Sony HDR-FX7 capture quality problem

[FW Productions]

Hello. I have been searching for days online for an answer. I have a Sony HDR-FX7 and am using Adobe Premiere CS4. I can capture both DV and HDV formats but on ALL footage there are distinc "horizontal glitches" when the shots are panning horizontaly. It is not ghosting but big glitches. I purchased a dolly which is pretty useless while this problem occurs.

Any ideas? Is it something to do with the sequence format? HDV 1080i30 (60i) , HDV 1080p30 and even in DV Standard NTSC I have tried them all... it has to be something really simple that I just overlooked.


Thanks!

Brian

[Stephan]

From your background I would assume you know about interlacing already, and you're not talking interlacing artifacts here - can you confirm that? Interlacing artifacts (comb-like horizontal lines), that may appear when editing, are normal and not to worry about.

What kind of "big glitches" is that, do they appear when you hook up your camcorder to your TV too, or only in Premiere? Could you attach a frame capture perhaps? (see Forum FAQ for attaching pictures)

[halfpipe]

Hey Brian
Try capturing the HDV with this program: http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/HDVSplit. ... icBeta.zip

[FW Productions]

I will try and post a clip soon. Glitches only when in Premiere. On my TV plugged right into the camera the image was great. One or two horizontal glitches only in Premiere... look like interference.

[FW Productions]

Here is the link to a short segment with the "flashy glitches" http://www.vimeo.com/14437551 at about 3 seconds...

[acgold7]

I can see what you're talking about. Can you look at the captured clips outside of Premiere, like in VLC or Media Player Classic or even WMP? What happens when you capture with HDVSplit? Finally, what are you PC specs?

[Stephan]

Sorry, I can't see it. I see all the ordinary extreme stuttering or macroblocking, various parts of the picture moving in de-sync, that I ordinarily associate to viewing fast motion in deinterlaced video and video sharing websites via a browser. These probably hide to my eyes what you want to show.

I'd try some lateral thinking... On a PC monitor, all this is deinterlaced to 30p at best, and your pan is too fast for 30p. Such pan would be acceptable @ 60i, but not in progressive video I'd say.

If that's the motion artifacts we're talking about, then 2 options:
1. If you'll be distributing interlaced media (DVD / blu-ray), then edit in Premiere without worry, output a sample media for proofing, then check on your TV with a DVD / blu-ray player. You should be fine (60i in, 60i out - straightforward). Or if you have a PS3, just output a sample HDV 60i MPEG2 edited file, then transfer it to the PS3 for checking.
2. If you're going to publish on the web, cut out those sequences. They're too fast for 30p. Anyway, I realized that, as much as I like doing pans when on location, they just look bad on screen. So when I feel like panning, I either do a slight, slow pan that's just there to introduce slight dynamics, or I change my angle altogether.

[EDIT] I logged in Vimeo and downloaded the video as mp4. Even worse, huge stuttering on my PC with Quicktime, barely viewable.

[FW Productions]

Yea. It's the entire studdering/de-sync problem I have. Thanks for enlightening me on the terms. I now feel rather surpassed when it somes to all the terms such ans 30p, 30i, 60i, etc... Does this mean that all the horizontal pans that I filmed are pretty much useless? I find this strange with a 2500$ HDV Camcorder. I filmed some shots with my D90 that did not studder at all. I needed these shots for making a HD movie on the web for the client. Could I put it in SD to maybe get rid of the studdering?

Can I change the format in which I film? The stuff looks great plugged directly on my HDTV...


Now I fell like a newb... hehehe


Thanks guys.

[Stephan]

Vocabulary point: I said 'stuttering' (with 2 t) by analogy to the verbal disorder, but that was a bit improper (not my native language). The rights terms are : motion judder.

You're having one of the most difficult problems to solve, one that I am ill-placed to help you with because we shoot in different formats: you shoot 60i (60 interlaced fields per second), I shoot 50i (50 interlaced fields per second), and that makes a world of difference when publishing video on the web - so much that I was never able to solve those issues myself. I hope someone in the USA can better help you.

Anyway, here is goes...

You probably do not have a capture problem, but rather an encoding / publishing problem. You must use the HDV 60i preset in Premiere, and if your video looks a bit strange in Premiere anyway, never mind. What counts, and you should focus on, is how you encode your video out of Premiere and how you publish it.

Considering that your goal is to publish on the Web:
- If you really want to use Vimeo, encode your video properly for Vimeo according to these specifications: http://www.vimeo.com/help/compression
- Vimeo expects 1280x720 @ 30 progressive frames per second (30p), you give them 1440x1080 @ 60 interlaced fields per second (60i) instead, and my personal opinion is, Vimeo is an absolute nightmare for encoding, they're just unable to handle video that's not encoded exactly how they expect it. I abandoned long ago any hope of publishing there correctly. I use YouTube instead, and it's much simpler and acceptable.
- If you had no issue with your D90, check its video format. As far as I recall, I think that is probably 1280x720 @ 30.0 fps (the Nikon D90 was initially designed for webcast), so you basically avoided most encoding issues with Vimeo.

As for your pans, before concluding about them, check one of these 2 solutions:
1. Upload your HDV video to YouTube instead,
2. Convert your HDV video to 1280x720 @ 30p (30 deinterlaced frames per second), check that it displays correctly in your computer first, then upload to Vimeo. Which codec you should use, I can't help you with that.

Someone in the US at the rescue? Anyone who successfully encoded HDV with fluid motion for Vimeo?

[Doughie]

- If you had no issue with your D90, check its video format. As far as I recall, I think that is probably 1280x720 @ 30.0 fps (the Nikon D90 was initially designed for webcast), so you basically avoided most encoding issues with Vimeo.

I have a D90 and for video it only has one frame rate of 24fps. Maximum resolutuion is 1280 x 720 as you say. Personally i think it's a shame that it doesn't at least have 30fps as well as 24p. Apparently there may be a D95 coming out soon and in my personal opinion, that will have multiple frame-rates as well as 1080p i would expect.