Very poor quality export from Premiere Pro using mpeg2-DVD.. HELP!!

[kieranvyas]

I am getting awful quality after my exports from Premiere Pro CC using the mpeg2-DVD option (See examples below.) Please help! I know DVD's use a low resolution but surely the quality can't be this poor! Scene's with a lot of motion are particularly bad - movement causes pixelation and distortion. I am thinking there is possibly a problem when Premiere scales my project from HD to SD.

My export settings:


My sequence settings:
Timebase: 50fps
Frame Size: 1920 x 1080
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels (1.0)
Fields: No Fields (Progressive Scan)
Preview File Format: P2 1080i-1080p 50Hz DVCPROHD

EXAMPLES:
mpeg2-DVD Screenshot:
Click for Example 1
Quicktime H.264 Screenshot:
Click for Example 2

[newpball]

First of all you should realize that:


You throw away 90% of your source!!

No, that is not a typo you are discarding 90% and have only 10% left for the DVD!

Pretty shocking isn't it?

So make sure you think you are doing the right thing by putting this on a DVD.

Looking at the picture it seems there is a level/color matrix issue. However we only can tell if you upload a 5 second original video and the same 5 seconds after transcoding.

[kieranvyas]

Looking at the picture it seems there is a level/color matrix issue. However we only can tell if you upload a 5 second original video and the same 5 seconds after transcoding.

Unfortunately DVD is a must for me! (As obsolete as it is.) I will try and get some clips up to show, how would I go about solving the 'level/color matrix issue'? Thanks!

[newpball]

EXAMPLES:
mpeg2-DVD Screenshot:
Click for Example 1
Quicktime H.264 Screenshot:
Click for Example 2

Looks like your typical run off the mill HD to DVD loss.

May I ask for what reason is a DVD a must?

[kieranvyas]

Looks like your typical run off the mill HD to DVD loss.

May I ask for what reason is a DVD a must?

It's unfortunately a must because the target audience is the older generation. Therefore Blu-Ray and online streaming are sadly not the best options.

It is something to do with the Bitrate encoding possibly. When I use CBR, the DVD has a TON of noise and no distortion. When I use VBR 2 pass, the quality is perfect, but there is a pixelated distortion around everything that moves quickly.

[LMotlow]

Amazing. Put up big bucks for Adobe bloatware, take 1080p 50fps progressive input and ask to output 25 fps progresive, then pull your hair out trying to guess why Adobe "Pro" allowed you to f+ck up your own video.

First, do a little research and find out what the hell you're doing.

I'm guessing you got a 1080p 50fps progressive video from a camera? Cool. Here's the bad news: that original video has invalid frame rate and frame structure for BluRay/AVCHD. and so does your screwed up output to DVD. Get a load of these standards:
- BluRay/AVCHD, 1920x1080, interlaced or telecined for 25fps PAL
- BluRay/AVCHD standard definition, 720x576, interlaced or telecined for 25fps PAL
- DVD, 720x576, interlaced or telecined for 25fps PAL

Using a high-dollar NLE the same way people use a $25 Walmart Special is a waste of your time and money. On top of that, Adobe can't resize anything worth a dam. I suggest you find out what you're doing by taking note of what the standards are for the videos you're working and trying to create. The standards exist for several reasons, not the least of which is to frustrate the hell out of oddballs like newpball who are too dense to understand them and too cry-baby to live with the rules of the game.

Start by asking yourself how Adobe actually went from 50fps progressive to 25fps progressive, and you'll know one reason why your output can't do the impossible, not even with Adobe.

[poisondeathray]

It looks "ba-aa-aa-d" <= get it ? sheep ...hahaha LOL sorry bad joke


But seriously, is using DVD9 an option for you ? Then you could use higher bitrates to reduce the macroblocking / artifacts

You can also try other MPEG2 encoders, such as HCEnc. HCEnc tends to do better at lower bitrates than Mainconcept/Rovi MPEG2 that Adobe uses

[kieranvyas]

Start by asking yourself how Adobe actually went from 50fps progressive to 25fps progressive, and you'll know one reason why your output can't do the impossible, not even with Adobe.

