CS4.0.1 Project Settings for ACVHD footage with 1920x816 aspect ratio

Maybe there's some confusion in the fact that one target destination is an SD DVD? I'd normally provide a letterboxed, but anamorphic (16:9) stretch that would be flagged to correct on playback in order to maintain more image than a 4:3 SD with letterboxing?

LightupChoiceFry - I think everyone is giving you the same advice :)

Basically, use a 1920X1080 project. The video you linked will have been a 1920x1080 project with hard mattes - exported as 1920X1080 (or a reduction of it) with black bars top & bottom. Unless you shot real anamorphics (where your image is vertically stretched and you have to correct for this first - before editing), you should follow the standard 1920x1080 path & use one of the methods for black bars as an overlay.
 
LightupChoiceFry said:
Here's someone with the same thing, and they were able to export from 1920x1080 to 1080x816 beautifully:
"Shot at 1920x1080. Cropped to 1920x816 (2.35:1 ratio)"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy9ktmidrpU

That's the end goal of quality and aspect ratio I'm trying to figure out
Click to expand...

The way I read this is: they shot the footage at 1920x1080 and then cropped to 1920x816 with masks/bars added (on the same 1920x1080 project) in their editing package... and then exported a 1920x1080 project.

The crop isn't in the export - but in the edit. As everyone says, you can export this odd file format, but it's non-standard and not how you deliver Blu-Ray or HD content.
 
Okay, I think I understand it. Please bear with me I apologize, we all have our strong areas, and I know this isn't mine. Once I get the dummy directions I'm set. I understand that it's not about the export, it's what's in the edit, so I know to just export in the normal aspect ratio. I'm still having difficulty arranging a hard matte over the 1920x1080 timeline to preview the 2:35 aspect ratio and to eventually export with. I tried to alter the pre-existing psd files or to create a new one and could not get it set, are there any pre-made ones for the aspect ratio I am seeking that I could download?

Does everyone export this type of footage with in an mpeg2 or is there another format that is the preferred choice?
And for the DVD export I know premiere pro cs4 has existing presets, so I could just use one of those correct?

I really appreciate all of this, I apologize for any difficulty my ignorance is causing.
 
LightupChoiceFry said:
Okay, I think I understand it. Please bear with me I apologize, we all have our strong areas, and I know this isn't mine. Once I get the dummy directions I'm set. I understand that it's not about the export, it's what's in the edit, so I know to just export in the normal aspect ratio. I'm still having difficulty arranging a hard matte over the 1920x1080 timeline to preview the 2:35 aspect ratio and to eventually export with. I tried to alter the pre-existing psd files or to create a new one and could not get it set, are there any pre-made ones for the aspect ratio I am seeking that I could download?

Does everyone export this type of footage with in an mpeg2 or is there another format that is the preferred choice?
And for the DVD export I know premiere pro cs4 has existing presets, so I could just use one of those correct?

I really appreciate all of this, I apologize for any difficulty my ignorance is causing.
Click to expand...

Don't apologise - forums are here to help & to expand knowledge :)

Everyone is giving good advice - you'll get there in the end. As I said previously, I don't use CS4 so I can't help on specifics there, but PM me with your email & I'll make a PSD for you.
 
Okay so I think I am understand this. Thanks to MadMonk's PSD, I am able to place the black bars to get the aspect ratio I want. But the question is if I want the video file to be 1920x1080 with the black bars at the top/bottom to take the actual "live" area down to 816, or whether I want the video file itself to be 1920x816. Which is preferred? The footage was shot with the intended 1920x816, but obviously shot in 1920x1080, and I know some said that it should be exported that way with the bars since the footage itself wasn't shot in the 2:35.

I'm told CS5 has a built-in option to crop in the export, but I don't think CS4.2.1 does correct? I was then told that I could do this in virtual dub, by exporting the final render at 1080 and with compression set to "None" or "Uncompressed", then import that into VirtualDub. In VD, and then adding the "Resize" filter, and one of the options of that resize filter is to crop the top/bottom down to 1920x816, and then save/compress it out from VD, and it'll save the new file at 1920x816.

Is that advised or should I just do the bars? I had problems importing the mpeg2 into virtual dub, so is another format preferred to export from premiere pro in?

Here's a sample with the bars:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI97ALUUANY
 
As PDR and others have said, the 1920X1080 export option is best if you intend to deliver the project anywhere and also the best to work from if you're going to resize it to SD (etc).

The 1920X816 (cropped & exported without bars) is non-standard... but is something that people have started doing quite a bit (Phil Bloom crops and exports these sometimes). But, IMO, it's more of a web based practice - so I'd go with the easy way and do 1920x1080 with black bars :)
 
You can crop it with AME when exporting if you wanted to, you don't need vdub

But I still don't see the point of exporting a cropped video unless you are using a custom player, or it's for personal use. As mentioned above, black borders will be added anyways for most site. Youtube will be letterboxed in a 16:9 display.

Media boxes (e.g. WDTV, Popcorn hour, TVix, etc...) and PC's can play 1920x816, but standard formats like blu-ray cannot

Don't re-encode things, that's where you lose quality. Lossy compression causes quality loss each generation - it gets worse and worse each time (that's why you use uncompressed or lossless compression when you have to do manipulations in other programs, but the filesizes are huge)
 
okay, now I get everything with the aspect ratio now that I've tried it out, thank you for clearing everything up everyone.

