Import full-hd-videos have bad quality

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Re: Import full-hd-videos have bad quality

Postby nsd3 » Tue Oct 22, 2013 3:53 am

The response I originally received from ProShow support was that everything is handled internally at 30fps. A conclusion I'd already reached myself prior to contacting technical support about this issue. Whatever goes in, becomes 30fp. Whatever goes out, is up to you. Hence my real desire to have control over the import portion of the show. In a sense I can understand it. if you import video with multiple different frame rates, how could ProShow handle it?

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Re: Import full-hd-videos have bad quality

Postby Jeep » Tue Oct 22, 2013 4:18 am

I think we must not compare what is "in" for preview - in this case a video at 30 f/s - and what will be rendered by proShow. According to what I know from ProShow, all renderings processes are done from the original files (photos and videos). If the original video file is at a rate of 25 f/s, this will be the reference for the output rendering and if we ask for a 25 f/s output, no conversion will be made.
I do think that it's a good way to convert all videos in a project at the same rate (whatever this rate) as to normalize the preview mode
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Re: Import full-hd-videos have bad quality

Postby nsd3 » Thu Oct 24, 2013 7:08 am

I don’t have definitive proof, but what I can prove is certainly beyond reasonable doubt regarding this issue, so here goes.

I took a 9m39s video shot at 25fps and burnt a SMPTE timecode into the video starting at zero. So each frame has a unique time identifying it. I then added the video as the one and only slide in a slide show, setting the transition time between the end of the slide and the next slide to zero seconds. I let Proshow import the file, and then I saved the slide show. If I examine the resulting Proshow PXC cache file, the embedded video within the cache shows a frame rate of 29.97fps. That’s the NTSC TV standard.

Ok, so the cache file is transcoded from 25-30 fps, as I stated in an earlier post to this thread. This is not unexpected. Proshow has to make some decision on what it will use to allow the user to preview show.

Now comes the interesting bit. I instructed proshow to output a video file with the same pixel resolution, same aspect ratio, and same frame rate (25fps) as the original video that was added.

When I examine the output video, it is indeed 25fps. Now if I examine the individual frames, I’d expect to see a sequential timecode increasing by one increment for each frame. So for example, if I were to examine one second’s worth of frames from 5minutes 00seconds 00 frames, I should see:

Frame 01 - 5:00:00
Frame 02 - 5:00:01
Frame 03 - 5:00:02
Frame 04 - 5:00:03
.
.
.
Frame 25 - 5:00:24
Frame 26 - 5:01:00
Frame 27 - 5:01:01

The above is what I should see.

Now what really happens? I’ll show you the whole second at the end of this text. Where the numbers have a “/” between them, it means you are seeing two timecodes on one frame. This happens when proshow blends two frames to make a new frame. What I can’t show you is the fact that the timecode(s) as it appears in the frame are not equal in opacity. Sometimes there is more of the previous frame showing through, and sometimes more of the current frame showing. Occasionally they are both equal at 50% each. In all of these cases, the frame is a blend created from two frames.

The first 6 frames are a mix of two frames. Frames 7, 8 and 9 are solid single frames, but notice how the frame represented originally by the real timecode of 5:00:07 is simply missing. It’s not there. The same thing happens at frames 18 and 19. This is exactly what would happen if you transcode from 25 to 30fps, and then back down to 25fps. Five frames have to be added, then five frames need to be subtracted. There is no guarantee the five frames that were originally (generated) and added to make 30fps, will be the same five removed going back down to 25fps, hence the loss of whole, real, frames.

I appreciate this may not be an issue for most people, I noticed it because I videoed a ski vacation, which has lots of fast horizontal movement - and that’s where you see the stuttering, juddering movement appear as a consequence of the transcoding issue. There’s no real solution to this problem, unless proshow handles input video natively and doesn’t transcode. You would still need to ensure all your input video is the same frame rate, but at least then you would have a fighting chance of a smooth output.

Frame 01 - 4:59:24/00
Frame 02 - 5:00:00/01
Frame 03 - 5:00:01/02
Frame 04 - 5:00:02/03
Frame 05 - 5:00:03/04
Frame 06 - 5:00:04/05
Frame 07 - 5:00:05
Frame 08 - 5:00:06
Frame 09 - 5:00:08
Frame 10 - 5:00:08/09
Frame 11 - 5:00:09/10
Frame 12 - 5:00:10/11
Frame 13 - 5:00:11/12
Frame 14 - 5:00:12/13
Frame 15 - 5:00:13/14
Frame 16 - 5:00:14/15
Frame 17 - 5:00:15/16
Frame 18 - 5:00:16
Frame 19 - 5:00:18
Frame 20 - 5:00:18/19
Frame 21 - 5:00:19/20
Frame 22 - 5:00:20/21
Frame 23 - 5:00:21/22
Frame 24 - 5:00:22/23
Frame 25 - 5:00:23/24
Frame 26 - 5:00/01:24/00
Frame 27 - 5:01:00/01

Apologies to all for the long reply. I spent hours investigating this problem before I raised it here in this group, and I've tried to be as objective as I can.

Regards,

Steve

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Re: Import full-hd-videos have bad quality

Postby gpsmikey » Thu Oct 24, 2013 7:40 am

I would talk to support - your data certainly looks like you have uncovered a problem where it is converting the source to a different framerate when it is not necessary (with the associated issues that happen when you do convert frame rates). What you want to happen is for it to transcode on render from the source frame rate to the output frame rate. In your case, they are the same, so there should be NO transcoding of the framerates in the output. Your data certainly seems to indicate that it is using a different framerate as an intermediate format which, as you have seen, causes lots of motion issues.