OK, so can you help me? Most of my footage is 50fps, some is 25fps. What is the best solution?

But seriously, is using DVD9 an option for you ? Then you could use higher bitrates to reduce the macroblocking / artifacts

You can also try other MPEG2 encoders, such as HCEnc. HCEnc tends to do better at lower bitrates than Mainconcept/Rovi MPEG2 that Adobe uses

DVD9 is not really an option for me unfortunately. But I can certainly try a different encoder!

[poisondeathray]

Can you clarify - your concern wasn't the low resolution, low detail was it ? Your primary concern was what you called "pixellation and distortion" during motion ? How about uploading up some native samples ? It' s difficult to examine "motion" on a still image

Was 25p a deliberate decision (instead of interlaced) ? Interlaced will have 2x the motion samples (motion smoother like the original 50p) , but the image quality will actually be worse. However, the higher temporal resolution can often "hide" the perception of artifacts

[kieranvyas]

Can you clarify - your concern wasn't the low resolution, low detail was it ? Your primary concern was what you called "pixellation and distortion" during motion ? How about uploading up some native samples ? It' s difficult to examine "motion" on a still image

Was 25p a deliberate decision (instead of interlaced) ? Interlaced will have 2x the motion samples (motion smoother like the original 50p) , but the image quality will actually be worse. However, the higher temporal resolution can often "hide" the perception of artifacts

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9f0vlUQnRBwSkFYR3FuNlF3MDQ/view?usp=sharing

The above link is a short clip of the problem. The dog has a distortion around it as it moves. Weirdly enough the problem is more subtle after being uploaded to Google drive. On my computer and my TV, playing directly from the original file or the actual disc the same problem is more exaggerated.

[poisondeathray]

The subtleness of the problem in the google drive preview (online) is "normal" because it's a re-encoded version with AVC, which has inloop deblocking. Thus macroblock edges are "softened" (but the entire picture will actually be softened)

Yes, likely the primary problem is poor MPEG2 encoding . This has nothing to do with resizing algorithm or anything like that.

I just noticed from your 1st screenshot that you are on a Mac. It will be much more difficult to use HCEnc since it's Windows only. And Compressor isn't much better for MPEG2 encoding. This doesn't give you a lot of options.

[kieranvyas]

The subtleness of the problem in the google drive preview (online) is "normal" because it's a re-encoded version with AVC, which has inloop deblocking. Thus macroblock edges are "softened" (but the entire picture will actually be softened)

Yes, likely the primary problem is poor MPEG2 encoding

I just noticed from your 1st screenshot that you are on a Mac. It will be much more difficult to use HCEnc since it's Windows only. And Compressor isn't much better for MPEG2 encoding. This doesn't give you a lot of options.

OK! So would the best option be to export the project using a lossless codec and then find a PC to use to encode with HCEnc?

[poisondeathray]

The subtleness of the problem in the google drive preview (online) is "normal" because it's a re-encoded version with AVC, which has inloop deblocking. Thus macroblock edges are "softened" (but the entire picture will actually be softened)

Yes, likely the primary problem is poor MPEG2 encoding

I just noticed from your 1st screenshot that you are on a Mac. It will be much more difficult to use HCEnc since it's Windows only. And Compressor isn't much better for MPEG2 encoding. This doesn't give you a lot of options.

OK! So would the best option be to export the project using a lossless codec and then find a PC to use to encode with HCEnc?

I wouldn't say that's the "best", but it generally does better at lower bitrates than Mainconcept/Rovi MPEG2, and is free . It's definitely worth a try

The "best" would be to use segment encoding with higher end studio software (you basically go over "problem" areas and specify different settings, but it's more user intensive. )

[kieranvyas]

I wouldn't say that's the "best", but it generally does better at lower bitrates than Mainconcept/Rovi MPEG2, and is free . It's definitely worth a try

The "best" would be to use segment encoding with higher end studio software (you basically go over "problem" areas and specify different settings, but it's more user intensive. )

OK awesome. Well I'll give it a go. Thank you so much for all your help!

