Gentlemen:
We are talking about a HD Camera.
If you want to produce only SD then it might be the wrong choice.

But editing in HD and downscaling with a little vertical blur in Aftereffects isn't too hard I guess. Each and every big movie, shot on 35mm and then downconverted to standard SD DVDs has to go through such process.
So it's not Sony's fault to sell us a superb, sharp HD Camera.

Still (for the simple way) I would use clipbrowser for Pre-Edit downscaling to DV.

Peter

YouTube - high-quality HD to SD-DVD conversion with FCP
It seems, there's some kind of a youtube-bug. You have to skip the first seconds.
The result of Compressor is almost PERFECT. It's not possible to get better than perfect.
But why is a freeware-app capable of doing (almost) the same?
Well, writing a piece of software which downscales pictures perfectly isn't very hard: First you have to to eliminate the spatial frequencies above the (new) nyquist-limit using a (windowed) sinc-low-pass-filter. With FFT this can be done very fast. Then you downsample the picture using the sinc-function again (if the old dimension isn't an integral multiple of the new). Done! This method is also called "lanczos resampling".
The extra-sharpness of streamclip could be some aliasing, but the difference is so little that it's not worth discussing it further.
What exactly do you mean with "bad"? Perhaps you mean flickering on interlaced displays:
To reduce flicker on interlaced screens you have to vertical lowpass-filter (= blur) the pictures. But by doing this you're loosing sharpness. You have to find your own tradeoff between more sharpness and less flicker.

Thanks Peter - I had an email from them last night and I replied expressing an interest.
I suspect it will mean I have to buy a Mac Pro but I'm prepared to do that if Bit Vice will produce a satisfactory result.

Episode is another one - but again, it requires Intel processor.

At barely two years old, my Mac is obsolete!

Yes I agree.
I've even tried exporting as an image sequence and using Batch Process in Photoshop to apply the Unsharp Mask (I don't get on well with US Mask in FCP).

That seemed to help significantly, so I can't understand for the life of me why the guys are going on about adding blur!

I'd dearly like to get Photoshop CS4 Extended because I understand you can use it for video now but guess what - (Intel again)!

No Dominik, I mean Blur - so bad that if I watch for more than a few seconds, my eyes feel strange.

As I said, there's grass, trees, and to make matters worse, shiny steel fencing with horizontal bars.

So it's not going to look great but what I've been trying to explain is that in the DVDSP Simulator it looks really good but once formatted to DVD and played on an SD TV it's VERY blurry.

I suspected the DVD media or my DVD burner, so I encoded an old SD movie clip from our last DVD production and it was absolutely fine.
____________________

I don't think I've taken the time to thank you for trying to help, so I'd like to do that now.
It's a huge help to be able to talk to others on forums like this one. I've even had private emails from other people who've seen the thread and want to help too.

So thanks to you all (please keep it going - we haven't fixed it yet).

I rather feel I've hi-jacked the OP's spot but it's well "on-topic" so hopefully I can be forgiven.

Not necessarily. They still offer a PPC version which (I think) is not bad. However, they changed the scaling engine in their latest version 2.4 to 3D Flir or something like that. BTW that's the same engine MPEGStreamClip uses. So a good workflow for the time being would be to scale HD > SG with MPSC and encode into MP2 with BitVice 1.8.1.

You guys sound like you're looking for problems. When I need to produce an SD DVD from my EX HQ 1080/25p material in Vegas, I simply use the DVDA PAL widescreen video stream template for my final (and only) render; it produces gorgeous DVD image without any additional tweaking etc.

The only FX I add at the track level is slight Unsharpen Mask (forcing it to act only after downconversion), and - if the DVD is going to be delivered to a wide audience - the Broadcast safe colours on the Project level.

That's it; never encountered soft picture or line twitter... From what you're saying I'm beginning to suspect there is some weak link in your viewing hw/sw chain...

Piotr, what stands that template for? I'm on a Mac... P.

Nothing special; obvious things like frame size, fps, pixel aspect ratio. Of course it has the quality settings - I'm always using the highest possible (including bitrate).

Interestingly, this produces 50i version of my 25p material, but in fact it's really 25PsF so no problems with either authoring DVD (as it's flagged 50i), or watching on a progressive flat displays (as it's really still progressive, with no time shift between fields).

I don't have clue what's going wrong, but believe me: It's not the downscaling-quality of compressor. ;)

Indeed, when I set Compressor to all "best quality" parameters, recorded on DVD picture came up as good as one can expect for SD.

