1080p to 480i Conversion Problems
 

After having some very serious interline twitter problems in the results from 1080p to 480i conversion in Encore, I decided to use the Cineform resizing, and boy do I have an insoluable mess!

Here's what I had been doing, on Premiere CS3, with Cineform Prospect (and by the way, although highly likely to be totally irrelavant to my current problem, everything is updated, including Microsoft, Cineform, all Adobe programs, and the driver for my NVidia video card). I've used the Cineform HD Link to import 1080/30p from the EX-1 cards, edited the data in Premiere, and then used Cineform to render out to archive at 1080/30p. So far, so good - the results there look great, even played back on the unadvised current edition of Windows Media Player. Previously, I had then taken the archived avi into Encore, which did all resizing, etc. And the resulting 480/60i DVD when played back on a Sony BluRay player (300 series) and put up on a 109 inch screen with a Panasonic 1080p projector looked stunning, extremely low interline twitter. The problem with the disc, however, showed up on the systems of a number of my customers. When some of them played back the DVDs on relatively inexpensive DVD players feeding 42 inch and larger LCDs, the twitter was sometimes obtrusively noticeable.

Soooooooo, I decided to use Cineform for the resizing, etc. I placed my archived 1080/30p presentation in Premiere, and used the exact procedure enumerated in the Cineform "Maintaining Best Image Quality When Exporting to DVD", and upon checking the resulting 480/60i result before even bringing it into Encore, it showed up as 4x3 instead of 16x9. So, I did it twice more, with the same result both times. So having thrown out the coasters, here I am, wondering what simple point have I missed??????????? And of course, I did determine that the Pixel Aspect Ratio was properly set to "D1/DV NTSC Widescreen (1.2)" each time.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

So, I am still awaiting the massive, positive response with the answer to my issue?

Did you submit a trouble ticket to support?

Thank you David, no, I didn't know it would be necessary, but if so, I wll do a trouble ticket within the next several days, or when I return from a long shoot in New York!

If there is aspect ratio bug, someone will need to test it. The ticket system is the way to get that testing done.

Quick question. In Encore, can you change reinterpret the aspect ratio? If so, what does the resulting dvd look like?

Jake, thanks for the query, which I just picked up - may not be able to test your procedure for a couple of days, but just found out that one of the problem 4x3 DVDs (and perhaps all) does not play 16x9 in Windows Media Player or Premier, but will on at least one DVD player/LCD screen combo>

David and Jake - thanks so much for the thoughts and suggestions. At this point because of severe time constraints, I won't try to get at the root of this problem until much later in May.

I tried out Jake's thoughts, and I now have five more 4x3 DVD coasters. All played out everyplace in 4x3, with the one exception noted above - when played on a cheap Sony DVD player with switchable output (either interlaced or progressive) into a Samsung 1080/60p LCD (I know, "p" on the Samsung is redundant). My compatiblity test arrangements otherwise all showed up 4x3, including a Sony Blu Ray player and a Toshiba HD-DVD player into a Panasonic LCD Projector (1000U), five different computers, an Insignia (real cheap) player into a Daewoo CRT (a WHAT!), and two different portable Insignia DVD players.

By the way, on the Sony/Samsung combo, all of the DVDs look really deplorable with the Sony player output set to interlaced, but excellent with the Sony player output set to progressive. It was the Sony/Samsung combo which was the only one playing the Cineform resized disc in 16x9, and I could not discern any significant difference between the two different discs, with the resizing done from 1080 to 480 by either Cineform, or the dreaded Premiere Encore program.

And both of the discs looked superb with the Sony Blu Ray player/Panasonic projector - I couldn't ask for anything better for handling the EX-1 output on a 480 DVD! The Toshiba HD-DVD player/ Panasonic projector did not show up as well as the Sony/Panasonic combo, which suprised me, given that the Reon chip in the Toshiba player has been praised as distinctly superior to most processors. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.