[Skiller]

Well if you're interested I'd like to demonstrate what I consider a good downscale and DVD-compliant encode of that dog scene (or any other). I would need a losslessly encoded sample at the native format of the footage (1080p 50 fps). Do you have a lossless codec installed? MagicYUV (free of course) is very recommendable.

Although lossless, 3 seconds (or a bit more) shouldn't be too much of a hassle to upload to, for example, Mediafire or the like.

[newpball]

Well if you're interested I'd like to demonstrate what I consider a good downscale and DVD-compliant encode of that dog scene (or any other). I would need a losslessly encoded sample at the native format of the footage (1080p 50 fps). Do you have a lossless codec installed? MagicYUV (free of course) is very recommendable.

Although lossless, 3 seconds (or a bit more) shouldn't be too much of a hassle to upload to, for example, Mediafire or the like.

That's a good thing, we will all be able to see how much this 90 something percent discarding actually degrades the video quality!

Here is a small clip that demonstrates how much is discarded going from HD to SD (make sure you select 1080p).



And that does not include the 50% that is discarded in the temporal dimension.

[Skiller]

And that does not include the 50% that is discarded in the temporal dimension.

Nothing is discarded in the temporal dimension going from 50p to 25i, you know-it-all-better.

[newpball]

And that does not include the 50% that is discarded in the temporal dimension.

Nothing is discarded in the temporal dimension going from 50p to 25i, you know-it-all-better.

You are going from 50 frames per second to 50 fields per second.

So that means you discarded 50%!

I suppose it depends how you look at it, but I am willing to call it spatial as well if that makes you feel any better.

And then that 50% is again decimated, definitely spatially, by going from 1080 to SD.

[hello_hello]

Here is a small clip that demonstrates how much is discarded going from HD to SD (make sure you select 1080p).

It makes me laugh when someone who ignores samples that don't suit his viewpoint posts a sample himself and expects others to look at it. Especially when it's a re-encoded YouTube sample.

Of course you'll lose some picture resolution if you downscale that much. There's a news flash........

Just for fun:

Script 1

FFVideoSource("E:\1080p.mkv")
Spline36Resize(720,576)
Spline36Resize(1920,1080)

Script 2

FFVideoSource("E:\1080p.mkv")
Spline36Resize(720,576)
LSFMod()
Spline36Resize(1920,1080)

[newpball]

Of course you'll lose some picture resolution ...

I think going from Full HD to SD is not losing some it's losing a significant percentage.

Honestly I wonder do those who think going from Full HD to SD is just a small step actually realize what damage they do?

SD is very poor quality compared to Full HD, that is just mathematics!

To suggest that the poor quality is due to Premiere Pro or not using some kind of sharpening is really missing the point big time, the poor quality is because the source is decimated, because over 90% is thrown away!

Hopefully the poster posts some original footage so we can actually compare and contrast before and after. And I guarantee you that tinkering with coded options, sharpening, noise reduction, edge blur, edge enhancement and other filters will not improve things one single bit. If anything some filters will destroy even more resolution.

[hello_hello]

Of course you'll lose some picture resolution ...

I think going from Full HD to SD is not losing some it's losing a significant percentage.

Honestly I wonder do those who think going from Full HD to SD is just a small step actually realize what damage they do?

I know exactly what damage I'll do. I posted a sample of it. I assume you didn't look. I'd expect to lose some picture detail and depending on the source it might be anything from "some" to "significant". It depends how much picture detail the HD source actually has.

I'd not go from HD to SD without a reason, but I've done it lots of times (mostly as AVIs with 720x400 type resolutions). Sometimes to put a copy on a portable device, other times to play using a SD player such as a DVD player etc. Sometimes to give a copy to a friend/relative, similar to what the OP is doing. Thankfully pretty much every time I've done so I've managed it without needing a statement of the obvious in respect to loss of picture detail, and when I have a had problems in the past, whether it be software or picture quality etc, I've been lucky enough to get help without it also being accompanied by unnecessary statements of the obvious in respect to loss of picture detail.