PS. The only problem that i do not know how to overcome is INTERLACING. I shot with 1080p24 and in FCP I turned Interlacing to De-Interlace. In compressor I did the same and yet final DVD has this problem. Any advice?

Don't know a lot (barely anything) on making DVD:s.

But does somebody have knowledge of the quality of the SDI out from the camera?

You could edit in FCP and export the MP4 film back to the SxS card via Transfer manager and play it out from the camera via SDI or composite.

Thanks for an informative thread. I've been battling with exactly this issue since I bought the camera. The way I downconvert now is simply to change the timeline setting to a DV Pal timeline and then export it (FCP). Just switched from Avid to FCP and find the import and export routines a lot simpler and faster on FCP.

Interestingly I have tried Mpeg streamclip and the results I have got out of it have been dire. looks like a badly compressed dogs dinner. Blocking, blurry and rubbish. Obviously doing somethig wrong as its just unusable.

Andy, I think one of the problems is that you are viewing it in simulator in DVD studio pro. it looks great on your monitor. All nice and compact. then you burn it to dvd and play it in your dvd player onto your tv ( not sure what TV you have? Plasma? LCD? Screen size?) and its blown up to 32 inches? less more? thats a lot bigger screen than the simulator on the apple monitor.

My best result with MPSC (if I remember rightly) was converting ProRes422 to DV. Then I put that into DVDSP.

Yes I realise that, but I think the difference is too great to be explained that way. In the past, I've read many posts from people far more experienced than me, telling us not to pay much attention to the DVDSP Simulator because the resolution's very low.

The more serious comparison I'm making is with a previous DVD we made a few years ago - shot with PD170 (SD) - with a very similar subject, scenes etc etc.

Viewed on the LG CRT, the old SD footage is vastly superior to the downconverted EX1 footage - but on the DVDSP Simulator, the downconverted EX1 footage looks slightly better than the SD!

(The mind boggles).

Have you thought about Bootcamp and chucking a copy of Vegas/Architect on it to see how that compares to FCP/Compressor. There's a 30 day trial available and if it still looks like a dogs dinner........

Thanks Steve - but I'm running one of those vintage (barely 2 year old) G5s.
I want to get a Mac Pro quite soon but not really before I finish this project.

I may have to though - it would open up other possibilities - including Bit Vice (2.4), Episode etc etc

But really, I'm exploring the possibilities of a hardware downconversion now.

Quite soon, I suspect there will be an EX1 on eBay UK!

Fabulous camera, but it's a complete dud if I can't get my footage on DVD at a reasonable quality.

As a fellow Mac toting FCP user, I can absolutely positively attest at getting great SD DVDs from EX1 footage using Compressor. And I'm assuming up to date FCS 2.0 here, bets are off on earlier versions.

Edit in FCP using the native XDCAM-EX format, export a self contained QT in the native format, plunk it into Compressor and drag one of the standard presets (I tend to use 120 even for short movies because the data rate is client-friendly.

And that's pretty much it for most of the time, and clients noticed the step up from Z1 to EX1 from the DVDs.

In the early days, I tried doing the downconvert in FCP and this required some chicken-waving regarding fields, output quality and scaling quality, as I could see aliasing problems with near horizontal lines. But certainly not eye crossing blurriness.

The only thing I can think of regarding your previous comment about CRTs is that somehow your progressive footage is being treated as interlaced, and is having a very savage deinterlace done to it.

Note that if you want 'video' motion, it means shooting 720p 50fps, turning on the advanced controls in Compressor and turning interlacing ON (IIRC - don't have access to my cookbook). There are also some times when extra fiddling IS required (perhaps a bit of blur etc) but right now most of my stuff has been treated very nicely by Compressor.

FWIW I've also found Clip Browser to do nice things with downconverted rushes, but I stick to 720p25 for almost everything now. I can deliver native 1280x720 WMV added to an SD DVD, and enjoy the benefits of 60fps when required.

Andy:
I am sorry that You still don't get satisfying results. But I wonder why You are ignoring the solution like editing in hd, adding a little vertical blur and the downconvert in Aftereffects or something like that. Or have a missed something in this meanwhile long discussion ?

I wouldn't sell the ex1. There's nothing better at the moment - except ex3 :)

Peter

Peter (and everyone else who's been kind enough to try to help me with this) please understand that the situation is fairly desperate here so if I don't reply to every post, I hope you'll forgive me.

