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    Poor Video Quality and Website

    Hi everyone, well i just bought a 1 month membership to AW to see what its like, and i must say that i am very disappointed in the website, it is very confusing, and very poorly laid out in my humble opinion.

    Also, i have downloaded a few of the 720p HD videos that are between 4 and 5Mbps and they are horrible quality, and 720p mp4 at that bitrate should be a lot better quality than these are, so i am afraid i have been very let down by my experience so far, given i decided to give this site preference to Girls Out West because all the hype on the internet suggested Abby Winters had better Amateur content, and very good quality video.

    I dont know what camera's are being used, or who is editing and encoding the video, but you guys need to lift your game thats for sure.

    Cheers

    #2
    Welcome to AW and the forums...

    If you give the examples of the "horrible quality" video's your talking about and why they are a let down then AW maybe able to respond or take note and improve to meet your expectations in the future.

    What parts of the website do you find confusing? I'm sure many members for AW staff can help you find what your looking for, then hopefully you will come to find that there is a reason AW has all the hype especially in comparison to GOW.

    Comment


      #3
      What pinky said

      Some of the older (years ago) HD vids can be a bit less quality, but mostly they've been good. At least for the ones I've watched 'cos I usually download HQ/mp4, I'm impatient like that

      Feel free to ask questions about site navigation!

      Comment


        #4
        Hi, one such video i refer to is this one, it was listed as released in August, however for a video that is 720p and has a bitrate of nearly 5Mbps, it is extremely poor quality, and so too have many of the HD mp4 files i have downloaded so far for Sept and Aug.

        Outdoors and nestled among the lush greens of the woods, Maylin and Blanca flirt with each other as they get closer to one another.  Lifting off Maylin's top, Blanca exposes her ripe, pert breasts as she leans in closer to cup them in her hands and feel their texture as she grips them. Pressing their naked bodies against one another, they grind and scissor together, their hands exploring their partner's petite bodies.


        Are all these videos shot recently then added to the site, or are some of them older videos and re-released.
        I also notice in some videos that the cameras seem to be older type, so is anyone able to tell me what camera models are used, and what format and bitrates are the videos actually shot in.
        I will admit, i am a videographer so i am probably more familiar with video quality than other people might be, hence why i may seem critical of the video quality i have been seeing so far.

        One video i did like was the one of Maria_W skinny dipping at the beach, it seems to be a lot better quality than most of the others so far, and they did a nice job shooting it as well, a very refreshing video of a beautiful model, and hoping to see more of her in the future.

        Feeling the warm sand on her naked body, Maria lays on the beach under the hot Australian sun, her browning body still showing the white tan lines of the last time she was there.Moving from the house to the lush greens of the Australian flora, Maria then takes us down to the waters of the beach as we spend the whole day with her. Exposing her stunning slender body, perky breasts, pert round bum and full bush we're treated to every inch in beautiful locations.


        Another thing before i go, i finally sorted out how to locate the videos as they are being released from newest to oldest, so thats all good, but i am curious, where are most of the videos shot, as i see some that are clearly shot in Europe.

        Isn't Abby Winters an All Australian outfit.

        Cheers

        Comment


          #5
          Equipment is listed here http://www.abbywinters.com/about under tab 'equipment'

          AbbyWinters was based in Melbourne Australia from start (2000) up to 2010 when they moved to Amsterdam, Netherlands.

          The blanca/maylin vid is an outdoors one with lotsa leafs, a video-tech once told me that is very hard to compress nicely. I'll ask staff to look into it.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by Frans View Post
            Equipment is listed here http://www.abbywinters.com/about under tab 'equipment'
            No disrespect intended, but your still shooting with those old HPX200 Cameras, well no wonder the newer videos are not as good as they could be, those are way obsolete now days, should have thrown them away a long time ago, time to upgrade your gear.

            Actually you are much better off shooting video with the 5Dmk3 stills camera, hack the firmware and shoot in Raw, then process the video, but seriously, DSLR cameras are a pain in the butt to shoot with, so just go grab some decent hand held AVCHD cams, or maybe a couple of the new 4k cameras (get them around $3000 now) and shoot with those.

            Also like to know how your editors are processing the video, like what software etc.

            Originally posted by Frans View Post
            AbbyWinters was based in Melbourne Australia from start (2000) up to 2010 when they moved to Amsterdam, Netherlands.
            Yes i noticed one video where i saw a canal with gondola looking boats in it, and one girl spoke with an accent.

            So is all the content shot in Amsterdam now, if so how come so many aussie girls feature in the Videos.

            Cheers
            Last edited by derflapin; 24 September 2014, 09:35 AM.

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by derflapin View Post
              So is all the content shot in Amsterdam now, if so how come so many aussie girls feature in the Videos.
              Most of it is shot in the Netherlands, not just Amsterdam. AW does have shooters who work in other cities, e.g Berlin and also one in Melbourne. As for the assie girls in vids... they travel to Amsterdam sometimes Kenji for example, who did some shoots in Aus. and several when she was over in Amsterdam.