And I guarantee you that tinkering with coded options, sharpening, noise reduction, edge blur, edge enhancement and other filters will not improve things one single bit.

Even after I posted a sample that'd been improved a little by applying sharpening? That's a fairly brave denial of reality.
Well I think it looks better and I don't like sharpening myself as a rule. It's got to be subtle and the video needs to be clean. I hate sharpened noise.

Enough detail lost here for the difference to be more noticeable but along the lines of what I'd expect.

[newpball]

Even after I posted a sample that'd been improved a little by applying sharpening?

I apologize in advance if I state the obvious to you (again) but you do realize that sharpening destroys information right?

You can sharpen the edges and edge blur the everything else to the extreme and you may think that 'cartoon look' may look good but it has nothing to do with the original video.

Unless you have a high definition video of some razor blade real video tends to have very few sharp edges. And it still may not look sharp due to diffraction of light.

Now if you want to view a video on some small display like an old-style TV then sharpening may be beneficial because the detail is not visible anyway. So yes if you have some Full HD video and you wish to view it on some small old style TV then it really does not matter if you trow away over 90% of the video and sharpen a bit.

On this, sharpen to your heart's content, it's not going to make a difference anyway:

[hello_hello]

Even after I posted a sample that'd been improved a little by applying sharpening?

I apologize in advance if I state the obvious to you (again) but you do realize that sharpening destroys information right?

If you want to apologise for anything, apologise to the OP for ranting unnecessarily about loss of of picture detail when the OP is asking for help with DVD authoring in a forum dedicated to DVD authoring but unfortunately has the audacity to be using a high definition source for said DVD.
Or apologise for not discussing the samples I posted which I assume you're furiously ignoring.

You can sharpen the edges and edge blur the everything else to the extreme and you may think that 'cartoon look' may look good but it has nothing to do with the original video.

If you really need to apologise for something maybe apologise for your unnecessary rant about sharpening despite the fact I clearly stated I don't like video that looks "sharpened" as a rule. Obviously you furiously ignored my samples because the sharpening I did apply had nothing even remotely resembling a cartoon effect.

Unless you have a high definition video of some razor blade real video tends to have very few sharp edges. And it still may not look sharp due to diffraction of light.

And if you have a HD video it'll have sharper edges than a SD version, so what's your point?
If I sharpened video that'd been resized down it'd only be to compensate for the loss of detail a little. If the edges look sharper than the original, then there's too much sharpening. I'd normally aim for something subtle in between the original sharpness and the unsharpened downscaled version. I doubt my samples look any different, but I didn't exactly spend hours fine tuning them and you're just ignoring them as you always do anyway.

Now if you want to view a video on some small display.......

Irrelevancies and silly pictures..... there's a surprise.

[Skiller]

Nice samples, hello_hello. If newpball had the decency to look at them he would be wondering why it doesn't quite look like you're watching only 8.33% of a video...

[newpball]

If you want to apologise for anything, apologise to the OP for ranting unnecessarily about loss of of picture detail when the OP is asking for help with DVD authoring in a forum dedicated to DVD authoring but unfortunately has the audacity to be using a high definition source for said DVD.

It seems to me the OP had unrealistic expectations. He looked at a nice 1080/60p recording and was surprised that after decimating it to SD it did no look anything near the original. Then he thinks the problem is Premiere Pro's bad encoder.

Rather than suggesting a different encoder, which is obviously not going to make much of a difference someone should have educated the OP about the immense quality difference between Full HD and SD. I attempted to do that.

I think that is helping people. Not "agreeing" with them and telling him if he tinkers with some MPEG-2 codec options or change the MPEG-2 encoder everything will look great. That's like when a doctor advices his patient to try a different brand of cigarettes instead of blatantly telling him smoking is bad.

Also I personally found the ageism remark a bit offensive as if older people would have more trouble with the remote of a blu-ray than a DVD player.