We've been working on this project solidly from May 2008 until the present time. It never occurred to me that we'd have trouble downconverting footage to SD and now, with the project way behind schedule we have to do whatever we can to get it back on track.

I have a G5 Mac (not Intel) so many options are closed off to me, including, I believe, AE. But I would buy a new Mac Pro on Monday morning if I was convinced:
a) It would mean the footage could be converted to a suitable standard and
b) there would be time to do all that was necessary to get our DVD released in early January (nearly three months later than we announced originally).

At the moment we are anxiously awaiting test footage from a Hardware Downconversion which I am hopeful will give us a better result. I've tried dozens of different encoding methods and to be perfectly honest, the difference in the quality has been barely discernable.

I have also sent test footage away for others to work on (with software) all with similar results to mine with Compressor and MPEG Streamclip.

I think the likelyhood of me owning an EX1 beyond early January is very slim. The camera (with certain reservations) is superb for the money, but I need excellent quality footage I can put on DVD for my customers - the EX1 doesn't give me that, I'm afraid.

I owned a Sony Z1 for a while and loved it. Now I see the Z7 will record HDV to tape and SD to Compact Flash . . . SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Now THAT sounds like a good idea!
(Interchangeable lenses too).

xdcam>hdv>dvd
 

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I don't normally edit or create DVDs but I have to send six hours of material out on DVD Monday. After a number of false starts, a couple dreadful attempts and a lot of reading on this thread, a friend suggested simply exporting HD Pro Res timeline>Quicktime movie> HDV self contained. Then I dragged the HDV.mov into idvd. The results are not stunning (like original hd video) but it looks pretty good and the workflow was comparatively quick.

Andy.......... So very briefly, I am as ready as you to be rid of the EX-1 for DVDs..please see the post in this forum, I began, "How to Convert EX-1 to SD for DVD???"....this has had a superb response in suggested solutions. I'm on PC, but exact same problem as you. Again, personal issues will keep me off this board for at least another week. Good luck to us all.

I'm sorry to hear of your current personal problems but when you are able, check out the Sony Z7 - it's got most of the features of the EX1 (apart from SloMo) but as I said, will record SD and HDV simultaneously.

The more I read about it, the more I like it.

Andy, as You wrote, that You gave others footage to work with, meaning to downconvert, I only could offer You to also send me a short clip of that problematic HD footage and I'll try my best to do a SD-DV-Quicktime with my method.

Maybe I am totally wrong, but I've just downconverted a full hd project and I am fully satisfied with the SD quality. But maybe we are really talking about different expectations.

For your example, that Z1 footage worked well and me having also a Z1 it's no wonder to me, as the Z1 is significant softer overall.
That also explains again that blurring the ex1 footage makes better sd downconversion. And that is still the only thing I do.
Getting HD into aftereffects, vertical blur, downres... voila: finest SD footage. :)

Peter

Andy I'm not quite sure this is the best way to go. Check the Z7 forum somewhere round here. I think to remember some posts that there are severe pobs to record SD and HD simultaneously to DV and the CF card. P.

Andy, have you tried using Cinema Craft Encoder MP? I have heard very good reports on it. Rather than using Compressor to do the job, its a compressor plugin but extremely powerful. All the major studios use this compression engine to make their DVDs like Spiderman 3 and Return of the King.

Its not cheap at $799 but the reviews on it say its money well spent. With Compressor you can do two passes, but with Encoder MP you can do up to 99 passes to get the very best dvd.

I have just picked up a legit copy off Ebay (comes with a dongle) for £299.

I'll have it by next week so have a serious play with it. Could well be a solution.

CINEMA CRAFT Encoder SP2 - OMNI-CINEMA CRAFT

Thanks for the warning Peter.
I'll certainly check that out.

Never heard of it, Steve but I'll have a look at it (thanks).

You can d/l a demo version of CCE Basic here: Cinema Craft MPEG Encoders - Convert AVI & Quicktime to MPEG1 & MPEG2 for DVD

There is no demo version of Encoder MP for the Mac.

There are demoes of CCE Basic and CCE SP2. Both Win only (no prob with
an Intel Mac and a Virtual Machine like Parallels and Co) to run them on a Mac, though.

Peter, do you have any experience with this plugin? I have purchased it blind through reading quite a few good reviews. Wondering if it is money well spent or a waste!

