Quality issue converting AVCHD to DVD

[gmcmahan]

I recently purchased a Canon Vixia hf200 camcorder and have been recording in AVCHD to a memory card (1920x1080 framerate 60i). In order to transfer and edit my video, I purchased Roxio Creator 2010. I plug the memory card directly into the computer (Windows 7, Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66GHz Processor, 4MB L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB, 8192MB DDR2 Dual-Channel 800MHz RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 Graphics with 1GB Dedicated Video Memory) and access the card as a disk drive.

 

Initially, I was using the drag and convert feature of Creator 2010 to convert the video clips to h.264 (1920x1080). The process seemed to work fine. When I viewed the clip on the computer they didn't look the greatest, but I thought it may just be the fact that I was playing them on my computer screen. I used mydvd to burn some clips to a dvd and chose to burn at the highest quality dvd. I was very dissapointed when I viewed the dvd on my 42" TV (upconverting dvd player, also on older 27" crt tv to the same lack of quality). I was very disappointed with the quality. The pictures was grainy and very jumpy. The sound was also off. There was close to a second delay between people's lips moving and hearing their voices. The colors were strange as well; grasses were almost a neon green. Since I assumed that the problem was in the conversion, I copied the AVCHD files directly from the SDHC disk to my computer. When I played the AVCHD clips with Windows Media Player (7), the clips looked great. They were very sharp and the audio was right on. Thinking I had my problem solved, I went back to MyDVD and added the AVCHD clips directly. Again I chose the highest quality DVD and burned. The output DVD was no different than the first. Since I don't have a blu-ray player I am not able to burn straight to AVCHD and test the output.

 

The output I have gotten so far is unacceptable. It is much worse than the old miniDV camera I used to use. I am assuming the issue lies within the conversion process from AVCHD somewhere (hopefully the settings). What should I be looking for withing the settings?

 

Has anyone had similar issues, or does anyone have any suggestions?

 

Thanks

[ggrussell]

Have you installed in other video editing software or any shareware or free codec packs? Make sure you have the latest drivers for your nVidia card. For video/audio sync, there is no magic solution. Sometimes trimming a few frames at the beginning will help. If you continue having issues, you can post a sample file somewhere like UpforDown or YouSendIt. We are willing to try to duplicate the problem. I have a sample Canon HG100 file. Not sure how different the HF200 would be.

[gmcmahan]

Have you installed in other video editing software or any shareware or free codec packs? Make sure you have the latest drivers for your nVidia card. For video/audio sync, there is no magic solution. Sometimes trimming a few frames at the beginning will help. If you continue having issues, you can post a sample file somewhere like UpforDown or YouSendIt. We are willing to try to duplicate the problem. I have a sample Canon HG100 file. Not sure how different the HF200 would be.

 

Before having the problems I hadn't installed any other video editing software. Since having the issues, I installed windows live movie maker. The output from movie maker was worse yet. The computer is brand new so it is possible that there are kinks to be worked out, however when I ran windows update it did update an nVidia driver. When I get home from work tonight I will try to post a sample. I have hooked the camera directly to the TV with a mini HDMI cable and the quality looks great. Also when I copy the AVCHD files directly to the hard drive with no conversion and play them in Windows Media Player they look great. I'm sure the quality is being lost in the downgrade. I realize that I will loose quality going from High-Def to DVD, but I it doesn't seem like the quality should degrade that much. It is also a lot more flickery. My camera gives me the option of different bitrates. Some of the recording was done at 24mbps(mxp) and some was done at 17mbps(FXP), would this be something to look at?

 

Thanks

[ggrussell]

I realize that I will loose quality going from High-Def to DVD, but I it doesn't seem like the quality should degrade that much.

Ah, but it does! You are going from 1920x1080 @20Mbps down to 720x480@8Mbps or lower depending on length of video.