It just seems we come from different planets, different perspectives.

I am trying to help the OP by making him understand he is decimating the video and inquiring about possible better alternatives while others simply go with the "Premiere Pro is the culprit" approach.

Next people have him install codecs, render uncompressed video, install virtualdub, avisynth and all kind of filters. Then people will suggest all kind of scrips to "improve" things.

And the irony is missed, first decimate a video and join forces to repair things. Video racketeering it is!

[poisondeathray]

It seems to me the OP had unrealistic expectations. He looked at a nice 1080/60p recording and was surprised that after decimating it to SD it did no look anything near the original. Then he thinks the problem is Premiere Pro's bad encoder.

Rather than suggesting a different encoder, which is obviously not going to make much of a difference someone should have educated the OP about the immense quality difference between Full HD and SD. I attempted to do that.

I think that is helping people. Not "agreeing" with them and telling him if he tinkers with some MPEG-2 codec options or change the MPEG-2 encoder everything will look great. That's like when a doctor advices his patient to try a different brand of cigarettes instead of blatantly telling him smoking is bad.

Also I personally found the ageism remark a bit offensive as if older people would have more trouble with the remote of a blu-ray than a DVD player.

It just seems we come from different planets, different perspectives.

I am trying to help the OP by making him understand he is decimating the video and inquiring about possible better alternatives while others simply go with the "Premiere Pro is the culprit" approach.

The OP is concerned about a specific issue . The macroblocking artifacts around the dog in motion represents the type of issue he's dealing with. That specific issue is related to the encoder , without a doubt. It has nothing to do with "decimating the video" , or resizing, or discarding "x" % .

He needs DVD-Video, Period. Suggesting other non DVD options is fine, and something to keep in mind ; but going on and on about them doesn't help him with this specific scenario.

If you want to help, try to suggest solutions to the actual problem, not ranting about some other issue.

[usually_quiet]

Also I personally found the ageism remark a bit offensive as if older people would have more trouble with the remote of a blu-ray than a DVD player.

The old folks in question very likely do not have a Blu-Ray player or PC. You should buy them one, or give the OP the money using PayPal and I'm sure he will pick out something nice. Put your money where your mouth is for once.

[hello_hello]

If you want to apologise for anything, apologise to the OP for ranting unnecessarily about loss of of picture detail when the OP is asking for help with DVD authoring in a forum dedicated to DVD authoring but unfortunately has the audacity to be using a high definition source for said DVD.

It seems to me the OP had unrealistic expectations. He looked at a nice 1080/60p recording and was surprised that after decimating it to SD it did no look anything near the original. Then he thinks the problem is Premiere Pro's bad encoder.

It seems to me I've posted two lots of samples of a 1080p video being downscaled to DVD resolution and back to 1080p again and you've continued to ignore them. Therefore your credibility has once again been downscaled to zero accordingly.

Rather than suggesting a different encoder, which is obviously not going to make much of a difference someone should have educated the OP about the immense quality difference between Full HD and SD. I attempted to do that.

I can take the OP's first screenshot, resize it to PAL resolution and back again, and it looks better than the resized screenshot from the first post, so how can the encoder/software not be making a difference? How can I resize and end up with a higher quality if there's no other variables?

I think that is helping people. Not "agreeing" with them and telling him if he tinkers with some MPEG-2 codec options or change the MPEG-2 encoder everything will look great. That's like when a doctor advices his patient to try a different brand of cigarettes instead of blatantly telling him smoking is bad.

I think we all get it. Downscale and you loose picture detail. No statements of the obvious required. No lectures needed. I'm fairly certain even the OP would be aware downscaling costs you picture detail. Obviously the OP also thinks the encoding program is costing more detail/quality than necessary and is asking about it. I don't use Premier but others here seem to agree. If you don't, you're free to say so, but why you don't understand everyone else understands the rest of it is a definite mystery.

Also I personally found the ageism remark a bit offensive as if older people would have more trouble with the remote of a blu-ray than a DVD player.

