Poor Rendered Video Quality PE7

Hi All,



I've been running the trial of PE7 for a few weeks comparing against my existing copy of Pinnacle 10 and trial of Power Director. I love the interface and edit abilities, however when I generate DVD files and view them the result from PE7 is of a much lower quality than from Pinnacle or Power Director.



I'm using the default quality settings in each of the programs and viewing all with the same DVD viewing software (AVS Player). The originating AVI that was edited was captured using Pinnacle, but I imported it into PE7 and rendered a PE7 DV AVI for editing to make sure I was working with PE defaults. The picture seems to be more grainy and less vibrant in color with PE7. Of course having the big black ''PE7 Trial'' directly across the middle of the screen doesn't help with comparison (what possessed them to put the watermark directly across the focal point of the viewfinder?), but I'm pretty certain the PE7 files are not as good.



Is there some setting that I'm missing that would make the video from PE7 that much worse than the other two products? I can't believe that the Adobe product would be that much worse without someting I'm doing wrong or missing.



Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Dale
Poor Rendered Video Quality PE7
If you're using an AVI created in Pinnacle (which can mean a number of things) you may not be comparing apples to apples.



Do a test with DV-AVIs captured over FireWire with Windows MovieMaker or the free utilty WinDV and import that video into each program. I think you'll find that, with an optimized source file, the program will more than hold its own, DVD encoding wise.
Poor Rendered Video Quality PE7
Dale,



The test of each program would be to author a DVD (use RW, so you don't spend a bunch of $ on test DVD's) and then watch that through a DVD software player on the computer, or on a set-top player to TV.



As for the display in the programs, there are a couple of things to look at. In PE, if your DV AVI Clip shows a green line, above the Timeline, it does not require Rendering. If it's red, just hit Enter, to Render it. If you Rt-click on the Display Monitor, you can choose Fit, or one of several resolutions - choose 100% and see if your display improves. Fit is basically a ''draft preview,'' sized to fill the Display Monitor, where 100% should show the actual detail.



It's been a long time, and several versions ago, since I last used Pinnacle, but I was less than impressed by its ''monitor'' back then. However, I am going both from memory and also this was on a previous laptop. Though it also had a 17'' monitor, the rez was way down (totally different GPU), than what I am now using.



I have Power Director on my workstation (dual 21'' CRT Hitachi 915's), and I see no difference between it's display, and that in P-Pro2, when I switch it to 100%. They both look the same to me. Do not have PE on the workstation, and do not have Power Director on the laptop, so I cannot compare those in an A-B situation.



Going back a couple of versions of P-Pro, Adobe went from DirectShow display to a common display engine for all of their programs. It has been my experience, when setup to 100%, that their displays are equal to, or better than, any program using DirectShow. This is for footage that does not need to be Rendered, or that has been Rendered, and is for 100%, and not Fit. I do not know if Pinnacel and Cyberlink still use DirectShow.



One last item to consider is the display settings on your monitor. Because Adobe does not use DirectShow any more, you could have differences there. I'd spend just a bit of time with the settings on your monitor, both in the Windows' Display, and in your GPU's utilities, to see if you can ''calibrate'' your monitor for best viewing of the Adobe display engine. In my nVidia Quadro 4500FX control panel, I have one setting for ''Print Work,'' and one for ''Video,'' and my needs fluctuate between the two. I also use Adobe Photoshop's Adobe Gamma utility to set things up for my print work. It is no longer included in the latest CS3-CS4 Photoshop.



Hunt