Video Clarity Issues

[belarefon]

So I'm having problems. I'm attempting to make an jiu jitsu instructional tape for my friend to sell to fund his return trip to Brazil for more training. We recorded the techniques with a sony handycam on standard quality. The videos look a little pixelated, so my first question is how to fix that so when they are burned to dvd in dvd format, they are high quality. My second question is a little more complex. As the day of shooting wore on, the sun got low enough that it was coming in through the windows. This put the camera in direct bright sunlight, and the subjects in the shade. This seemed to result in a loss of focus, and the videos shot later in the day are a little blurry. This is especially noticeable when it is put on the tv. Shooting is exhausting work for him, since he has to demonstrate the techniques from different angles, and we shot 27 techniques in one day. So if there is any way to fix this so we don't have to reshoot, that would be great. The programs we have between the two of us are Cyberlink 7, Adobe Premiere Elements 7, and Sony Vegas Pro 9. I can post some screenshots from the vids if that would help. Any help would be greatly appreciated, and please remember that I have no idea what I'm doing, so the more in depth the explanation the better.

[guns1inger]

Bottom line is that there isn't much you can do to fix either of these problems after the fact. Posting a couple of short clips might help, but the best and only time to truly address these problems is when you shoot. If you want quality, shoot in the high quality mode. Shoot indoors with enough electric light so that external lighting changes do not affect what you shoot.

While there are sharpening filters around, none of them will sharpen video that is out of focus. They are there to just add a little definition to details already present (including noise, which is why you need to be careful with them). The problem is that footage that is shot out of focus has no details to enhance.

Pixellated video can sometimes be fixed with a deblocking filter, however it does so by blurring the edges of the pixellated blocks, giving you a softer image.

Honestly, if you are serious about making a quality product, take this as a lesson. Go back and do it again properly so that you aren't trying to fix it in post, when it is mostly too late.

[lordsmurf]

You have to re-shoot.

[jagabo]

And get a better camcorder. One that records in a less compressed format. Shoot with controlled, very bright, studio lighting (bright lights --> fast shutter speeds --> less motion blur).

[jman98]

Welcome to the forums, belarefon. I want to warn you about one thing you probably haven't considered. Any time someone makes DVD to sell, some customer will always have a problem with it no matter what you do. If you are lucky, very few customers will have problems, but the odds are that somebody will have a problem. For best results, limit yourself to excellent media, which in the USA means either Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden. Even if you do that, somebody somewhere is going to have some ancient piece of crap player that won't play the disc no matter what, so be prepared to have to deal with some irate customer who says "The DVDs I buy in the stores always work but yours doesn't. You don't know what you're doing. You suck!" and so on.

[belarefon]

Theres nothing I can do with the videos that aren't blurry to get them to DVD quality? Also, will shooting with the High Quality mode get me the results I'm looking for next time, or do I need to use a different camera altogether? The videos aren't terrible, so if there is something I can do to re-render in higher definition, even if it's a long shot, I'd like to try it. Thanks again for all the help!

[jagabo]

Your camcorder's high quality mode will get you less macroblocking. But it won't help with motion blur or loss of focus caused by insufficient lighting. You might be able to bring out a little detail in the shadows or of a backlit subject.

Post a small sample and people here will give you suggestions on what might be done.

[Soopafresh]

You have to re-shoot.

That's quite possibly the case


Some of it can be fixed in post, but if your source isn't good...as the saying goes, you can't polish a turd.

Example of bad post production (terrible interlacing artifacts, macroblocks, etc)

http://www.vimeo.com/2785001

Example of better filming and good post production. Lighting is pretty well done (although the whites are blown out). Lighting is tremendously important when it comes to shooting anything.

http://www.vimeo.com/3180625

[belarefon]

Can I upload video directly to this site, or do I need to put it up somewhere else and post a link? If so, where would be the best place to do it so it doesn't change the format/lower the quality any more than it already is?

[jagabo]

You can upload directly to this site (use the upload image/file option below the editing box) but it has to be less than 6MB. Otherwise use a file transfer service like MediaFire.com.

