[brodeck]

I am now regularly burning my projects, thanks to Greg and Bruce in this forum. Now, I have the luxury of learning how best to use EMC8.

I created a project in VW8 at 4:3 with only SD content from both my DVD and my HD camera. This looked pretty good overall. The SD content looked good, but the hi-def content (down-converted to SD in the camcorder) is not as good as normal HD.

In contrast, I created a project at 16:9, including both SD and HD content. Playing the DVD, the SD looks really bad and the HD looks very good. The SD content was very shaky looking compared to the way it looks on normal playback. I have to think it comes from rendering to 16:9.

So here's my question. I want my 16:9 project to be just the way it is, but changed to 4:3. How do I change this project - I don't want to lose the transitions, etc.

Thanks,

Brian

[ggrussell]

Bummer, can't do it. Have to redo the entire project - as far as I know. If you do find away, let us know!

I don't have any HD media, but I have mixed 16:9 and 4:3 without any problems. Are you using the pan/zoom to make the 4:3 clips widescreen? Zooming in on 4:3 would definitely cause some degradation. I did a 30min Christmas video that way for my sister who has a 42" widescreen Plasma and she thought it looked fairly good.

Granted if you mixed HD clips with SD clips, I'm sure the difference will be noticeable.

[brodeck]

ggrussell, on May 6 2006, 04:37 PM, said:

Bummer, can't do it. Have to redo the entire project - as far as I know. If you do find away, let us know!

I don't have any HD media, but I have mixed 16:9 and 4:3 without any problems. Are you using the pan/zoom to make the 4:3 clips widescreen? Zooming in on 4:3 would definitely cause some degradation. I did a 30min Christmas video that way for my sister who has a 42" widescreen Plasma and she thought it looked fairly good.

Granted if you mixed HD clips with SD clips, I'm sure the difference will be noticeable.

I'm not doing any pan/zoom at this point - don't really understand it yet. I'm just selecting SD video already at 4:3, and then selecting HD video already at 16:9. The variable is whether the project itself starts in 4:3 or 16:9 mode.

I've found one thing that answers my question - almost.

In the original project I Select All and then Edit | Copy.

I open a new project in 4:3 mode and Edit | Paste. All of my content along with the timing, transitions, etc came over. Cool!

The almost part is a particular section at the end of my SD video - fading to black. My burn freezes at that point, which happens to be the 93% complete point. It coincides with the reason for my first post (freezing at 93%) that started my foray into this forum.

Interesting that the segment portion that freezes at 93% in 4:3 mode burns flawlessly in 16:9 mode. However, the visual quality of that SD segment suffers when burning in 16:9 mode.

I'm currently clipping it off and trying the burn again...

Brian

[ggrussell]

When you drop a 4:3 SD clip into a 16:9 project, doesn't it but the bars on the left and right? The only thing I can think of is the 4:3 is already in MPEG format. By adding the bars, it will have to re-render causing a degradation in quality.

Keep all original clips in DV AVI format.

This post has been edited by ggrussell: 06 May 2006 - 04:45 PM

[brodeck]

ggrussell, on May 6 2006, 05:42 PM, said:

When you drop a 4:3 SD clip into a 16:9 project, doesn't it but the bars on the left and right? The only thing I can think of is the 4:3 is already in MPEG format. By adding the bars, it will have to re-render causing a degradation in quality.

Keep all original clips in DV AVI format.

I think you're right about re-rendering the video, but I don't think it's a "purity of AVI" thing. Unless I'm mistaken, that's what I was using in the 16:9 mode combined with HD video.

I've looked at the video quality in different renderings, and think that maybe EMC8 isn't really ready for Hi-Def. It accepts it and renders it, but the overall visual experience doesn't seem to be there yet.

Bottom line, I'm going to see my niece and brother-in-law with a skydiving project - combo of this video compilation and a slideshow. I'm bringing the SD - SD version, because SD input from an HD source seems to yield the best visual quality.

Brian

[ggrussell]

When it comes to my camcorder, I always capture as DV AVI. I would be curious to know how large those HD DV AVI files are. For example, SD DV AVI are about 13gig per hour of video.

It will be a few years before I even go widescreen much less HD. Everyone in my family has 4:3 TV sets and they hate watching letterboxed 16:9.