Still no HD AVI export in PSP?

[peterphelan Profile Private messageWebsite]

Having just spent hours trying to export an avi file from PSP; all to no avail, I found the earlier thread about the impossibility of doing this. Has there been any recent update on the situation? Or are we still stuck with the serious limitation?

Thanks
Peter

[peterphelan Profile Private messageWebsite]

Well in case it's of help to others, although not ideal, this seems to work:

Choose the export for Youtube - I chose 720p maximum quality - and save the file to disc rather than upload. There are no options or indication of the settings that will be used, but the resulting video uses an avi wrapper and the details are:

Codec: MPEG4 (DivX/Xvid compatible)
Frame: 1280 x 720
Bitrate: 8000
30 fps

Audio:
Mp3
Sample rate 44100 - 16 bit
Bitrate 192
My original sound track was a much higher quality wav file, so I deleted this from the PSP video and used another master audio file.

I took this final video only file directly into Magix Movie Edit pro for incorporation into my main video project and it handled the change to my UK based 25 fps. And although the transitions are not quite as smooth as I would like, it exported the 22 minute final HD mp4 file ok. So some further tests are required.

Peter

[evangary Profile Private message]

Hi

Yesterday and today I rendered 3 HD AVI files using the Lagarith, HuffyUV and Uncompressed formats. Not a single crash. Luck? Maybe.

evangary

[Turbopizza Profile Private message]

Evangary

Are those 3 HD AVI files by any chance smaller then 2 GB?


William

[Luke_Miller Profile Private messageWebsite]

I have long been frustrated by the limitation on HD AVI files. But am less so now. My productions tend to run long - 40 or 50 minutes or more. Even a compressed HD AVI file for a production of that length would be enormous. Far larger than I would want to deal with. So I let Producer perform the compression to mpeg. That gives me a file size I can easily manage. I take that file into Adobe Premiere Pro to add chapter markers. Premiere's smart rendering does not decompress and then recompress the Producer mpeg file so I do not take a quality hit. I take the resulting file straight to Encore for menus and ISO creation with no transcoding needed.

For shorter HD productions I would like the option to get an AVI file from Producer, since I believe Premiere Pro's mpeg compression can produce a slightly better result than Producer. But at this point that is not a show stopper (pardon the pun).

[Turbopizza Profile Private message]

Luke,

I also want sometimes to render to HD AVI, I then use an intermediate codec like Lagarith because of file size (much smaller then un-compressed AVI but same quality) next I add effects with After Effects.

But for some reason Proshow damages the HD AVI file don't know why, it happens mostly when filesize is big!

I can't render to MPEG2 because AE will then trans-code and quality will degrade.

Last week I bought Muvee Reveal X, for now I use that when I need a HD AVI, until Proshow is stable with HD AVI's.

When I don't need to add extra AE effects I can render to MPEG2 with Proshow, the mpeg quality is good enough AND it is blu-ray compatible! I use Sony DVD Architect for authoring.

[evangary Profile Private message]

Hi all

All of the files I rendered were considerably larger than 2 GB in size.

evangary

[wwaag76 Profile Private message]

This is still an issue. I'm trying to render an AVI 1080 60P using the latest Cineform codec for input into Vegas Pro. Here's what I've found. If the output file size is under 2GB, it's OK. Between 2GB and 4GB, the file index becomes corrupted but can be fixed using Virtualdub. Over 4GB, it renders OK up to the 4GB point and then only black frames.

I called Photodex tech support this morning about the problem. The only suggestion was to break down the slideshow into smaller segments. That works out to be about a minute per segment, which is completely unacceptable. He then suggested I document the problem with an email support request, which I will do.

Suggest that others having this problem do the same. If enough document this as a problem, perhaps they will address it in a future release, although I'm not optimistic. This is an expensive piece of software and should work as advertised--at the moment, I'm pretty disappointed.

wwaag

[Luke_Miller Profile Private messageWebsite]

I called Photodex tech support this morning about the problem. The only suggestion was to break down the slideshow into smaller segments. That works out to be about a minute per segment, which is completely unacceptable. He then suggested I document the problem with an email support request, which I will do.

Good suggestion. My mpeg2 workaround lets me do what I need as far as adding the additional features Photodex does not support. But it only works because Premiere Pro will not decompress and then recompress my files. Other applications may not be so accommodating. While the mpeg2 files exported from Producer are very good - I think I can do better in Premiere Pro. My preferred export format is also the Cineform avi, but I am getting the same results you experience.

I will submit a support case to Photodex. Since Photodex chooses to not add features such as full font support, chapter markers and elaborate menu structures to Producer it should allow Blu-Ray producers who need such features to export an uncompressed or a lossless compressed file so those features can be applied in a third party program just as DVD producers can currently.

Speaking of Blu-ray - my Blu-ray player supports 1080P 60 FPS, which is part of the new Blu-Ray 3D standard, but Producer only outputs 1080P in 24 FPS. I am not a fan of 24 FPS since I can't afford a TV that displays 24 FPS material natively (i.e. operates at a frequency that is a multiple of 24). So 1080P 24 FPS discs have to be converted in the player or TV to match the frequency of the display. This frame rate conversion can create motion "judder" in some cases, but is never as smooth as 60 FPS. I produce my Blu-Rays in the 720P 60 FPS format for this reason. I lose a touch of visible resolution, but motion is much better. I would love to see Photodex support 1080P 60 FPS output.

