Quality slipping!

[TimKennelly]

I have just been perusing this thread for the first time as I have been too busy elsewhere in life, but currently doing a little R&R in Florida so catching up.

First, for your work Bob reserving some archive footage/highlight Projects would be the ideal solution, actually far better than DVD both in quality and efficiency.

You would lose no resolution to compression or gain visual artifacts (defects, glitches, etc.) for the same reason.

By doing this "as you go" throughout the year you would save a ton of later review and input time going through the DVDs for the material.

On a different point.

It almost sounded like you thought firewire transfer compresses or degrades the video, it doesn't.

And lastly, none of this really addresses your initial post as everyone went on about how going to DVD compresses the footage.

While true, that ignores the fact that you stated you have been doing that all along so the fact that this year the same method ended with inferior results is still a question of why.

Are you shooting with the same cams?
Are you using the same settings with the cam, same lighting or relative light levels, same basic zoom levels (you mentioned grain)?
Are you inputting with the same method (ie: fire wire, YC, etc.)?
Are you using the same monitor, same monitor settings?
Are you using the same compression level (normal, high, maximum) when authoring to DVD?
Have you changed OS and/or Arabesk versions since the good results versus the current results?

If you answered no to one or more of these, that (or one or a combination of those changes) is likely the cause.

[CliffHawkins]

WOW! What a great group. Where else can you find so many willing to help with any other video editing product. The Cassie family is the best.

[CKNewman]

A while ago I asked if you were using image processing that you weren't using a few years ago. Tim just asked a few questions about the physical aspects of the way you acquire your footage.

There is another possibility that I will introduce but am not qualified to elaborate on (unless I make up stuff ). Digital recordings use error correction if some of the data (but not too much) is missing. This helps players to play damaged discs. I'm not sure about video cameras. It may be that the bearings in the players you are using, maybe even the Renomee, are wearing down and/or lasers are goingt out of proper alignment and causing read and write errors - thereby causing error correction to kick in. This could possibly result in reduced image quality.

Take that one, Tim And you thought you were on vacation

[TimKennelly]

Craig,

The "bearings in the players"?!?

Man, how old school.

Seriously, I doubt a bearing or laser would cause a signal degradation result as in "lousier looking picture quality".

It could make it unplayable, introduce freeze glitches, macro blocking, etc. and such, but other than that the error correction should either make the picture work as well as always or falter far more significantly than softening the shot or such.

As our system keeps the actual stats top secret it's possible MS has changed/lowered the data bit rate for it's individual quality settings for all we know and Bob with his direct comparison footage is just the first to notice this in A/B comparisons.

[flvideo]

Hi Guys, I am in awe with the number of people that are willing to help with my problem. As someone above said, its awesome to have a network of people in the same business that care about others experience with this brand of editor. Adobe eat your heart out. I will respond to some of these tomorrow. I am just puting my equiptment from a very long day of work. We got rained out last and they elected to race today. Got started late and it was colder than a well diggers butt all day. Well for us Flordia folks any way. Thanks Bob...

[flvideo]

I am using the same run of the mill DVD player to input the footage. Same Cameras, same lighting, same monitors, same settings The only thing that has changed at all is that I have a different Arabesk in one HD. I'll have to look and see which I used in which. I am not in my Studio yet but when I get out there I'll look at that. The first one was loaded by the dealer where I bought the Rennie. The other I downloaded. That could be the difference. This week I am going to try to input with firewire and try to use the ksebara to input Dvd's and see how that goes. I'll probably go as usual today and tomorrow I have 3 days of shooting to edit and another my XYL shot. I really appreciate all the concern for my problem. I am also going to begin to load my edited footage on DV tape. I may need some assistance there. I have never done that or at least not to DV, just VHS. Can I use firewire to go that way too? At my age my learning curve is very steep. Thanks Again guys. Bob.....

[CKNewman]

Yes, you can use Firewire.

CAUTION - When using a firewire cable to connect devices make sure that both devices being connected are off - otherwise you may fry the firewire interfaces in the editor and/or the other device. Also, when you power them up I would turn on the device that will be sending the video first. Powering up in this order may help the receiving device "see" or recognize the sending device.

I'm curious, how do you load the original camera footage into your editors?

[flvideo]

YC is what the dealer started me doing years ago with my Avio and I always have used YC. There was something that wasn't available with firewire and it was something I liked at the time but For the life of me I can't remember what. It was something to do with audio. Must have been real important. HUH? I generally have had good success with the YC but I would like to have as good quality as I can. The majority of my shooting is in low light or at dusk outside when the sun is going down and the track lighting is just coming up, White balance is a challenge at those times. The quality of my DVD I sell from my edited master seems to be good still. Where I have run into a problem is when I have put the edited footage back into my Casssie from the DVD master. I usually only do that at the end of a season for the end of year video and my hi-lite of all the crashes. Thanks Bob...

[CKNewman]

There was something that wasn't available with firewire....It was something to do with audio

Years ago you could not control the level of the audio when you imported video via firewire. This changed for the Kron and Prestige with the introduction of Smart Edit 3. I'm not sure if or when it was added for the Avio.

With your Renommee you can raise and lower the audio level as you load video via the firewire interface. I try to keep the audio level so that the meters stay in the blue and maybe once in a while go a little into the yellow.

Another benefit of loading footage via firewire is that you can use the Auto Split feature. The feature finds the points where you started and stopped the camera and splits up the footage automatically at those points. It saves a lot of time.

You don't indicate which version of the operating system or additional software packages you are using in your profile, but if you are running SE 8 I would recommend the 3-DVD set of training videos called Smart Edit v8 Intensive from CasablancaExpert.com (Chet Davis). If you are running an earlier version of Smart Edit, MacroSystem has some excellent video tutorials.

[flvideo]

Craig, How do I tell what operating system I am running? In system settings it says Version 7. THanks Bob...