Re: Cannot Edit HDV Successfully With Ulead VideoStudio 11+
- From: "David Ruether" <druether@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:10:33 -0500
"Smarty" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:nAkxj.6584$xg6.4186@xxxxxxxxxxx
"David Ruether" <druether@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:>
[A quick follow up to the above, with the whole story in my HV20
review, at www.donferrario.com/ruether/canon_hv20.htm ---]
The Ulead output that had been recompressed over the whole
timeline at export to avoid glitches turned out unacceptably soft,
but I think I have traced the causes of my problems with the
Ulead editing software. The original footage had a very brief
timecode gap (not enough to reset it) early in the tape and well
before the parts that were captured. The source material also had
some droupouts. Ulead software does not handle less than
perfect footage well, unlike the other editing programs I tried.
Even edits of the same footage exported successfully by other
programs would show problems when imported into Ulead
(green frames, blocking, etc.). I do not trust Ulead VideoStudio
11+! Premiere Elements 4 is a much nicer program to work with,
and much more reliable, but it will always recompress everything
at export (as will Premiere CS3) - though this is usually OK with
this program, and the output is generally good even when using
footage which should be very difficult to recompress well, and
which was the same footage I had problems with in Ulead. Among
Sony Vegas programs, the cheapest will not handle HDV, but the
slightly more expensive "Platinum" version will - but like Premiere
Elements, it will recompress everything on the timeline at export.
Sony Vegas Pro 8 recompresses only changed footage at
export, and handles less than perfect footage well - though its
export function is no faster than Premiere's, and much slower
(but with better quality) than Ulead's. This program has amazing
versatility (which can discourage a beginner if looking at the
program on the Sony site), but it can be "dumbed down" easily
to operate almost as simply as Premiere Elements. Its price is
high ($550), but if one looks around, one can find version 6 for
$80 (probably good enough to use as a final software choice...)
and the upgrade to 8 for $100 (hint: B&H and TigerDirect for
the pieces...;-).
--
David Ruether
Ulead's software apparently can screw up when HDV with dropped frames
is captured, based on what you are now reporting.
I don't really know if the causes of the problems with Ulead were
the timecode glitch (previous to the captured video, though...), the
dropped frames (though the actual frames were still present in the
captured footage, but damaged by partial "greening" and blocking),
neither, or both - but I will not use Ulead again, regardless of what
others may report ("once burned", and all that...).
I have never seen the problems you report, and most likely this is the reason why. Dropouts for HDV are a serious and essentially
unrecoverable problem when using HDV video in an editor unless the editor has specific techniques to drop the surrounding GOPs
intelligently altogether. Ulead certainly does not, and I doubt that FCP, Vegas, or many others can handle this case well either.
As I reported, Premiere Elements, CS3, and Vegas did handle
this same footage well, as did all when the timeline of Elements was
exported either to camera or as a file and then imported into these
programs, but Ulead further messed up the same file when I tried
importing that file into it (there were many 1/2 green frames and
frames with blocking). It couldn't even import a "good" file
successfully! Yuck.
The best solution, no doubt, is to use good tape, clean heads, and import the HDV using a program which supports dropped frame
error correction.
Smarty
Yes, and using a program that successfully handles problems reliably,
instead of one that can unexpectedly cause a whole finished project
to be useless, seems more basic to me than doing the other things you
suggest, since other problems can be worked around during editing if
they don't present problems in the exported footage. When previewing
footage, it is quite evident where dropouts have occurred (1/2 second
pauses are hard to miss!), and it is usually easy to find and edit around
the one or two bad frames that caused the pauses when viewing the
raw footage, with no further ill effects. Of course, the best solution is
to have no problems with the source material, but that is hard to be
sure of - and if one exists, I don't want it to be fatal, as it appears to
be with Ulead, but not with Premiere or Vegas.
--
David Ruether
d_ruether@xxxxxxxxxxx
www.donferrario.com/ruether
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