[belarefon]

Okay. Here are two samples from the video. The first is from the very first video of the day, before the sunlight became such a problem. The second is from the last video of the day, when the sunlight was shining directly in on the camera while the subjects were still in the shade. They are both only about 5 seconds, so I hope that is enough. They were cut with cyberlink power director 7 and rendered in HQ mpeg2 format. The ones where the sunlight wasn't coming in the window yet just need to be higher quality I think. The ones later in the day are the ones that are slightly blurry. Although, once it's put on the TV they don't look so much blurry as just dark. But anything I try to do to the lighting just seems to enhance the fact that the videos seem a little pixelated around the edges of stuff. There are also audio issues that need to be fixed due to the fact that the school we were shooting at used to be a repair garage, and so there is some echo, but I might be able to figure out how to fix that myself. If not, I can always start another topic for that.



1.%20open%20guard%20leg%20weave%205%20second%20sam ple.mpg

[belarefon]

Second video




27.%20closed%20guard%20-%20arm%20drag%20into%20sweep%205%20second%20sample .mpg

[poisondeathray]

These are re-encoded by cyberlink? Was the 16:9 letterboxing recorded in the original footage or added later?

You lose quality each time you re-encode with a lossy format. It might be better if you posted native footage.

The others are right, not much you can do except reshoot with better conditions, better quality.

You might be able to make some minor improvements, you could make a levels adjustment to bring out more detail in the blacks , maybe some mild sharpening. The problem is you can only push so far with low quality footage, before other problems materialize (like noise in dark areas etc...). You might have to use a mild denoiser to get rid of those new issues that arise from making the video brighter.

For other problem areas, not shown in your examples, (I suspect pixellation during motion/action), you could use deblocking filters, but this will blur the image a bit. You might apply the filter in segments for example.

If you are re-encoding for DVD, use the highest possible legal bitrate to mimimze macroblocking artifacts. If you have to, use DVD9 instead of DVD5 to achieve higher bitrates.

before


after

The screenshots were deinterlaced to "simulate" what would be seen, but the script keeps the interlacing

This was done in avisynth, but most editing programs will have similar filters

MPEG2Source("27. closed guard - arm drag into sweep 5 second sample.d2v")
assumetff()
separatefields()
LSFMod()
HDRAGC()
Weave()

[belarefon]

Oddly enough, when there moving is when it seems the clearest. I don't know if it's because they move closer to the camera and more into the light or what, but it does seem to get clearer the closer they get to the camera. Should we have shot without zooming in any, and then cropped the video later? Also, everyone keeps saying I can only do so much with low quality footage. That's the problem though. No matter what I do as far as the quality goes, there doesn't seem to be any difference. No matter what bitrate I encode at, or what format, when I put the video on a disc and watch it in the tv, or when I watch the new video on the pc, I don't notice any difference from the original at all. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I've never done anything like this before, so so far everything I've done has been shooting in the dark and hoping for the best. Is there some kind of default settings I can use to get the best quality out of the video possible, and then see what other kind of issues come up? Or does it just not work that way, and I just don't know enough about the different settings and what they do?

[jagabo]

In the later clip the camera is zoomed out by about 20 percent (or placed farther back) so that the subjects are smaller, and hence, less detailed. But the overall sharpness of the two videos is about the same. And in these shots not much is moving so there's no significant motion blur.

The major fix you need is a gamma adjustment to bring out details in the dark areas. Poisondeathray's HDRAGC() example is a good one. Personally, I'd leave out the sharpening -- it's starting to create halos around all the sharp edges.

You didn't say what you shot this with (or maybe I just missed it) but your source is probably much cleaner than the MPEG samples you posted. You should get better results making your adjustments on that and then MPEG encoding. Dark areas are the first to suffer in MPEG encoding so bringing up the brightness will alleviate this. Your samples appear to have been encoded CBR at 5000 kbps. Using more bitrate will help. Try 8000 to 9000 kbps and limit yourself to 1 hour on a single layer DVD.

If your source is anamorphic (ie, the 16:9 video fills the entire 720x480 frame) then you should encode anamorphic too (rather than letterboxing in a 4:3 DAR frame). That will retain more detail.