[wwaag76 Profile Private message]

I eagerly awaited version 5 to see if this problem had been fixed--it has not, which is really a disappointment. Has anyone had any success rendering to HD AVI? I am still using Cineform, but renders at 1080 60P are limited to about a minute.

wwaag

[Luke_Miller Profile Private messageWebsite]

I downloaded the Photodex Devices Plugin. It installs in the "Video for Web, Devices, and Computers" panel. Under Custom -> Custom Video Presets you can create custom export formats. When you select AVI there is a RAW option. Selecting this produces an uncompressed AVI file containing the raw data (in BGRA format) of your production.

For those searching for a method to export an uncompressed avi of an HD show this looks to be the solution. But it also belongs in the catagory of "be careful what you wish for." A one minute and 45 second 1280 x 720 60P clip produced a 22.3 GB file. The only application I've found so far that can display this file is Quicktime Pro. Using that I can convert it to MOV format at the same filesize (22.3 GB). The MOV file can then be brought into the third pary application of your choice assuming it doesn't choke on the filesize.

While an uncompressed AVI is still my preferred export for standard definition productions, it is not workable IMO for high definition ones. My goal is to find a way to get a lossless compressed export from Producer, but have not been sucessful so far.

[wwaag76 Profile Private message]

Luke Miller,
Just looked at this thread and saw your post. Sounds like you and I are the only one's interested in HD AVI export. I still think it's a shame that Photodex refuses to fix the problem and if they ever do, we'll have to pay for an upgrade!!

I do think I have a solution. Following your suggestion about rendering "uncompressed", I believe that using the freeware program Virtualdub is the answer. It does, however, require the initial render as "uncompressed" which can be quite large. However,once compressed, you can delete the large file. Here's what I did.

First, I rendered a one minute file at 1280x720 at 60P. This produced a 9.26 GB (9945MB) file.

I then used Virtualdub to open the file and compress using a variety of codecs. Incidentally, it took about 1:50 sec to render the file from Proshow and roughly the same time to recompress the file--I suspect that the main time is read/write. Here are some examples of resulting file sizes:

Uncompressed--9.26 GB (9945MB).
Canopus Lossless--5.4GB (5803MB)
Canopus HQX--superfine--2.08GB (2238MB)
Canopus HQ--fine--1.35GB (1457MB)
Lagarth Lossless--2.27 GB (2445MB)
Cineform Filmscan 2--1.92 GB (2068 MB)
Cineform Filmscan 1--1.46 GB (1577MB)
Cineform high HD--1.03 GB (1110 Mb)
Cineform medium--.83 GB (87- MB).

I then put these clips on the Vegas timeline and took "snapshots" of a few at full resolution. I must say that that at full screen resolution, they looked virtually identical. I then opened a few in Photoshop and zoomed to 500%. At this zoom, there are some differences, although quite subtle. Changing from Uncompressed to Lagarth lossless showed virtually no difference. I also looked at Cineform Filmscan 1 which is the preset in Vegas Pro, Cineform medium which I have used in the past, Canopus HQ and Canopus HQX. The only one showing really noticeable differences was the Cineform medium HD setting.

My conclusion: Lagarth Lossless was the best. If you want to compress further, then Canopus HQ and Cineform Filmscan 1 would be my next choices.

The good news is that at least Virtudaldub does work to recompress using whatever codec you choose. Moreover,the resulting files work nicely with at least Vegas and and can be played with Windows Media Player. In explorer, thumbnails are created and the length of the clips are show, unlike any AVI file rendered directed from Producer.

Hope this helps.

wwaag


Incidentally, all of these codecs are free.

[wwaag76 Profile Private message]

This is an old thread, but the problem still remains. I tried PSP 6, but the HD AVI export is still broken. Has anyone had any success?

[Luke_Miller Profile Private messageWebsite]

This is an old thread, but the problem still remains. I tried PSP 6, but the HD AVI export is still broken. Has anyone had any success?

I haven't. The utility program that allows me to convert my Producer HD MPEG2 output to a version that will burn to a Blu-ray (without decompressing and recomprerssing) does not support the current version of Premiere Pro. So I no longer have a method of getting a high quality HD export from Producer for my Blu-ray projects. I Just completed an hour and ten minute Blu-ray using Premiere Pro CC for stills, titles, and video. Worked very nicely. I tried to do it in Producer, but it locked up when importing the video files. The video files were in cineform avi format that worked well on shorter projects. I suspect the length of the video was the problem. I think Producer is a fine program and continue to use it for projects that are not video intensive. Unfortunately my needs and Producer's capabilities seem to be moving in different directions.

[pgp Profile Private message]

Hello and thank you for sharing your experience. I found this thread very interesting and helpful. Let me add what I recently found and used in the subject of using Producer generated files in Encore.

I called Photodex, asked for lossless output generation and was pointed to the avi file option. In ver. 6 of Producer it is under "Publish->For Computers->Custom Video File". In the window that pops up you select Format Type: Custom and Format Settings: Format: AVI-Uncompressed. They allow you to set the resolution, frame rate and a few other things. The resulting .avi files were about 10GB for each minute of video (1080p, 23.976 fps).

In this particular project I had 4 files each about 100GB in size. A bit awkward to deal with, size-wise, but still manageable, at least for me. I imported these files directly into Encore (did not go through Premiere) and BD transcoded them using all the high quality options I could find in Encore. The resulting BD is ok. I think it is noticeably better than what I was getting when I generated mpeg2 files from Producer and then had them transcoded in Encore. The main difference is less distortion in fast changing scenes. I just noticed that in Producer there is a "high-quality" option that I did not see (I used "normal quality"). I'll try it next time (likely will give even bigger .avi files).

Peter G.