              It's a small world after all... (and now to get that tune out of my head again)

              Comment


                #8
                Hi Frans, what happens if someone in Australia wants to contribute a video of themselves to your website, but cannot make it to your Melbourne shooter because of remoteness or other reasons, can they shoot their own video, or have someone else shot it for them, and submit the video to AW for appraisal, and if it was acceptable, would AW actually use it.

                I have a particular reason for asking, but just wanted to run it by you first to see how things worked.

                Cheers

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by derflapin View Post
                  I have a particular reason for asking, but just wanted to run it by you first to see how things worked.
                  Have forwarded this to staff as that's well outside my area of expertise

                  Please do make new threads for new topics (like the above, hint ;-), this thread has veered off it's title quite a bit, gets confusing to read/reply.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    hey derflapin,

                    Thanks for your feedback so far. As Frans suggested, we have contact shooters around the place, and we're training up some new ones now as well. We don't buy shoots from producers who have not organized to become contract shooters for us, and completed the Training (more info here, http://careers.abbywinters.com/contract-shooter/). But perhaps the highest priority would be for the modelling candidate in question to make contact with us first (after she has read the info on www.femalephotofun.com). Once we've established we're compatible, we can work on the next step.

                    Coincidentally, I just updated the Equipment page, and made a type - you're prolly thinking of the HVX200 as being the older camera (we used to use them), but about a year ago we upgraded to the HPX-250 (not the HPX200 - my mistake). It was released in 2012, so not that shabby. From the way you're talking, you don't have a lot of experience with the considerations we have when producing shoots - we're reasonably confident of the suitability of the camera we're using for what we need, but as always, the devil is in the details, and small settings adjustments (in shooting, post processing, and encoding) can make big differences.

                    In my experience, lighting makes the largest difference to image quality, then lenses, then "everything else", and we're working on improving our lighting for this reason. I'm looking at the HD download of Blanca and Maylin (on a blue mat in the forest, right?). The compression looks ok to me - not amazingly good, not terrible. As Frans mentioned, the more detailed moving parts, the more data there is, so the more the bitrate has to be allocated to "unimportant" things, like leaves and grass.

                    But in this scene, I am far more concerned by the over-done colour correction than anything else (which contributes to lower quality, to a degree). I will get the team to fix this and re-upload it.

                    We edit in Avid Media Composer, and encode in Vantage.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      I thought I might offer some suggestions and feedback basically in the areas of shooting, since I too am a videographer and I too use Avid for post-production.

                      Garion, you mentioned the colour in Blanca's vid having to be worked with in post, and I agree that the colour correction tools being used in post does tend to detract from the overall clarity of the video being output from a non-linear edit workstation. In fact any type of filter, such as colour correction, sharpening, image resizing, noise reduction- any of those filters trade away some detail and clarity from the source video and they add noise floor.

                      I shoot with Panasonic TM-700s in the field and although I set my cameras for 1080 @ 30p (sometimes I use 60p) and I believe the bitrate on those top out as 20Mb/s, I also take steps during a shoot to ensure the best capture, such as a polarising filter on the lense or in the matte box plus I'm really big on white balancing and exposure settings. One thing I find is that anytime I re-position a camera that has already been white balanced for a shot, gotta do white balance again after repositioning because once the camera is in a different spot, the colour temperatures the camera is capturing is gonna be different than what the camera saw before it was moved. Anyone changes a light or reflector, camera's gotta be set to it otherwise I would be bringing all different coloured footages back to the shoppe and I'd have to deal with it in post and believe me, that can get time-consuming and it's a headache, and again, the more filters I would have to apply to the footages needing corrected, the more detail and clarity I sacrifice on what my NLE is gonna output to final file and it consumes more post time for rendering.

                      I did mention in another thread about codecs and that is another area of the process that has a tendency to gobble up clarity depending on which codec is used. If I may make a suggestion, just in my travels I have found that the H264 Mpeg4 codec tends to offer pretty good clarity retention through the compression process and I choose a stream bitrate of at least 13 Mb/s.

                      Just some thoughts.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        I back up what wolfgangbuster29 has said in the first part of his post, and this coming from a very experienced Videographer shooting weddings, commercials, corporate videos, and i worked for a production company for 1 year as main shooter on projects almost identical to the videos shot for AW.

                        I have mostly used panasonic cams, at home i owned the first TM700 sold in australia (SD700) and this was the actual camera that changed the whole consumer/prosumer avchd video camera market with its brilliant Auto Focus and Image Stabilization systems, and the first camera to shoot 1080/50p (60p in usa) @ 28Mbps, and even now, canon and sony have only just started catching up to panasonic and moved to much better AF and IS systems to match those in panasonic cams.

