My HMC40 video looks like karp

K

Kimchoc

Member
I'll need to ask a few questions here but I want to start with a few basics.



For my depositions, its fine. Load .mts files to Pinnacle, chop front and chop end. Perfect. looks fine. No complaints.

Heres my workflow for the first time I tried to do a multicam edit:

.. after placing the HMC 40 .mts file on one track with another .mts from my JVC Eviero on the second track, I then render to an mpg after editing. Since Pinnacle has only two tracks.
Next I take the mpg file I rendered first and add the third mpg file(from my GS500) on the second track. Adds a few pics, then edit and render the last time to mpg.

At this point the HMC40 looks completly useless. I can post a Youtube up in the next day or so.
But before you guys look at how horrible it is, let me make sure i am using the HMC40 correctly.

Its not a lighting issue. Its inside a very well lit airplane hangar during the daylight. The subjects are stationary speakers. No movement. Camera is placed about 35ft from subject on a tripod. Sometimes zoomed in a bit. I prefer to use the Pinnacle zoom in post.


Please let me ask the first question. I am using the default settings on the HMC40 with one exception. I have it set to avchd. Is this enough resolution? I seem to get much better performance from my JVC Eviero on avchd. Nothing I do requires High Def. I know no one that has a Blue Ray player. My old Panasonic GS500 has a significantly better video mpg than the avchd of the HMC40. All of my previous video from all cameras is rendered to a DVD from an mpg2

And a quick second question. Does the HMC40 default setting have a "smoothing" feature on the first preset? I've read you guys talk about that but I'm not as much an expert as you all. I prefer to setup and shoot.

What am I doing wrong? Its basically unusable footage after the first mpg render.

Thanks,
Gary
 
The HMC40 shoots 24p, 30p, and 60i at 1920x1080. It also shoots 60p at 1280x720.

What format is your Pinnacle timeline set for, and what formats are the HMC40 and Eviero footage in?
 
HMC40 is set for HE1080 60i.
JVC is set to extended play avchd. Not sure what that setting is but it hasnt failed me in quality in a year. I.ll have to get back to you on exact settings for the JVC.

Never looked or set anything in Pinnacle.

Thanks,,
 
What format is the Enviero footage? And what about the final export?

Also also, you never really described exactly what looked bad about the HMC40 footage...
 
The HMC40 looks as though it is MUCH less resolution than any other clip after it has been rendered to an mpg. Remind me of how bad a photo gets after you save it as a jpg many times. I'll have to ck the Eviero manual for what format the EP selection is.

And the 40 looks bad in the preview window, not just the output. I could tell right away even before I rendered that something was wrong.

I believe the project output is NTSC standard. And I see where you are going with this. Can you give me a suggestion as to what I SHOULD be outputting to as well as what camera settings should be? I assume I need to get all my clips on the same page as well as the output of Pinnacle.

The reason the 40 is set to that res is due to the 16gb card holding 4 hours of data at that5 setting vs. any other setting that gives me only 1 hr, 7mins. I could get a 32gb card if needed.
 
Its only 1 time before it is rendered as a DVD . I render to mpg one time, then that file is rendered to a DVD. Makes me think I start out with a crappy file. But,,, thats why I'm asking.
I've rendered a few times before on some other projects with the JVC and dont see this issue. In fact, I've rendered many times using this method with only a captured DV mpg to start with. Not this bad a result. Its the method I use for a 3 camera edit.
 
Sorry, is your issue that your HMC40 footage look crappy? (sorry that I do not know what karp means)

But if this is your issue, I was wondering why you were shooting it with HE60i? Because that is the lowest quality you can set on the HMC40, like for going straight to low-bandwidth web. If you want the footage to actually look nice, try PH 60i or PH 30P. I don't believe that HE is the default on the HMC40. Mine came pre-set to PH 60i, I think this is the default.
 
