Not satisfied with image quality after export

johnebaker wrote on 3/23/2013, 2:56 PM

Hi

We need a lot more information:

What is the source video framerate, is it interleaved or progressive, what is the width and height in pixels and the source ie screen capture or what?

What is the resolution of the viewing device - TV, computer or?

Come back with this info.

Re . . . . if it is allowed . . .

It is possible to copy the text from the other post and paste it into the question entry box here when you started the question.

John

Izkall wrote on 3/24/2013, 9:16 AM

hi, thanks for helping out.

Just tried to produce a video with the settings: 512x384 and 25 fps but achieved an even worse result than earlier. I think "planar" means progressive. A more correct translation would be "even out" maybe. But I don't know if this is the place to find the info about interleaved or progressive framerate.

The source is a DVDrip..

I'm viewing them on a computer with a 1440x900 monitor

Unless I'm doing something serious wrong, I can only assume quality differs between different video editing programs, and that Magix can't come up to Techsmith class on this matter.

johnebaker wrote on 3/24/2013, 1:19 PM

Hi

If you are viewing 512x384 and 25 fps full screen on your 1440x900 monitor you will see quality problems very clearly.

What does the quality look like when they are viewed at 512x384 ?

Similarly if you are trying to convert DVD video to mp4 you are also introducing several more problems which affect quality:-

- Upscaling from 720 * 576 / 720*480 to 720p will introduce upscalng artifacts which can be very obvious, particularly when viewed the video is viewed on a screen of higher resolution as above.

- Changing interleaved video to progressive also introduces various issues such as judder and combing on panning shots or where there is rapid movement, and a form of ghosting.

Note: This answer does not in any way condone the ripping of copyrighted video.

HTH

John

Izkall wrote on 3/24/2013, 3:40 PM

What does the quality look like when they are viewed at 512x384 ?

okey but clearly worse than a camtasia produced vid in same format.

Similarly if you are trying to convert DVD video to mp4 you are also introducing several more problems which affect quality:-

If choosing mp4 is not a good idea, do you have any suggestions of what I should try next (for this particular video example)? For playback on youtube (note, this doesn't mean I intend to share illegal material, if it does sound like that) full screen on 1440x900 monitor. I'm interested in very high quality but a file size around approximately 50-60mb/minute. And the encoding process shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes for a video on a few minutes. Ok, very hypothetically I know, but I basically mean I'm not interested in uncompressed just to get as much quality as possible. But keeping it within a sensible level and to not have a big quality drop like I'm having now with the Magix mp4 export.

I'm not finding many tips on google for good magix export settings so that's why I've no idea what to choose. Like I said, these settings are working extraordinary with Techsmith's software so I'm not buying it has to be bad producing it in .mp4 or large up the resolution (but keeping aspect ratio).

johnebaker wrote on 3/24/2013, 5:09 PM

Hi

. . . . For playback on youtube ...not finding many tips on google for good magix export settings so that's why I've no idea what to choose . . .

Youtube recommendations are here, unfortunately mp4 is one of the few options available to you

However you may still hit the interleaved --> progressive problem with panning and movement.

Is the DVD from a mini DV camera or is it a commercial DVD ? If commercial DVD then there is possibly another problem - most DVD's eg films are heavily sharpened to the point that, if played on a HD TV or computer, the sharpening halos artifacts are clearly visible reducing quality.

HTH

John

Scenestealer wrote on 3/24/2013, 5:36 PM

Have you tried using one of the HDTV 720p presets and only modifying the aspect ratio to 960x720 (ie leave all other settings alone? These usually give good results.

Loooking at your screenshot of settings:-

I would not use 2 pass and leave the Quality setting at 9 (balanced) - I have have degraded encodes with both those options you have chosen.

Also make sure you have some B frames in the GOP - at the fairly modest bitrate of 5000kbps you need them in there as they contibute the most to the compression into that bandwidth without robbing quality from the I and P frames.

Ss

Izkall wrote on 3/25/2013, 8:49 AM

However you may still hit the interleaved --> progressive problem with panning and movement.

Do you have a suggestion of what settings I should select?

Have you tried using one of the HDTV 720p presets and only modifying the aspect ratio to 960x720 (ie leave all other settings alone? These usually give good results.