[edit] in looking at another post, you might want to see if what Jeep is saying at the end would work for you viewtopic.php?f=10&t=22130


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Re: Import full-hd-videos have bad quality

Postby mike_stew » Fri Jan 31, 2014 8:29 am

Hi NSD3,

Did you ever get a reply from Photodex on this issue? I'm trying to generate an executable out of Producer using an HD video file as input (mp4, PAL, 1280x720, 25fps). Playback of the source mp4 file is perfect. However, the playback of the generated Producer executable is full of artifacts. I've raised it with support but heard nothing back as yet.

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Re: Import full-hd-videos have bad quality

Postby nsd3 » Sun Feb 02, 2014 10:56 pm

Nothing other that Photodex would look at it. Now that Producer 6 is out, although I haven't done any exhaustive testing as yet, it looks like the same issue is still present. First chance I get, I'll timecode some 25fps video and embed into a slide show, just to confirm (or otherwise).

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Re: Import full-hd-videos have bad quality

Postby mike_stew » Tue Feb 04, 2014 8:47 am

Finally got a reply from support although I must admit it was a bit like having teeth pulled to get them to admit there is a problem. Here's a portion of their reply -

Ultimately, unfortunately, there is nothing you can do with those video files in Executable output. I.e., you won't be able to get rid of that shimmering in ProShow with Executables.

Thank you for your feedback but it seems to happen with video files in general with Executable output but its more noticeable when the video file is HD unfortunately.

The bottom line is that you can't include video footage in an executable without the video being degraded. So it seems like they've known it's a problem (for how long?) but have chosen to do nothing to address it.

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Re: Import full-hd-videos have bad quality

Postby nsd3 » Wed Feb 05, 2014 12:45 am

Good and bad news. I’ve done a little research the past couple of days and I’ve found some very strange anomalies with importing HD video (1080/25i) into Producer 6.

If I import raw video straight from my camcorder AVCHD format HD 25fps, file extension .MTS, Producer 6 transcodes the video to 30fps.

If I externally transcode the video (I use Adobe Premiere Pro CC) to either MPEG2 or MP4 (same resolution, same frame rate) the embedded slide show video is not transcoded at all. It remains at its native 25fps.

If I transcode to .m2v or m4v video formats, Producer 6 can’t import them at all. These are the two formats I use the most for creating Blu-ray discs.

So it seems to depend on what the native file format of the video is as to how Producer 6 will handle it. This at least is a step forward from Producer 5 that imported every video file and transcoded to 30fps regardless, but still rather strange. I’ve a few more tests to carry out, to determine what happens if you mix different video file formats (all the same resolution and frame rate of 25fps) to see how Producer handles them, then I’ll send my results to Photodex.

At least for me, it looks like the frame rate problem is resolvable with the above workarounds, and creating MPEG2 from Adobe Premiere Pro CC is the simplest option, requiring just one button click. I’m going to delve into this more deeply with more exhaustive testing to prove (or otherwise) my initial findings.

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Re: Import full-hd-videos have bad quality

Postby piko » Tue Jun 17, 2014 2:29 pm

Well, I have the problem with MTS files. (Great job anyway!)

ProShow also hurts my MTS files (from Sony camera), output video has some video lags.

I do not think that this is a good idea to convert MTS to MPEG2 due to recompression.

You convert or just "repackage" (lossless conversion) to MP4 in Premiere?

My files I would have probably convert to MP4, but I use ffmpeg lossless conversion (<i>ffmpeg -i input.mts -vcodec copy -acodec copy -f mp4 output.mp4</i>). Maybe it will work.

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Re: Import full-hd-videos have bad quality

Postby nsd3 » Wed Sep 16, 2015 5:19 am

As far as I'm aware, there is no lossless conversion between formats, so conversion does entail another drop in quality. To be honest, I can't really see the difference unless I deliberately look for it, so I'm not too bothered about including another iteration of video conversion, especially if working with full HD from the onset.

Unfortunately PSP7 fairs little better although tech support inform me there has been significant (though unpublicised) improvements in video handling. I had a very good email conversation with Photodex technical support, and they agree this is an issue and has been included on their feature list for development. The workaround for now is rather bizarre, but you can understand the logic of it.

What Photodex recommend is threefold:
1. Keep the video clips short
2. You should always use interlaced video
3. If you have the ability to do so, capture your video at 50fps interlaced. If you can only capture progressive at 50fps, actually interlace it prior to importing into PSP.

So reading between the lines:
1. Short clips don't allow the viewing audience enough time to spot the picture judder.
2. I suspect that internally, there's a degree of field interpolation to build up a full frame from one field of the interlaced video, that would certainly smooth playback at the expense of resolution. If you think how well video upscaling handles the conversion of SD video to FULL HD video (5:1), then working on a full HD field has a conversion of only (2:1) so should yield better results.
3. The more frames you have, the less actual movement between frames occurs, making the picture judder less obvious. The PSP processing algorithm now has to discard frames rather than duplicate them, and coupled with (2) it should look better to the viewer. If the import video can only be 25fps, I'd also hope their algorithm is smart enough to remove repeated frames (added to take the frame rate from 25fps to 30fps) rather than taking out another valid frame every 1/5 second during the final slide show video output rendering.

The ideal of course is don't just simply expect all video to be native 30fps or a multiplier of that basic frame rate. Just one simple question, ask the user if they want to
(a) Keep 25fps in 25fps out
(b) Keep 30fps in 30fps out
(c) Just work with whatever I import, and I'll live with compromise


Steve

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