Quality issues w/ edits/fades on DVD project.

[click_one]

I've been tasked w/ creating DVDs of a dance recital.
This is actually my third time doing this, but a wrench got thrown into the works.
The recital was filmed w/ a rather nice Sony camera (model number escapes me), and yielded some rather large 50MBps AVCHD files.
I've used AVS2DVD to convert those to MPEG2, using FFMPEG CBR 1-pass at 9MBps bit rate.
They look pretty good at this point, actually.

Where things get a bit tricky is when it comes to editing the files.

I initially used VideoReDo to cut out the dead space and it seemed to stitch everything back together w/ no perceived loss in quality.
I've been using DVDStyler to put it all together, and it works well.
Everything still looks great at this point.

The issue is that the client wants some simple fade out -> fade in effects between the cut sections.
They felt that the abrupt cuts looked a bit jarring, and I tend to agree.
VideoReDo did not have a viable way of doing this, so I wound up trying PowerDirector.

PD has definitely delivered the fades effortlessly, but the overall quality looks appreciably worse than before.
Not very impressed by the output capabilities of PD at this point.

Fine details of the backdrop could be seen from my input files, when viewed in VLC.
These details have been lost when viewing the output from PD.
The dancers look washed out and smudgy.

I'm looking for advice on things that I might be doing wrong/overlooking.

I'm not averse to using a different program to make all the edits/fades, provided that it'll keep the quality on par w/ the input file.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[manono]

You should be editing from the source files and not from a DVD created from those files. Every step along the way degrades the video quality more.

[click_one]

Good point. I worded that poorly.
After the client expressed a wish for fades, I took a fresh copy of the MPEG2s from AVS2DVD and used those w/ PD.
The files going in looked great and had very good detail.

The files being exported from PD after trimming, whether it be an iso image, or just a video file, have lost a lot of visual quality.

[amaipaipai]

Blackmagic Davinci Resolve can handle this quite easy, it opens my Sony Camera AVCHD files directly and you also can edit this files on the go, the cuts and the FadeIn/FadeOut effects comes with the free version, you can learn the basics of Davinci in like 5 min.
Export the final edition to MP4/H264 and I believe DVDStyle will handle it pretty well.

[videobruger]

I would just use DVDStyler to make the cuts and fade using the AVCHD files as source and then encode using 2-pass VBR.


[Attachment 46088 - Click to enlarge]

[TimA-C]

There is a fade option in Videoredo but I think it just fades titles in and out. Don't think it would do what you're looking for. There are fade filters for Virtualdub (and Virtualdub2) but I think they're pretty basic and would involve some messing around. amaipaipai is probably on a better track for you.

[johnmeyer]

Womble lets you cut VOB/MPEG-2 losslessly but still do fades at cut points, when you want to. The video is re-encoded only at the fade points.

[click_one]

Thanks so much for all your advice. It is greatly appreciated.
I took a look at Davinci Blackmagic Resolve, and it sure looked neat, but it would not import the AVCHD files.
I did some digging and found a post on the BM forums which pretty much nailed it:

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=71892#p409118
The files I've got are 10 bit and the free version will not open these.

Also tried using Resolve on the mpegs that I got from AVStoDVD, but this seems to be another format that will not work.

I grabbed the 7 day demo of Premiere and gave that a whirl.
Despite the very complicated interface, was able to import the avchd files w/ no problems and they looked great.
However, there is no sound because I'm on Win7 and dolby is not supported.
This is a pity because it seemed that Premiere would keep the input and output bit rate the same.

Back to square one.
Should I try and transcode the Sony files to something more compatible, or just stick w/ the mpegs that I got from AVStoDVD?


Going fwd, I will suggest that my friend throw that camera away and get something a bit less ridiculous.

[amaipaipai]

You'll have to transcode or to convert this material to a compatible one, a 10 bit video file is useless for DVD standard anyway.
Try to convert it to a lossless H264 format:
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264#LosslessH.264

For audio you can use eac3to to convert to any other format

Then you can mux the end results together and edit on Davinci or any other tool, when I work with Davinci I convert to H264+AAC using the qaac tool.

PS: Davinci don't understant "-crf 0", so use a big bitrate, 20000 is good enough for me.

[amaipaipai]

This is what I use to transcode de-interlaced, VHS/DV material:

x264.exe --bitrate 2000 --preset ultrafast --sar 1:1 --keyint 30 --threads 8 --open-gop --colorprim "smpte170m" --transfer "smpte170m" --colormatrix "smpte170m" --no-interlaced --output "VIDEO.MP4" "tmp.avs""

For 720/1080 I just replace to "smpte170m" to "bt709"

For audio:

qaac.exe --verbose --log audio.log --threading --text-codepage 65001 -V 100 -q 2 AUDIO.WAV -o AUDIO.m4a

For muxing:

mp4box -add "VIDEO.mp4#video:fps=29.970":name="Some name" -add "AUDIO.m4a#audio:lang=eng:name=English" -tmp "D:\tmp" -new "VIDEO_MUXED.mp4"

You don't need to compress or mux the audio, but if you need it.

[videobruger]

DVDStyler handles 10-bits source just fine.