Loooking at your screenshot of settings:-

I would not use 2 pass and leave the Quality setting at 9 (balanced) - I have have degraded encodes with both those options you have chosen.

Also make sure you have some B frames in the GOP - at the fairly modest bitrate of 5000kbps you need them in there as they contibute the most to the compression into that bandwidth without robbing quality from the I and P frames.

so, these were the settings I tried now:

It seems keeping the quality at "9" doesn't make it worse at least. I did like you said, took a 720p HD preset and only changed the ratio. Still not that big improvement, but I guess I can't say that the quality is "poor". Just annoying that it's just isn't as sharp image quality as compared to the same format in another program.

Anyway, you are mentioning B frames, GOP etc. Can you give me exact numbers? Right now it's kept at 2, and I suppose you are suggesting a higher number, if so, what? (notice: *it seems I can't go higher than 3*)

I still don't know what "Frame Type" I should select. Should I go for progressive frame?

If I can get slightly higher quality from here it is at least decent...

johnebaker wrote on 3/25/2013, 4:16 PM

Hi

. . . . Just annoying that it's just isn't as sharp image quality as compared to the same format in another program . . . .

Is the other program adding sharpening before writing to file? In MEP you can sharpen the whole timeline by selecting Effects, Movie Effects, Sharpen tab and set the sharpness - try 65 as a starting point.

. . . . Anyway, you are mentioning B frames, GOP etc. Can you give me exact numbers? Right now it's kept at 2, and I suppose you are suggesting a higher number, if so, . . . .

Stick with the defaults unless there is a very specific reason to change them.

. . . .Should I go for progressive frame? . . .

You have no option but to use progressive for 720p, if you change the setting to interleave I have found it will revert back to progressive.

HTH

John

Scenestealer wrote on 3/25/2013, 4:19 PM

Hi Izkall

Planar does not tell me your original footage is Progressive. Analyse you mpeg2 file from the DVD with the free app called MediaInfo or Gspot.

If it is interlaced it is best to leave it interlaced as John suggested.

2 Bframes should be fine but you could try 3.

Try changing the AVC Preset (in your screenshot) to HD1280x720 and profile to High.

The only other thing I could suggest is pushing up the bitrate to say 9000Kbps or more.

Peter

Scenestealer wrote on 3/25/2013, 4:56 PM

Changing to Interlaced in the "Advanced Video Settings" worked OK here John. Did you hit "apply" at the bottom of the window?

Good call on the fact that the other program could be applying sharpening.

Izkall wrote on 3/26/2013, 9:17 AM

Is the other program adding sharpening before writing to file? In MEP you can sharpen the whole timeline by selecting Effects, Movie Effects, Sharpen tab and set the sharpness - try 65 as a starting point.

Wow, this solved it. I'm now getting equal quality to the program I'm comparing with, exactly what I was trying to achieve. I've tried to raise the slider to 100 on 4 different videos so far and have got great results on all. It defaulted 50 in Sharpness for three vids, and 60 for one.

However, I had trouble with flickering on one when raising from 50. It was a thin string surrounding the edges of the video, and sometimes even around the entire clip. I tried a lot of options, setting it to maybe 65 only, or reduce back to 50 for the parts in the video that had flickering. But it didn't really help, there was always one part that couldn't avoid flickering, a part going into a new sequence after a jump cut. The first half of the video could play fine in 100% sharpness. But somehow, after trying a lot of different things and almost given up, I managed to produce them in first 80% without flickering, and then also one with 100%. I don't know what I did or if there was something temporary. But can flickering be a common issue when raising this sharpness slider? I know there's an anti-flickering (or whatever it's called) option before exporting but no, it only made my vid worse it felt like.

In camtasia studio you can't modify this manually. I guess it's somehow automatically encodes it in the highest possible image sharpness. After all, the program is known for being easy to use. But it seems magix is putting this too low by default, which makes me wonder why? I suppose this effect is something you always have to experiment with before exporting a video? I don't think I'm alone being unhappy with the 50 sharpness quality. It felt like my videos took a bit longer to encode today, is this a result of this improved effect? Might be a part of the explanation.

Analyse you mpeg2 file from the DVD with the free app called MediaInfo

Thanks for the tips. It seems to be working fine. I'll show the info for the source file, and then I'll show the result for the camtasia produced vid and also one for my magix produced. If there's something I can change in comparison with the source or the other video to achieve even better results, feel free to give me opinions about that. But overall, the problem is basically solved..

