Why do I lose my HD-ness after editing??

June 3, 2011 5:43 AM

The file size of my edited videos is too big and the quality is too small. Help!

The raw video I get from my HD Camcorder is beautiful. It's crisp, clear and 1440x1080.


After I edit them in WLMM or Pinnacle or WMM into a smaller, but still healthy, 1280 x 720 at 2000kbps and 25 frames/sec, and .wmv format (i have to do .wmv format) the the actual quality of the videos goes to hell. they get blurry, pixelated just drek.

Now I didn't pull those editing stats out of thin air. I used the stats of several other, high quality .wmv's I have seen. I used the information found in the video stats and set my editor's publishing stats to the same info.

I know others in my field use the same editors and their videos at the same rates look so much better. Edited videos made by others where the raw footage was shot on mini-dv are coming out better quality than my videos shot in full HD.

Since this is happening in different editors and only on my machines, I cant help but think it is maybe a codec problem? But I have the full K-lite codec pack installed.

My computer is pretty fast and has 12gb of ram.

Any advice?

Thanks in advance!

posted by sandra_s to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

i prefer to use Gordian Knot to compress videos. It gives me enough control over basically every aspect of the process that I end up coming up with good quality vids at a reasonable size.

not sure if that helps at all, but it's worth a google to see if it's a good fit for you
posted by zombieApoc at 6:18 AM on June 3, 2011

Are you editing at those settings or editing at something better and then transcoding when you're done? The preferred path is to edit at the best quality you can. On the Mac I would suggest something like ProRes for an edit codec. Not sure on windows.
posted by bug138 at 6:37 AM on June 3, 2011

Response by poster: I edit at full settings, then publish/save the finished file to the new settings
posted by sandra_s at 6:39 AM on June 3, 2011

.wmv is not a video format. It's a container format. That means that a .wmv file can contain any number of different video codecs. Saying that your clip is in .wmv format is like saying that your document is in .zip format -- there could be anything inside there. What you probably want is one of the VC-1 codecs like WMV9 Advanced Profile. Those give roughly comparable quality to h.264.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:40 AM on June 3, 2011 [2 favorites]

And I meant to add that before you can start comparing your files to other files and comparing bitrates you need to figure out what actual codec and profile you're using and what codec/profile the comparison file is using. File extension tells you nothing.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:42 AM on June 3, 2011

Response by poster: @rhomboid - Good point. How do I determine which codec they are using?
posted by sandra_s at 7:27 AM on June 3, 2011

MediaInfo is the tool you want for inspecting video files
http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en
posted by bug138 at 7:47 AM on June 3, 2011

There's a lot here that can affect encode quality. 2000kbps is actually at the low end to get a good 720p encode. Note that Netflix uses Microsoft formats for a lot of their video and they encode 720p at 2600kbps on the low end (3800kbps on the high).

a few things to check.

1. How are you encoding audio. You can be using a bunch of the 2000kbps on (what can be very poor source) audio if you audio encode settings are too high.

2. Are you doing single pass or double pass encoding. Double pass encodes will generally be of higher quality then single pass for the same bitrate.

3. Video codec. H.264 is usually the way I'd lean, but you should also realize that even h.264 has different profiles. Main or High profile H.264 will be better quality per bitrate then H.264 baseline codec. I can't speak as well for the MS formats.

I'd try outputting the raw video and using a few other encoding tools which may provide more control over the output. I'm on a Mac and use FFMpeg which is a command line tool, but usually with the FFMpegX UI - I also use Handbrake for some videos which works well. I don't know of good Windows equivalents if you're on there.
posted by bitdamaged at 8:26 AM on June 3, 2011

TL;DR each step is adding a transformation of your video (from camera to editing, from editing to distribution) and it's why your video looks like hell.

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The problem is that you're comparing the distribution format and quality (the WMVs you've seen) to the editorial needs. And I'm 'blurring' the lines a little here between containers (like WMV) and codecs (Windows media 9 or VC-1)

Basically, it rolls like this. There are three given compression types to deal with in video:

1) Camera codec. For HD, most prosumer HD cameras are working in a specific flavor of MPEG-4 called h.264. I don't think that's the 'best' codec for this, just what's common.
2) Editorial codec. We'll come back to this. It shouldn't be WMV and certainly it shouldn't be 2mb/s
3) Distribution codecs/containers - this could be a WMV file, an MPEG-2 (VOB for DVD) or again, h.264 video.

Here's the problem:
You don't want to add any additional artifacts/compression to what you shot, until the very, very last step. Here's a frightening number: uncompressed HD runs around 880 mb/s. Not 2. 880 - yes 400x larger.

Your problem is in the Editorial side. You don't state what your camera is producing - and likely WMM is crushing the hell out of it. I'm pretty sure Avid bought Pinnacle (are you talking about Pinnacle Liquid?) And I don't know what WLMM is.)

At the professional level the general thought when you get anything from a camera, is to take it to an editorial container++codec - a codec that is 'larger' but not fully uncompressed.
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As to the 'big' solution - I'm not sure that any of the editorial tools is treating your video without screwing it up further. I don't know the free level tools in windows. I do know that you shouldn't worry about it being a WMV file @ 2mb/s until the very last step - as it comes out of your editorial software.
posted by filmgeek at 9:03 AM on June 4, 2011 [1 favorite]