[rident]

I have a significant quality problems with home video that I'm editing. Raw video looks fine coming from the camcorder (Sony HC42 shot in 16:9 widescreen). In Videowave, I'm doing basic operations: splicing clips, adding basic transitions, etc. Then I output as DV AVI. I take this AVI file and edit a second time to replace certain sections of the sound track (too hard to do in the first step --- I do a lot of reordering of clips and I'd have to mute each one individually). This second editing is output as another DV AVI, which I then burn to DVD using MyDVD. I'm running EMC 8.05 on a Dell 8400 3.0GHz P4 with 1.5 GB RAM and a 250 GB HD.

The results are terrible. Raw video looks fine. But after editing with Videowave the video gets these translucent vertical bands (like looking through a bottle) and compression/digitization artifacts (blockiness, e.g. if a face crosses the vertical bands it gets split and a nose breaks into 2 pieces). Each edit with Videowave and then subsequent processing with MyDVD to create the DVD makes it even worse. Worst is that these vertical bands exaggerate any camera movement and you start to feel sick watching the video. The result is a video that I would be ashamed to share.

I've noticed subtle video bands when just taking raw video and putting on a DVD. And, I've noticed similar problems in pan-and-scan photostories.

Moving other sources of video, such as output from MS PhotoStory 3, is absolutely smooth and perfect.

I'm at a loss how to proceed. When I did some video editing last year with EMC 7 there were no problems. I was thinking that this was a problem with the new 16:9 except that I see the bands in a Videowave-created pan-and-scan in 4:3 format.

Any thoughts?

[ggrussell]

Has nothing to do with 16:9. It's more likely the new rendering engine. Several people have complained, but I have no issues at all with the quality. I'm beginning to think the rendering engine depends TOO much on the video card and video subsystem. It also could be video codec issues. I have several other video editors installed which also installs other video codecs. So I don't know if Videowave is using a codec from the other companies or the one it installed.

Do you have a video card or integrated video on the motherboard? In both cases, updating the drivers certainly wouldn't hurt and in most cases, helps.

[rident]

Thanks -- I switched to using software rendering and got a fine looking video, although I am still getting a little distortion on the right ~20 vertical columns of pixels on the far right, but I can live with it.

Interestingly, after I switched to software rendering, Videowave started using SmartDV (i.e. copying unchanged frames instead of rerendering) which had never been used since upgrading to EMC 8. So then I switched back to hardware rendering, and it still uses SmartDV and now hardware rendering works just fine too! Perhaps it was using another codec and the switch from software to hardware forced Videowave to reconfigure its codecs. I didn't think that I had any other DV codecs on my system because I started with EMC 7 when the PC was new, but who knows...

--r

ggrussell, on Jan 11 2006, 07:28 AM, said:

Has nothing to do with 16:9. It's more likely the new rendering engine. Several people have complained, but I have no issues at all with the quality. I'm beginning to think the rendering engine depends TOO much on the video card and video subsystem. It also could be video codec issues. I have several other video editors installed which also installs other video codecs. So I don't know if Videowave is using a codec from the other companies or the one it installed.

Do you have a video card or integrated video on the motherboard? In both cases, updating the drivers certainly wouldn't hurt and in most cases, helps.

[info@farfilm.com]

I'm having the same problem with video that becomes "jagged" when a subject moves within the frame or the camera pans. I switching between Interlace & Progressive, as well as using software rendering, but this doesn't improve the quality.

Can anyone suggest a solution? Also, how do I update my drivers, if that is a solution?

Thanks,

Michael