                        I then bought 2 of the TM900 cams, but they turned out to be identical to the TM700 so it was really a waste of time.

                        In early 2012 i then moved those along and bought 3 of the stunningly beautiful HDC-SDT750 cams, which i still shoot with now, and last year i bought an AG-AC90 shooting 180Mbps ProRes 422 onto a Ninja recorder, and on shoots for other people i uses a variety of other cams far too numerous to mention.

                        I have recently pre-ordered a new DMC FZ1000 4k bridge camera to try out (my first ever DSLR type camera for video)

                        Anyway, some people think these consumer class cameras are no good for serious video production, and i can assure everyone that these types of cameras are just as good as many other much higher end camera without spending the money, you just need to know how to get the best from them, especially in low light because these panasonic cams, because of the sensor size, are hopeless in low light, hence the need for some decent LED lighting at night, which i usually mount on my rigs.

                        With all my cameras (except the AG-AC90) i have always shot AVCHD in 1080/50p (mts) and the average bitrate i get from all these AVCHD cams is 24Mbps, you never get 28Mbps like they are rated at, and i shoot in 50p mode for several reasons that i wont go into just now.

                        For my Vimeo channel i convert copies of my videos to 720/50p mp4 (h264) @ 10Mbps which is the recommended bitrate for 720/50p h264 using the x264 encoder, in the mainconcept encoder i would use 13Mbps.

                        I personally think the cameras used in these AW video shoots are just too big for these models and operators to handle, especially given they are shooting like i do, in roaming mode, where they are all over the place, and there are many many better quality avchd cameras out there that are a lot smaller and lighter that will shoot better video than these cams do (many think the bigger the camera the better the video quality)

                        There is also something going on during post production that is destroying these videos, and i would love to get my hands on a sample clip taken directly from the camera to see just what these cameras are spitting out, but we should be seeing better quality and sharper video from these 720p mp4 files, even at 4Mbps.

                        End of Rant.....Cheers

                        EDIT: Check out how bad this video is regarding this lack of sharpness or blurriness people have been talking about, i have to squint and blink my eyes just to try an focus on it, and it is not because it was shot indoors, the lighting was fine, and for a 720p mp4 @ 4Mbps it is barely watchable in my opinion.

                        Oh, and try and get your models to not shoot directly towards a window that has no blinds or curtains, Blanca is doing it in the first part of that video and its annoying.

                        Running her hands up Thais' long socks, Blanca spreads her legs and opens up her pink, wet vagina. Pressing her tongue against Thais' vulva she licks and sucks as she makes her squirm on the floor. Undressing their petite bodies they grind against each other, grabbing their breasts, puling at their nipples and fingering each other to intense orgasms!
                        Last edited by derflapin; 26 September 2014, 10:42 AM. Reason: added link

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Sorry to keep on about this topic, but the poor quality in many of these latest videos is simply driving me up the wall, and the following video i will use as one of the worst examples i have seen so far, and it is impossible to watch, and it is not because it was shot indoors, under bad lighting or anything else, this problem is clearing being caused during the post production/editing phase, and for a 720p mp4 video with a bitrate of 5Mbps, it is simply unacceptable quality.

                          "Moan into my mouth!" Intimidatingly kissing and moaning in pleasure, Twyla and Roxanne's open mouths press together as they masturbate side by side on the sofa.  "Do you wanna play a game?" Twyla and Roxanne test each other in a guessing game and you can play along with them: "what is soft and sometimes wet?" Roxanne's large breasts are squeezed into her clothing, the soft flesh spilling out by the pink ribbon of her bra, as she leans forward to share Eskimo kisses with Twyla. Twyla compares her small breasts to Roxanne's large beasts, starting to stroke her own crotch over her shorts as Roxanne licks her large breast, sucking her inverted nipple till it pops out hard and excited!


                          I know what cameras are being used, but i still dont exactly what they are doing to these files during editing, but something is definately not right, and it needs to be fixed.

                          Unfortunately after downloading many of the latest offerings, i wont be continuing my membership at the end of my current month trial because of this quality issue, as well as because i find some of the videos very ordinary and boring to be honest.

                          Maybe i am just very fussy, but i know i am not the only member who is not happy with the video quality.

                          Cheers.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Depflapin, I agree, there are issues with this shoot.

                            Rather than try to propose a solution without know all the facts, I'd welcome feedback from you on what you see the symptom(s) to be, specifically, please?

                            Comment


                              #15
                              I believe this particular video would have to be the exception to the claim being made here in this thread as I find that the quality and clarity of this video, as well as the stills, is the best there is around. Top-notch quality, with rich and vibrant skin tones and stunning detail throughout, as well as excellent sound pickup.

                              So with that I would venture to say that this proves that certainly not all AW vids could be considered as sub-par or not even poor quality. Far from it. Whoever worked on this shoot, from start to finish, did a wonderful and outstanding job.

                              Comment

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