I took it to mean the older generation are more likely to own DVD players than Bluray players. Nothing offensive there. It's probably true.
Although I know some members of the older generation who aren't "silly" by any means, but who are technologically stupid. I lost the best part of an afternoon when I gave my father my old DVD player and had to explain to him the purpose of the extra remote and how to switch the TV to the Aux input to which the DVD plyer was connected. Written instructions, diagrams, flow charts...... it's true, some of the older generation would have more trouble if you changed the colours of the buttons on the remote. "But the blue button used to make the DVD logo appear........."

I am trying to help the OP by making him understand he is decimating the video and inquiring about possible better alternatives while others simply go with the "Premiere Pro is the culprit" approach.

Next people have him install codecs, render uncompressed video, install virtualdub, avisynth and all kind of filters. Then people will suggest all kind of scrips to "improve" things.

Once again, we all get it. Downscaling costs you detail. The OP also seems to be having problems with encoding artefacts. Something you've so far continued to ignore because apparently all evil is the result of downscaling alone. That's what he/she seems to be enquiring about, not the expected loss of detail from downscaling.

Here's the same video I posted earlier for you to ignore again. This time encoded with Nero 7 at 720x576. There's a fair difference (fullscreen on my TV), but I'd guess that's mainly the sharpness of the resizer.
(Edit: Thinking about it, much of the difference I'm seeing at the moment is possibly how sharply it's being upscaled again. I don't think the 720x576 version looks as sharp fullscreen as I'm using a soft resizer with MPC-HC. The script resizing would be sharper)
I suspect Nero uses a soft resizer in order to make the video easier to compress so it can fit more on a disc without noticeable compression artefacts. Later on I might try some different software (ie AVSToDVD) and any codecs or other tools it requires to see if you're correct and it's not possible to improve on the quality. Do you think I won't be able to "improve" things? If nothing else, I'll be able to convert the colours, which apparently Nero doesn't do.

It's a pity the OP hasn't provided a sample of the original video in question so we can use it for testing. Or have I missed that?

[LMotlow]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9f0vlUQnRBwSkFYR3FuNlF3MDQ/view?usp=sharing

The above link is a short clip of the problem. The dog has a distortion around it as it moves. Weirdly enough the problem is more subtle after being uploaded to Google drive. On my computer and my TV, playing directly from the original file or the actual disc the same problem is more exaggerated.

Thanks for the link, but I think you ought to realize that absolutely no one here can tell you what went wrong that gave you the result you posted. The reason we can't tell you is because no one here has any idea whatsoever what the original looks like or how you can get better results. All I can tell you from your brief sample, after having seen a somewhat compressed jpg of the 1080p original that we can't really do anything with, is that it looks poorly resized and encoded, period.

I think you can understand that we need an unprocessed few seconds of your original video. If you don't know how to cut and post an un-reencoded sample, just ask. Without a piece of the original, there's not much anyone can do except make wild guesses and post irrelevant samples.

[poisondeathray]

Thanks for the link, but I think you ought to realize that absolutely no one here can tell you what went wrong that gave you the result you posted. The reason we can't tell you is because no one here has any idea whatsoever what the original looks like or how you can get better results. All I can tell you from your brief sample, after having seen a somewhat compressed jpg of the 1080p original that we can't really do anything with, is that it looks poorly resized and encoded, period.

Actually, in this case, you can tell from the encode alone, with 99.9% certainty, that the main reason for the artifacts was it was poorly encoded - that's all. ie. not from some other reason such as resizing etc...

You can determine that the source was fine - even without looking at the jpg (which only shows 1 frame, that might have been an IDR frame anyways) . The reason is I frames are clean in the MPEG2 encode, it's the P and B that pixellate around the dog, right where the motion vector is. There is zero chance that the 50p source had the same 12 frame GOP cycle composition as the MPEG2 encode. All 50p cameras will record a 1 or 2 second GOP while recording long GOP (so 50 or 100) , or I-frame only won't show these types of fluctations.