Editing Half D1 video

March 8, 2010 3:09 PM

What's the best way to edit Half D1 (352x480) footage in a NLE?

I've got a DVD with several hours of surveillance footage that I need to edit and output to DVD. I imported the VOBs directly but there's only 352 horizontal lines and they're all displayed on the left side of the program monitor. Green fills out the right side of the box. So I tried to use TMPG to create a 720x480 video. The quality takes a big hit and that won't do.

I was initially planning on doing this project in After Effects but this is really throwing me for a loop. At this point, I'll just be glad to import the footage properly into Premiere.

posted by GalaxieFiveHundred to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

Best answer: Here's one approach that should work:

1) Use DGIndex to index (Create Project) and demux audio from the source file(s).

2) Use DGDecode.dll (part of the same package, needs to be dropped into your Avisynth plugins folder) to load your .d2v project file into a powerful frameserver called Avisynth, which can be used with Premiere using a plugin.

3) Here's roughly what you should do in your Avisynth script:
MPEG2Source("C:\path\somefile.d2v")
# probably no deinterlacing needed because no change in vertical
# resolution; set TFF/BFF in your MPEG-2 encoder.
LanczosResize(720,480)
# you will need to set the pixel aspect ratio, probably NTSC 4:3,
# in whatever MPEG-2 encoder you use.

I'm not sure the best way to handle audio in Premiere, but DGIndex will automatically write a WAV header to demuxed PCM audio and print the audio stream's delay in MS in the file names of all demuxed audio tracks.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 5:09 PM on March 8, 2010

I should add that half-D1 is DVD compliant, and you could save time and hassle by finding an authoring program that will take a demuxed .M2V and whatever audio directly. If you don't need a menu or any other advanced DVD features, Muxman may do the trick,
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 5:12 PM on March 8, 2010

Response by poster: I'll give this a shot in the morning. I really appreciate your response Inspector.Gadget. I was at a loss as to how to proceed. This will be my first time using Avisynth. My understanding of how fields really work isn't great but I should be able to do this. The trouble is that I need to overlay one piece of video onto another so it's not just a matter of authoring a new DVD. I need an AVI to work on.

Thanks again.
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 9:01 PM on March 8, 2010

Ah, that explains why you need Premiere. Since 720x480 is not the correct dimensions of the upsized image but instead what you use for DVD compliance (640x480 would be the correct 4:3 NTSC frame size at a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio), you may want to resize to 640x480 instead to add any overlay that's already at the correct dimensions and then resize to 720x480 only after the overlay is added.

Here's an intro to Avisynth's overlay capability; resizing syntax remains the same afterward, but depending on how sharp the overlay is you may want to switch to Spline36Resize() for the final move to 720x480 in order to limit ringing on edges.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 6:58 AM on March 9, 2010

Response by poster: Wow, ok. So, in theory at least, I could do this entire project within Avisynth. I'm not sure I'm ready for that though. I've successfully imported and re-sized a sample AVI but I'm having a little trouble with the .d2v. I can import it into Premiere but the video isn't re-sized. Get the same results in Virtual Dub so there must be something wrong with my script. Here's what the .avs looks like:

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\DGDecode.dll")
MPEG2Source("D:\C20973\VTS_01_1.d2v")
Lanczos4Resize(720,480)

Not sure why the filter isn't being applied. Got to keep reading...I'm making progress though, definitely appreciate the help Inspector.Gadget.
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 8:12 AM on March 9, 2010

Best answer: It's possible that the MPEG-2 stream is somehow flagged as D1 and then decoded as D1 without resizing the actual content horizontally, resulting in the resizing operation being a null op. I don't know much about surveillance cameras, so I'm not sure about this. One way to address this problem would be to crop the right half before resizing (using Crop() ) and see if that solves the problem by forcing Avisynth to detect the area to be resized as only the active content area.

Alternately, Lanczos4Resize historically gave some weird output that should have been fixed in recent builds of Avisynth. Try replacing it with LanczosResize() or Spline36Resize(). I'll check back in a few hours and see if it's working.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:28 AM on March 9, 2010

Response by poster: Woo! Cropping it did the trick. I've still got a lot of work ahead of me but I think I should be good to go from this point. You've really saved the day! Hit me up if you're ever in NYC because I definitely owe you a beer. Thanks again Inspector.Gadget!
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 9:50 AM on March 9, 2010

Glad it worked. Happy to help, as I know what a pain this stuff can be. I'll check on this thread again over the next few days in case Avisynth does anything else weird. One way to make Google infinitely more useful for finding information about Avisynth and related programs is to use site:doom9.org, which should limit it to questions and answers on what is generally the best (albeit sprawling) forum on Avisynth use.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 10:36 AM on March 9, 2010