphic (This I didn't change, it was selected already)

AND

Quicktime Format
Mpeg Codec
24fps
Anamorphic (This I didn't change, it was selected already)

AND

AVI Format
H.264 Codec
Anamorphic (This I didn't change, it was selected already)


Did you do any time speed changes in Premiere? was clip blend on? No speed changes. And no, Blend clip wasn't on.

Thanks so much for the speedy response and the ideas!!!

[poisondeathray]

are you sure your sequence settings matched?

if there was an fps discrepancy (e.g. you put 23.976 fps footage on a 25p sequence) the default behaviour is to blend the frames to make the difference - kind of what's happening here. If you disabled clip blend for that clip, it would duplicate frames instead (choppy playback)

You shouldn't be using anamorphic for export, this suggests a non-square pixel format, but your footage was square pixel to begin with (1920x1080). If this was already pre-selected , this suggests you were using an incorrect sequence setting

Converting the video with Prism has helped greatly in reducing the amount of Ghosting, but not eradicated it.

Can you clarify this statement.... This suggests that the ghosting was in the original footage?

[aedipuss]

i can't believe anyone would recommend using a piece of junk like prism for any quality video work at all. if you want an intermediate, more easily editable format for a slower pc, you need to use a decent HD codec like cineform neoscene.

[Judah1]

are you sure your sequence settings matched?

if there was an fps discrepancy (e.g. you put 23.976 fps footage on a 25p sequence) the default behaviour is to blend the frames to make the difference - kind of what's happening here. If you disabled clip blend for that clip, it would duplicate frames instead (choppy playback)

You shouldn't be using anamorphic for export, this suggests a non-square pixel format, but your footage was square pixel to begin with (1920x1080). If this was already pre-selected , this suggests you were using an incorrect sequence setting

Converting the video with Prism has helped greatly in reducing the amount of Ghosting, but not eradicated it.

Can you clarify this statement.... This suggests that the ghosting was in the original footage?

1) There is no discrepancy in the frame-rates, I have maintained the same frame-rate that I am shooting when importing and exporting. I know this isn't the problem.

2) Thanks for the tip on anamorphic...this just happened to be the one that was default when I was in Premiere. I don't know why, but I will make sure to change that and see what happens.

3) Maybe I wasn't clear with my explanation of the whole Prism thing, so I will write it super simply, not to insult anyone's intelligence, but simply to make sure that I haven't been poorly explaining it:

- RAW footage from camera - EXCELLENT QUALITY. NO GHOSTING.
- Footage converted in Prism using a Lossless Codec - EXCELLENT QUALITY. NO GHOSTING. SMOOTHER TO EDIT.
- Footage exported from Premiere Pro using Encoder - GHOSTING APPEARS.

[Judah1]

i can't believe anyone would recommend using a piece of junk like prism for any quality video work at all. if you want an intermediate, more easily editable format for a slower pc, you need to use a decent HD codec like cineform neoscene.

I have in fact found Prism to be a pretty decent converter. I am using the lagarith lossless codec, which has been doing a very good job of maintaining quality while making it easier to edit in Premiere. I know that Cineform would be the better alternative but after having just purchased the entire camera set-up, this isn't in the budget. I have also seen some fine videos that have been pre-converted using the Prism program...

[aedipuss]

the only way to get blended frames like that is either the footage was converted to interlaced at some point or there is a frame rate change. if you have eliminated the framerate change look to see if prism is converting to or to and from interlaced back to progressive.

if you would use mediainfo on the files at each stage(camera, prism, pp) and post them here it might help. a small sample of the original footage uploaded to a filesharing site also if possible. someplace like http://www.filedropper.com/ works ok.

[Judah1]

Great input Aedipuss, I will check it all out and get back to you with footage from each stage!

[poisondeathray]

What does premiere interpret the lagarith intermediate as? right click and interpret the footage to check

As an aside, lagarith is lossless when used in some apps, but it isn't treated in premiere cs4 as lossless. PP clamps it 16-235 so you lose your highlights, there is also an RGB conversion to Rec.601 , which is different than your camera which uses Rec.709

I'm surpised it feels any smoother with lagarith, which is a pig to edit. There are many "faster" lossless codecs like huffyuv , ut video codec - we're talking in the order of several times faster when decoding (but they are mishandled by PP CS4 in the same manner as well)