Why does my exported movie look "grid-like" :( 1

[FilmGirl]

Hi,

I really hope that someone can help me - as I'm facing a number of film festival deadlines and I can't seem to work this out.

I am editing my project in Premiere 6.5 - it is a PAL DV project, and the footage originated on a Canon XL1-s. In the Premiere project itself, I'm pretty sure all the project and export settings (pixels etc) are correct, and not conflicting. (But maybe I'm missing something).

Here is my dilemna - the resolution gets considerably worse with each pass of the avi clip through Premiere. I originally captured the mini-DV footage to Premiere - where I converted it all to B&W and clipped it to letter-box, then exported the timeline as an avi movie(s) (this I'll call pass 1). Then, when I edited this B&W avi footage in Premiere and exported it out as an avi movie again (pass 2), I noticed a distinctive, what I would call "grid-like pattern" on the footage.

Running some tests I realised that the more times I pass the footage through premiere the "griddier" it looks. I'm not talking about 100 different renders either, just passing it through three to four times makes it look awful - and as I said above, even two renders of the same clip makes for noticably worse resolution. I have tried the same test with colour footage, with no effects added (ie no B&W or clipping) and the exact same thing happens. Every additional time I render the avi (ie. put it back in Premiere's timeline and export it as a movie) the worse it looks. But this is digital footage! - So why the distinct deterioration after just a few copies? It isn't even leaving my computer! I did make some Quicktime clips a month or so ago - could some setting be off that I'm missing? Sounds like I'm grasping at straws, but I'm a Premiere newbie, and I really don't know what to do

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks guys!

 

[Akribie]

Every time you export clips which have had any changes applied to them., Premiere has to recompress into the target CODEC (in this case I assume it stays as DV).

It is not usual to see noticeable degradation before, say, 5 or more such compression cycles.

If your input format (frame size, field order, frame rate, etc) is the same as that you have set for export, then Premiere does not need to recompress every frame, only those which have been changed in any way. The quick way to check this is to select a clip in the project window and then open the Settings Viewer and check that any red entries are acceptable to you.

Premiere export settings are set separately from those of the project/timeline. Maybe you are exporting to some other CODEC than DV, and it is this which is causing the loss of quality. In Premiere 6.5 there is also an export setting which determines whether recompression is always applied, or used only for altered frames. Worth seeing what happens if you turn this off (assuming it was on originally) when you have a DV export setting that exactly matches your original clips.

 

[FilmGirl]

Thank you so much! I think ticking recompress "off" might have done the trick!!!!!!

 

[Akribie]

Good !!