I have not yet bought the plugin but the demoes are the best and fastest encoders i have worked with so far. Will buy the plugin right after New Year (for fiscal reasons have to wait;-)). Let me know your results.

I was going to buy the plugin for mac a couple of months ago buut the pound plummetted aganst the dollar and where it would have cost me £400 it suddenly went up to £530. Luckily I saw a guy selling it on Ebay and got it for £299. he is selling Scenerist Studio 3.1 and another Mpeg encoder called Spruce DVd maestro ( whatever that is) at the moment.

It should be with me this week and providing it works OK ( the lisence will have to be changed over with Cinema Craft and it probably phones home) I will have basic results later on in the week.

Steve Spruce is the prececessor of DVD Studio Pro, Apple bought (spelling?) it, killed the win version, took the engine and gave it a new more mac-like GUI.
299 for the Mac Plugin can't be a bad investment.

OK the Cinema craft Encoder MP plugn DVD and dongle arrived yesterday morning.

It installed very easily and is fully working. Last night I put 20 minutes worth of footage on the timeline and used the Encoder MP through Compressor 3.

I did a 5 pass VBR encode. I am running Intel dual core 3 MHz with 4 Gb Ram. I found encode times were on a par with Compressors, except I did a 5 pass rather than Compressors maximum of two. Each pass is a bit faster than the previous pass, so its not like 1 hour, 1 hour, 1 hour, 1hour, 1 hour.

Results. Really excellent. And this is using basic settings out of the box. I am sure when I fully understand the PDF instruction file, which is NOT written for the layman, I will get even better results.

IMO it looks better than what compressor can produce. I am gooing to do some more testing in the next few days ( wish I could do it tomorrow but a day out with a visit to Father Christmas for my 4 year old, then friends coming a around on Friday and Saturday)

But Cinema Craft Encoder MP looks extremely promising on initial testing.

Why don't you post results you get with your methods together with examples which look great on your tv? I guess it will be possible for us to tell you what you have to do, to let your results look like them.

EX1 to SD Problem solved!
 

Dominik (and everyone else who has kindly tried to help me with this) I must apologise for not posting back. I thought I had replied to all threads about my EX1 to DVD issue, but I clearly missed this one.
_______________

This is a copy of my "solution" to the problem I was having converting my EX1 footage to SD for use on DVD:
_______________

At last, thanks to Kevan Holdsworth over on the Apple FCP Forum, I read through the XDCAM Transfer Instruction PDF very carefully and there it was all the time!

XDCAM Transfer is the Sony plugin for importing footage - but it also EXPORTS loads of stuff - including either DV PAL / NTSC @ 48k

OR

IMX50 625 (which is Ancient Dutch for Cracking SD) IMX PAL / NTSC @ 50Mb/s
(Choice of other rates available).

My settings are here:
http://www.workingsheepdog.co.uk/video/picture_01.png

This gives you an XML file which you then Import back into FCP using XDCAM Transfer.
EXCELLENT SD footage!

I tested it with 1080p footage. The left attachment is the xdcam-export result. The right is the Compressor result.
The details in the result of Compressor looks much smoother.
I really can't understand your preference, Andy.

I don't know what you mean by "smoother" Dominic.

To me there is very little difference in the two images, but I think the Compressor image is very slightly "sharper" and that is what I'm looking for.
(As a professional photographer, I would interpret "smoother" as meaning "softer").

Would you please tell me what your exact Compressor settings are for this please?
Then I will do more tests and post back.

Thank you for your help.

With smoother I mean that the edges have less (actually no) aliasing. I actually would call them softer (but not soft, because Compressor approximates the nyquist-limit very closely).
What kind is your footage of? Is it 1080i? Because Compressor has a bug which prevents it from rescaling interlaced footage correctly, if the output is interlaced, too. If you have 1080i and you want 576i as output you have to do the following workaround:
1. Export with Compressors motion-adaptive deinterlacing and high-quality scaling to progressive 576p50 (Apple ProRes-codec recommended).
2. Convert the result with Compressor to interlaced 576i with your dvd-mpeg2-settings.

If your footage isn't 1080i you can do it as simply as I show it in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSw9JfVmIpI&fmt=22
(you have to skip the first seconds because of a youtube-flash-player bug)

No all my footage is progressive but if you can give me the full workflow, that will help a lot. Even if there is no difference in quality, it's a lot less hassle to export using compressor - rather than export using XDCAM transfer, then re-ingest as SD, then export again.