SOURCE:

Format                           : AVI
Format/Info                      : Audio Video Interleave
FileSize/String                  : 349 MiB
Duration/String                  : 46mn 4s
OverallBitRate_Mode/String       : Variable
OverallBitRate/String            : 1 060 Kbps
Encoded_Application              : VirtualDubMod 1.5.10.2 (build 2540/release)
Encoded_Library/String           : VirtualDubMod build 2540/release

Video
ID/String                        : 0
Format                           : MPEG-4 Visual
Format_Profile                   : Advanced Simple@L5
Format_Settings_BVOP/String      : 1
Format_Settings_QPel/String      : No
Format_Settings_GMC/String       : No warppoints
Format_Settings_Matrix/String    : Default (H.263)
CodecID                          : XVID
CodecID/Hint                     : XviD
Duration/String                  : 46mn 4s
BitRate/String                   : 881 Kbps
Width/String                     : 512 pixels
Height/String                    : 384 pixels
DisplayAspectRatio/String        : 4:3
FrameRate/String                 : 25.000 fps
ColorSpace                       : YUV
ChromaSubsampling                : 4:2:0
BitDepth/String                  : 8 bits
ScanType/String                  : Progressive
Compression_Mode/String          : Lossy
Bits-(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.179
StreamSize/String                : 290 MiB (83%)
Encoded_Library/String           : XviD 1.2.1

Camtasia:

Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID                                 : mp42
File size                                : 53.2 MiB
Duration                                 : 1mn 23s
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 5 360 Kbps

Video

ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : Baseline@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : No
Format settings, ReFrames                : 3 frames
Format settings, GOP                     : M=1, N=90
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 1mn 23s
Source duration                          : 1mn 23s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 5 169 Kbps
Width                                    : 960 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Frame rate                               : 30.000 fps
Minimum frame rate                       : 30.000 fps
Maximum frame rate                       : 30.030 fps
Standard                                 : NTSC
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.249
Stream size                              : 51.3 MiB (96%)
Source stream size                       : 51.3 MiB (96%)
Language                                 : English

Magix:

Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID                                 : mp42
File size                                : 66.2 MiB
Duration                                 : 1mn 20s
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 6 895 Kbps

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : Baseline@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : No
Format settings, ReFrames                : 3 frames
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 1mn 20s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 6 702 Kbps
Width                                    : 960 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 30.000 fps
Standard                                 : NTSC
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.323
Stream size                              : 64.3 MiB (97%)
Language                                 : English

The GOP in Magix was set to 33

johnebaker wrote on 3/26/2013, 2:24 PM

Hi

ss

. . . . Changing to Interlaced in the "Advanced Video Settings" worked OK here John. Did you hit "apply" at the bottom of the window? . . .

I did apply the setting - will try again as I would really like to output 720i in the mp4 container, which is not a standard format, to avoid all the problems with converting interleave to progressive.

John

Scenestealer wrote on 3/27/2013, 6:00 AM

Hi Izkall

Good to see you got something you could work with.

The sharpness slider at 50 means no sharpening or softening (denoising) is applied. Much more than 70% looks artificial on good quality footage. It is helpful if a shot is slightly softer than the others - like if you used a W/A adapter in a shot which is not as good quality as the camera lens itself. Or if you are starting with low res images in a higher res format. It can also make aliasing effects (pulsating on high resolution lines/detail) worse, as you may be experiencing. The antiflicker filter is trying to combat this by applying some softening so the two may not work well together. Strangely magix do not recommend use of this AF filter.

It would not make sense to have the sharpening preset as you have summised. And yes, it will make for longer encodes because it means virtually every pixel in every frame needs to be processed.

Wow - I see Camtasia uses a GOP of N=90 - that's only 1 full frame every 90 encoded P & B frames, but MPEG 4 compression is pretty clever. Just for a giggle you could try increasing the GOP length to somewhere near this and see what you get. My rule of thumb is to try to match the encoder settings as closely as possible with the Media info analysis of the original and / or converted footage I am trying to match the quality / look of. Any change of codecs or parameters could lead to transcoding quality losses.

BTW there is the facility to create an AVI using Xvid in the File > Export options with plenty of customisation available.

Ss