User manual CANOPUS PROCODER 2

[. . . ] All Rights Reserved. Notices & Warranties Notice to Reader This document contains proprietary information, which is protected by copyright. No part of this document may be photocopied, reproduced or translated into another language without the prior written consent of Canopus Corporation. Canopus Corporation has gone to considerable effort to make this user's manual as accurate as possible at the time of printing. Canopus cannot assume, however, any responsibility for any inaccuracies that may be contained in the manual. [. . . ] If your output target is for computer use, it may be helpful to apply the Crop filter to remove the portions of the frame containing garbage or static (overscan) that are not normally visible when viewing it on a television. Improve or correct sources Use Source filters to apply filters that enhance or improve the source quality, such as Color Correction. Enhance encoding of specific targets 5: Helpful Hints Use Target filters to apply filters that are useful for certain encoding types, such as Blur for streaming formats. Expand/shrink 601 color range Different video editing systems and encoders use different color ranges to represent the minimum and maximum values. Use the 601 Correction filters to convert between 0-255 and 16-235 ranges when converting for systems that do not use the same ITU BT. 601 conversion methods. 83 ProCoder 2. 0 Improving your Video Even when using an intelligent tool like ProCoder, sometimes things just don't seem quite right. This section illustrates some common video encoding problems and how you can fix or avoid them. Video is blocky or appears to break up > Result > Original image The video image appears to break up into different moving blocks. Notice in the example that elements of the correct video seem to be mixed with the older video. After some time, the image may recompose itself, producing a correct image Cause: DVD media reading problem 5: Helpful Hints If you are seeing this type of problem after authoring a DVD and playing it back on a set-top DVD player, it could simply be a difficulty reading the DVD-recordable media. If it plays in the computer without problems, try a different settop player or a different brand or type of DVD-recordable disc. Many set-top players cannot reliably play all DVD-recordable discs. Cause: Use of seek or trick-play in the player If you were playing the file and playback was okay until you used the player's fast-forward, rewind or scrubber to reposition the playback location, then it's probably not a problem at all. Depending on the format and player, the video may take until the next keyframe to start displaying properly. Try letting the file play through from start to end without interrupting it to verify. If the video displays correctly in a straight-through playback, then the output file is fine. Cause: Video bitrate too low or not enough keyframes If the break-up only appears after scene changes, then the video bitrate is too low to handle the large change in the video. Alternatively, if the target format 84 Chapter 5: Helpful Hints supports keyframing, decrease the keyframe interval, thus increasing the number of keyframes. Keyframes provide a full video frame so large changes can be tracked and better compensated for. Cause: Video bitrate too high When using a hardware decoder, such as for MPEG playback, in some cases a video bitrate that is too high can cause the to image break up. If the video bitrate is at or near the maximum setting, try reducing it a bit. If it plays on a software-based player but not on a hardware-based player, this may also be because the bitrate is too high. Video appears fuzzy or blurry > Result > Original image The video appears fuzzy or blurry. When played zoomed, it appears blocky, almost like viewing something through a frosted glass window. Cause: DV playback not set to full quality If the problem occurs only with Microsoft DV AVI files, the problem may be due to the Digital Video decode setting being set to Low. When set to Low, DV files are decoded in low resolution, regardless of what the resolution of the actual file is. Open Windows Media Player, and look for the Options selection in the menu (usually under Tools). Look for a setting called Digital Video that has a slider with Small at one end and Large at the other. In Windows Media Player 9, this is found by clicking the Advanced button in the Performance tab. Close all open programs including Windows Media Player, then open the file for playback again. The file should now play in full resolution. 85 5: Helpful Hints ProCoder 2. 0 Cause: Video resolution too low When stretched to the original size, a low-resolution image will appear blocky. If you want or need to view the image at the same size as the original, you should increase the video frame size. [. . . ] PAL signals are displayed at 25 frames per second. 158 Glossary Progressive Download ­ A method of viewing video where the viewer receives enough of the video file to start playback while it continues to receive the remainder of the video during playback. Progressive download allows the viewer to start watching the video before it has been fully downloaded. QuickTime ­ Apple's popular format for audio and video playback. QuickTime supports a variety of additional interactivity features though they are not used often. [. . . ]