Hey, thanks. yes, karp=crap. I just don't like to give the impression that I am bashing the camera. Sort of my tongue and cheek method of a description.
yes, very possible that my setting is too low. The reason for that setting would be to get the longest recording times on the 16gb card I am using. I need quite a bit of uninterrupted recording time for the depositions. And not a real high quality. So that setting has been working.
I looked at the manual again and decided to try the HA mode which is listed as a HIGH quality mode. It cuts my record time down to about 2hrs. I can use two 16gb cards until I get a 32gb card.
I havent done much shooting with this camera actually, just one depo and a couple interviews. It is the interviews that looked bad.
I am shooting WW2 vets again this weekend and I'll post back with the results..

Still don't have a grip on the FPS with respect to pinnacle and the Everio deal yet. I'll get back to that after I try the higher quality setting.

Thanks all,

Gary
 
Why are you shooting 60i for that, anyway?

edit: Also, I don't see why you're having so much trouble checking the FPS of your timeline and the Everio... can't you just go into the properties of the timeline and the clips in Pinnacle? I know that, assuming that I didn't already know, I could check it within five seconds of the project loading in Vegas...
 
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Do yourself a favor:
Insert one end of HDMI cable into HMC40, other into HD Monitor, sit back an revel in the HD quality of the picture. If the quality is piss poor then you're doing something wrong. Shooting in the lowest quality mode, WHY?? This camera likes lots of light too.

You have to transcode any footage from this camera into an intermediate codec so your 8 gig card's footage will balloon to 40 gigs or more, now edit and then encode to your output format. If you're transcoding footage and it ends up the same size then your quality will suck.
 
TAllenCommon06.jpg
 
I am shooting 60i because it gives me the longest record times. A deposition can go on for 3-4 hours. Do you all understand that???? And it is NOT desirable to interrupt a lawyers line of questioning to change a flippin card or tape.
A deposition doesnt have to have all the hairs visible from the persons nose. Let me clue you into something. In court, they don't use GLORIOUS HD players. They don't use Blu Ray players in a lawyers office either. MANY times, MANY times, they dont even watch the damn DVD that I get paid to make because they LITIGATE the case before it goes to court.

Not everyone that buys this camera buys it to shoot HD footage. Is that clear? Now do you understand why I shoot in that format? The time/date stamp is worth its weight in gold to a videographer for depositions and that is the MAIN reason I bought this camera.

I could care less what the damn FPS is in Pinnacle. The Everio doesnt tell me what format it is shooting. It just says EP, SP and XP. The manual is at home. I don't have it memorized. I work a 24 hour shift. Thats why I cant tell you what it is set for.
All I care is whether it drops in the timeline,I can chop the front and the back, put a title on it and output the file to a DVD. Pinnacle has features I havnt even begun to tap, so NO, I dont know what the damn FPS on the timeline is.. To me, FPS is something I look at in the top corner of a video game.
I don't have to transcode anything and never have since I've been shooting avchd with the JVC. I can take the .mts file , drop it in and render and very good looking, no, make that outstanding, DVD with the JVC.

When I posted I had a sneaking suspicion that I WAS setting something incorrectly as the HMC40 is not an amateurs camera. Its not difficult to learn, its just there is much more to it than the JVC. Rightly so. I knew that when I bought it.

and blah, blah. blah, if I never hear anything more about this cameras low light performance I'll be very happy. Go buy a damn light and put it on there and stop whining. If you spend this much money on a camera without checking the lighting capabilities then you are an idiot. I am WELL aware of its shortcomings simply by reading the very first thread here from day one. I read nearly the entire HMC40 thread list before I bought it. I have no qualms about this camera. I do something different for a living than video. I don't know as much as most of you. Sorry for that.

Nice fish. Glad to see someone has a sense of humor.....

Thanks anyway.
 
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Here are things you need to consider before you get much more angry Kimchoc:

1) I understand that you were trying to be a miser and stretch a 16 gig card to as long as you could. The problem is you're recording in 1080i60 (which is 29.97fps btw) - the lowest setting is like 6mbps; that's not a lot of data for the resolution (yes, I know you don't care about HD - but that is ALL this camera records in, and because of that, and the bitrate used, it can and will directly affect the quality it puts out) - and heaven forbid if you have a lot of movement. You should consider a larger card, no matter WHAT camcorder you end up using - low bitrate on any modern day AVCHD camcorder looks rather poor. I'd say experiment with the camera in different modes - I usually always use mine in PH mode, but you should try HG and HA - you should see a significant improvement compared to HE mode.