The only thing I am verifying is the correct project settings and export format. The settings for acvhd footage from the ag af100 seem to work well with:
Editing Mode: Desktop
Timebase: 23.976
Frame size 1920x1080
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels 1.0
Fields: None (since it's non-interlaced

and I've been exporting on the mpeg2 setting in adobe media encoder, I choose hdtv 1080p and then customize. Is that the preferred setting? I was told to do an uncompressed avi which will be huge, and then export in virtual dub to get a high quality avi that isn't as huge.

How does everyone export to SD-DVD? using the mpeg2-DVD settings via adobe media encoder? When I was working with HDV footage I used a hd2sd code on hcencoder to do it, I'm not sure of the best way to do with our type of footage.
 
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LightupChoiceFry said:
and I've been exporting on the mpeg2 setting in adobe media encoder, I choose hdtv 1080p and then customize. Is that the preferred setting? I was told to do an uncompressed avi which will be huge, and then export in virtual dub to get a high quality avi that isn't as huge.
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Preferred setting for what ? It depends on what your goals are, and what you're trying to do.

Why do you want an AVI ? AVI is just a container - it is very non specific. What do you want to do? To upload to a website? This obviously won't for blu-ray, nor will it work for a flash site. Only a site that re-encodes like youtube will accept AVI, because AVI is a non streaming format

How does everyone export to SD-DVD? using the mpeg2-DVD settings via adobe media encoder? When I was working with HDV footage I used a hd2sd code on hcencoder to do it, I'm not sure of the best way to do with our type of footage.
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There is no "best". But one thing is for certain, that premiere does very poor interlaced scaling (its improved in CS5 when using cuda but still not ideal) - that doesn't affect you here with progressive footage

And as usually there's more than one way to do things. "Best" is always debateable, some people prefer encoder X over encoder Y, some prefer soft resize like bilinear vs. sharp resize like lanczos etc... etc....

You can still use hd2sd, you would export out a lossless or uncompressed format, then use hdsd in your script to frameserve into HCEnc
 
I only have two goals once the film is completed.
1. Have a file that's the best quality possible that I can view on the computer and upload if I'd like to, on vimeo. The same goes for when the trailer is complete which will go on youtube, facebook, vimeo.

2. Be able to put it on a standard DVD to submit to festivals, send out to cast, crew, etc.
 
LightupChoiceFry said:
I only have two goals once the film is completed.
1. Have a file that's the best quality possible that I can view on the computer and upload if I'd like to, on vimeo. The same goes for when the trailer is complete which will go on youtube, facebook, vimeo.
Click to expand...

Best possible quality would be lossless RGB compression, like huffyuv , ut video codec or lagarith . The filesizes will be huge ~20-40x larger and probably not feasible to upload to vimeo. Difficult to view on some systems, because too slow.

Next would be a mezzanine file 4:2:2 subsampled, using high bitrate visually lossless compression, something like cineform or dnxhd, bitrates will be around 150-200Mb/s (so about 8-10x size)

Then something like high bitrate 4:2:0 h.264 or even MPEG2 if you use very high bitrates . At normal viewing conditions and speed , most viewers won't see the difference in quality. This is what I would use, and suggested earlier - a blu-ray compatible encode. You can author directly to blu-ray , you can upload to website, you can view on PC or blu-ray . The only thing that it's "bad" for, is if you plan to do farther edits or use in other projects. I would use the original project files or use a higher qualty "master" for that



2. Be able to put it on a standard DVD to submit to festivals, send out to cast, crew, etc.
Click to expand...

You can export directly out of AME, or if you prefer your old workflow, hd2sd + HCEnc. There are dozens of other options and workflows as well , not necessarily better or worse.
 
Sounds good for the web export, thank you for all the options.

For the DVD export through AME, can I just do the mpeg dvd export option, that will export it in 720x480? Is that known to produce a good quality SD-DVD? I know there was debate about the custom codes and hc encoder doing a better job, but that was with HDV footage. I don't know how it handle acvhd, perhaps the AME options are better.
 
LightupChoiceFry said:
For the DVD export through AME, can I just do the mpeg dvd export option, that will export it in 720x480? Is that known to produce a good quality SD-DVD? I know there was debate about the custom codes and hc encoder doing a better job, but that was with HDV footage. I don't know how it handle acvhd, perhaps the AME options are better.
Click to expand...

I think it's ok, it's based on the Mainconcept MPEG2 encoder which is fairly good. Personally I prefer CCE for most types of progressive content, but you ask 10 people , and you will get 10 different answers . Some encoders do better on certain types of content than others. You might need to use custom matrix or settings. Sometimes you have to prefilter or maybe even dither - it really depends on the situation

You should do some small tests and compare with your eyes and see what you prefer . All encoders have areas of strengths and weaknesses
 
sounds good, thank you. I have a long road of editing ahead, but will try it all out once I'm done, and thanks to everyone for all the help, unfortunately you probably won't have seen the last of me, once the film is ready for export I'm sure I will have questions, but this gives me a great thing to get started with and try and more than likely I'll be able to figure it out will all the tips and information you've given me. I'm just so glad I have the steps all set it edit, thank you again.

If you'd like, please become a fan and keep updated on the film's progress:

http://www.facebook.com/DollsforStrangers
 
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