Hi everyone!

I am having problems with my underwater footage once i edit it and burn it to a disk.
The problem is that alot of video that has alot of blue especially (fish swimming with no background, just blue sea) is not coming out clear at all. Although saying that all the video is not coming out as clear as i it should.
When i play back directly from my camera to the tv its looks good, but once it goes through the editing process it doesnt come out clear.
The program i am using is Adobe Premier Pro 2.0.
at first i thought that the problem could of been the first step in Adobe where you choose the settings of video you are going to be doing. But i have played around with most settings and it still doesnt come out clear.
Could it be that because my camera is a HD camera, and im editing the disc in the HD format, that the footage will not come out clear unless its played on a HD tv?
Cheers

Huffy

Welcome to digideep

huffy - 03 February 2008 12:42 PM

Hi everyone!

I am having problems with my underwater footage once i edit it and burn it to a disk.
The problem is that alot of video that has alot of blue especially (fish swimming with no background, just blue sea) is not coming out clear at all. Although saying that all the video is not coming out as clear as i it should.
When i play back directly from my camera to the tv its looks good, but once it goes through the editing process it doesnt come out clear.
The program i am using is Adobe Premier Pro 2.0.
at first i thought that the problem could of been the first step in Adobe where you choose the settings of video you are going to be doing. But i have played around with most settings and it still doesnt come out clear.
Could it be that because my camera is a HD camera, and im editing the disc in the HD format, that the footage will not come out clear unless its played on a HD tv?
Cheers

Huffy

The HD should not be an issue, it is probably related to the workflow (I shoot HDV and make both HD and SD discs that look fine when played back on a TV, but my workflow is Mac based.).  I have not used Premiere in awhile (use to use it on both Mac and PC, but not for HD), but in general I would guess you shot on a flavor of HDV?  If somehow you converted it to another codec prior to encoding for DVD you could lose something there.  Also the encoding settings themselves for the MPEG-2 can change how it appears.  If you have more details on the workflow, timeline settings, camera used and the settings to make the DVD it can point to what be causing the quality change.

Dear Huffy,… Welcome to our board!

What camera, lens and housing are you using?
Are you mainly shooting with filters or with lights?
Can you post an example-clip and let us know where it was shot?

All the above would help in solving your problem.

thanks guys (great forum here)

Camera im shooting with is a Sony HDRHC7. With a Top Dawg housing.
Im not using any filters or lights as i film while freediving so alot of my footage is on surface also.
funny thing is when i watch the footage directly from my camera on a t.v. its fine.. and when i watch the original (not yet put into adobe) its also clear. only when its gets burnt off adobe it ends up unclear.??

Ill check all the settings tonight and ill let you know what the setting are.

Thanks fellas

Okay,… one thing for your underwater footage:

In a depth of 3-12 meters you should consider a UR-Pro Filter.
However with the Top Dawg Housing you need to decide prior
to diving if you want to shoot with a Filter or not.

On the surface and more shallow than 3 meters your pictures
will have a very red tint as the Auto White Balance is unable
to compensate the filter in that environment.

Huffy,

try to identify the point in your workflow where the quality degrades.

Is the quality still fine when you captured them to your harddisk? For example with HDVsplit?

ok.. here are the setting that i am burning with (i am in australia btw)
NTSC, 720x480, 29.97 non-drop frame [fps], Lower, Quality 5.0
48 kHz, 16 bit, Stereo, PCM
CBR, 7.00 [Mbps]

Now when i watch my video straight from my camera to my tv its good.. but once i burn it onto disc its not looking very clear! especially for HD. It also seems that once burnt onto disc through adobe that its zoomed in a bit..maybe this could be the reason why its a bit blurry?

huffy - 10 February 2008 10:43 AM

ok.. here are the setting that i am burning with (i am in australia btw)
NTSC, 720x480, 29.97 non-drop frame [fps], Lower, Quality 5.0
48 kHz, 16 bit, Stereo, PCM
CBR, 7.00 [Mbps]

Now when i watch my video straight from my camera to my tv its good.. but once i burn it onto disc its not looking very clear! especially for HD. It also seems that once burnt onto disc through adobe that its zoomed in a bit..maybe this could be the reason why its a bit blurry?

Could be a few things.

First is the camera a PAL camera and are you editing in PAL? If so that would be one thing to consider.  Even though there is an NTSC option for export, all PAL NTSC conversion ways are not created equal and that can make things look poorer.

Second on the timeline itself you may have changed something in what you were editing.  (Though I am guessing not.)

Third, if you edited in HDV and are making SD there is also some scaling/cropping occurring to make the video portion.  Again this scaling can affect the footage.

Fourth, some DVD players may or may not handle scaling/output the same..not sure if you have a PAL Player that can play NTSC discs, so something can be happening there. 

When you mention HD, you are not trying to make a HD DVD (well blu-ray in Premiere) to play on Playstation are you?

Also as an aside, though less of a problem nowadays, and your setings should be okay, changing auido to Dolby can help prevent playback issues.  Also 7 CBR shouldn’t have a smiliar problem, and people do differ on this one, but you may also want to try other options.  Not sure which ones you have but a two-pass VBR may be worth a whirl.

One last thing, you may want to look at another encoder, such as ProCoder or CinemaCraft, and see if there are demos available (they have high end and less expensive versions) and run some test clips to see if the quality is better.

huffy - 10 February 2008 10:43 AM

NTSC, 720x480

especially for HD

Well, what do you expect? First you are converting PAL to NTSC which has less
quality then PAL and second you convert to standard definition.

I am really not sure what you expect to get?! Stay within HD and everything will be fine.
The PS3, Drew mentioned, is a very nice way to play HD materia toHD TVs.