2) FPS - it does matter. Dealing with video in an editor and outputting for final use isn't like watching an FPS counter in a video game; If you have two segments of footage, both recorded at different FPS rates, and try to tie them together it can cause grief. If you have one clip that is drop frame footage and another that isn't drop frame, depending on the editor - it can cause grief, etc.

3) I don't use Pinnacle, but your workflow seems hinky - many editors only use a single track in a sequence/timeline unless they need a title overlay, green screen, side by side, etc. - why can't you tag the portion of the clips you need and place them on the timeline in sequence or are you really stacking video? If you are needing a lot of stacked video clips (and you shouldn't), but if you do it may be time to look for a different editing suite. Having to continuously export video to a potentially lossy codec will cause continual loss in quality of your footage - and you're already starting with the lowest possible quality out of the HMC40 to start with. You need to use a workflow that requires as little export and import as possible. Oh and so you know - when you export your footage from .mts to .mpg, you're transcoding - so yes, you are doing it. If you're trying to work with 3+ cameras, having them all in sync and edit together, then you need to use a package that is more in tune with multicam editing then Pinnacle evidently is.

4) The HMC40, depending on when you bought it (the deal may even still be going on), came with Edius software, have you tried using that to see if you would have a better workflow with it?

5) Considering your long recording time needs - you may be better served by a hard drive based camcorder. I say this because more and more camcorders are going to higher average bitrates, and even the "low" average bitrates are moving up as the top end moves up. As these averages move up, they require more space to record to; SD cards aren't the largest storage mediums out there, and many camcorders do use hard drives and can record for many, many hours on the internal storage. I know the time/date display is very important to you, but I'm sure there is a camcorder with longer recording capabilities that would work out better for probably less money.

6) Have you, assuming the footage is still on the master card, put the card back in the camcorder and hooked the camcorder up to a TV to see the footage directly? It's possible that the version of pinnacle you have isn't working well with the files from the HMC40.

Just some thoughts on your post.
 
First off, it seems a little rough to jump in and say that the HMC-40 footage looks like crap. A lot of people on this forum and other places have got some pretty stunning footage out of this very inexpensive camera.

I understand you need for long record times and for lack of a good quality image for the depositions, but why not change formats for the stuff that you are wanting a better looking image. One of the great features of this camera is how easy it is to change both image size and frame-rates. It may be worth at some point for you to read and understand exactly what the different frame-rates are. I shoot at both 30p, 24p, and 60p depending on what I know the footage will be used for. The only time I shoot 60i is if I know the footage will have to match with something that was shot on a different camera at 60i.

Even though you say you do something for a living that is different than video, understanding both how the camera records and how your NLE interprets and uses the footage is something very valuable.

Best of luck with the camera in the future, just try not to be so quick in putting down the camera when it is really no fault of it.
 
Kimchoc said:
I am shooting 60i because it gives me the longest record times. A deposition can go on for 3-4 hours. Do you all understand that???? And it is NOT desirable to interrupt a lawyers line of questioning to change a flippin card or tape.

A deposition doesnt have to have all the hairs visible from the persons nose. Let me clue you into something. In court, they don't use GLORIOUS HD players. They don't use Blu Ray players in a lawyers office either. MANY times, MANY times, they dont even watch the damn DVD that I get paid to make because they RTFM before it goes to court.

Not everyone that buys this camera buys it to shoot HD footage. Is that clear? Now do you understand why I shoot in that format? The time/date stamp is worth its weight in gold to a videographer for depositions and that is the MAIN reason I bought this camera.
Click to expand...

Well, that's all fine and dandy, but at the end of the day, you're the angry guy complaining because your footage looks like crap... and that just may have something to do with the fact that you're using the lowest quality setting that the camera has to offer.

Nethfel said:
Here are things you need to consider before you get much more angry Kimchoc:

1) I understand that you were trying to be a miser and stretch a 16 gig card to as long as you could. The problem is you're recording in 1080i60 (which is 29.97fps btw) - the lowest setting is like 6mbps; that's not a lot of data for the resolution (yes, I know you don't care about HD - but that is ALL this camera records in, and because of that, and the bitrate used, it can and will directly affect the quality it puts out) - and heaven forbid if you have a lot of movement. You should consider a larger card, no matter WHAT camcorder you end up using - low bitrate on any modern day AVCHD camcorder looks rather poor. I'd say experiment with the camera in different modes - I usually always use mine in PH mode, but you should try HG and HA - you should see a significant improvement compared to HE mode.

2) FPS - it does matter. Dealing with video in an editor and outputting for final use isn't like watching an FPS counter in a video game; If you have two segments of footage, both recorded at different FPS rates, and try to tie them together it can cause grief. If you have one clip that is drop frame footage and another that isn't drop frame, depending on the editor - it can cause grief, etc.

3) I don't use Pinnacle, but your workflow seems hinky - many editors only use a single track in a sequence/timeline unless they need a title overlay, green screen, side by side, etc. - why can't you tag the portion of the clips you need and place them on the timeline in sequence or are you really stacking video? If you are needing a lot of stacked video clips (and you shouldn't), but if you do it may be time to look for a different editing suite. Having to continuously export video to a potentially lossy codec will cause continual loss in quality of your footage - and you're already starting with the lowest possible quality out of the HMC40 to start with. You need to use a workflow that requires as little export and import as possible. Oh and so you know - when you export your footage from .mts to .mpg, you're transcoding - so yes, you are doing it. If you're trying to work with 3+ cameras, having them all in sync and edit together, then you need to use a package that is more in tune with multicam editing then Pinnacle evidently is.

4) The HMC40, depending on when you bought it (the deal may even still be going on), came with Edius software, have you tried using that to see if you would have a better workflow with it?

5) Considering your long recording time needs - you may be better served by a hard drive based camcorder. I say this because more and more camcorders are going to higher average bitrates, and even the "low" average bitrates are moving up as the top end moves up. As these averages move up, they require more space to record to; SD cards aren't the largest storage mediums out there, and many camcorders do use hard drives and can record for many, many hours on the internal storage. I know the time/date display is very important to you, but I'm sure there is a camcorder with longer recording capabilities that would work out better for probably less money.

6) Have you, assuming the footage is still on the master card, put the card back in the camcorder and hooked the camcorder up to a TV to see the footage directly? It's possible that the version of pinnacle you have isn't working well with the files from the HMC40.

Just some thoughts on your post.
Click to expand...

This.

Maybe you should just show us your problem child end-product so we can see what's actually wrong with it?
 
Quote: I am using the default settings on the HMC40 with one exception. I have it set to avchd.

I didn't get much past this sentence in the original post, because I had no clue what was meant by it.
 
ZFHProductions said:
I understand you need for long record times and for lack of a good quality image for the depositions, but why not change formats for the stuff that you are wanting a better looking image. One of the great features of this camera is how easy it is to change both image size and frame-rates. It may be worth at some point for you to read and understand exactly what the different frame-rates are. I shoot at both 30p, 24p, and 60p depending on what I know the footage will be used for. The only time I shoot 60i is if I know the footage will have to match with something that was shot on a different camera at 60i.
Click to expand...

His problem around that it seems is record time - the only mode that offers the record time he *seemed* to want to use is the HE mode which only offers 1080i60. To get those other modes, they are only offered in PH - which would reduce his record time on his 16 gig card to 1.5 hrs - of course, if he upgraded to a 32 gig, he'd bump it up 3 hrs and could use the other modes.

The other thing I should mention that I did forget - the lowest mode - the one the OP was using is 1440x1080, and I read that the GS500 that he's using is a Panasonic DV camcorder and the JVC everio - it's probably a HD camcorder, so the OP is *probably* using 3 formats on one timeline - and depending on Pinnacles ability, and what the OPs settings are, he's either upscaling (to 1920x1080) or downscaling (to 720x480) that video and depending on how well Pinnacle handles that could directly affect the output, especially with a lower bitrate on the HMC and the multiple conversions / exports.
 
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