Progressive SD DVD

[Jeff Harper]

I am about to burn a DVD for a customer that consists of progressive scan video. Should this be a problem for most people?

My original footage was progressive, and after interlacing it it just didn't look so hot, so I went with progressive. Then I realized I don't know if the disc will play properly for most folks.

I feel confident this particular customer will have a new player, probably bluray, so in this case it's not an issue, at least I hope not.

I would like to follow this workflow for my next project, but feel unsure how wise it would be to do on a regular basis.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Jeff

Take a look at the post about "do you shoot in 108024P" in the weddings forum. George Kilroy tried a progressive disk ...easy to do in Vegas of course, but he, and clients have issue playing it and find that the images have problems. Worth a read ???

Chris

[Jeff Harper]

Thanks Chris. Inconclusive it seems. Indeed they should work fine, and he did say on some. Which ones do they work fine on I wonder? Do they play fine on Bluray players? I imagine they do. Or maybe it has also to do with the tv itself.

Hmmm. I can't wait for more replies, I have got to burn these puppies now, customer is waiting, but I'm anxious to hear more advice/feedback on this issue.

[Peter Manojlovic]

Sorry...

But is it progressive scan 30fps, or 24 fps??

[Chris Harding]

Hi Jeff

I can play progressive movies from my media player via HDMI to my LCD TV with no issues but the DVD player probably cannot do it.

I think you also have to bear in mind that you need quite a wide compatibility before creating a disk...it might play well on the client's brand new DVD player that can handle a progressive DVD but I would find out if the disk is likely to be played elsewhere???

With weddings the bride's setup might play fine but when she goes to Grandma to proudly show off here wedding video, the older player and maybe even CRT TV that Grandma bought 10 years ago is no use.
Fine if the client is only using one setup but for best cross compatibility I still render my progressive to DVD with the standard Vegas settings of interlaced, lower field first and onto a DVD -R too.

Probably worth a check???

Chris

[Leslie Wand]

chris is spot on - you really don't know what / where your vid is going to be played, and the last thing you need is a client coming back saying it wouldn't play on...

also the dvd-r point is still (unfortunately) valid. people don't rush out and upgrade their dvd player just because they can - if it's playing the hire movies, what the hell.... i still come across players that wont play dvd+r.

[Jeff Harper]

I hope it will play find for this customer, he has bluray, so it should look great, at least on his TV.

Problem is my source footage was upper field first on one camera and progressive on another, and lower field first on another, so it seemed easiest at the time, without thinking it through, to convert it all using HD link to progressive.

It's 30p Peter.

[Peter Manojlovic]

Jeff....

As far as DVD's are concerned, there's no issues with upper or lower fields...In fact, there's no such thing as progressive output...

As long as it was exported correctly from the encode, the flags in the player will playback the appropriate field.

Regardless of the type of footage you've encoded, the playback from the settop player will always be field based. Therefore, a lovely progressive image (although encoded as a frame), gets ouput as a field.

[Jeff Harper]

Peter, take a look at this article and see what you think. Progressive scan DVD player - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I suspect bluray players have progressive output, and as long as the TV has the ability, it will play back progressively also.

I might be missing something, correct me if I'm wrong.

[Peter Manojlovic]

Ah yes Jeff...

But here's the rub.
It's not native DVD output. You're at the mercy of the DVD player, or TV rebuilding information from the fields.
Of course, most upconvert DVD players do a fine job, but the only issue that you need to be concerned about is "the look"..

But back to your original question...
60i has a look that's more like video, and 30P has a film/video look.
Your encode for DVD options guarantee that playback is correct on a DVD player.

It will be your choice in the future to stick with "the look". Otherwise, you've done nothing wrong.

But i personally stick to 30P, since it resizes much better than 60i, and makes for better web uploads.

[Jeff Harper]

Peter, my point of the post before was that there IS progressive output from some DVD players. You said there is no such thing progressive output, which didn't make sense to me, as I have an old DVD player that specifically has progressive scan ability. All do not, however.

I suppose I'm wondering what percentage of current DVD players might be progressive scan. I feel positve most bluray players are, since hey play back 720p and 1080p. At least mine did, until it died recently.

So if the DVD is progressive, and the DVD player is progressive capable, it will play back pprogressively,right? Fields are non-existent with progressive unless the progressive image is interlaced for compatibility reasons. But virtually all new televisions play progressive, I think.

Upscaling has nothing to do with progressive or interlaced, that's a separate issue that has to do with resizing, if I'm not mistaken.

Most of my work is for DVD so this is why I'm pursuing this question.

It would seem that for safety, yes, interlaced is best across the board for compantibility, as has been pointed out, and I can't argue with that. But I also know that when I played the progressive DVD I burned yesterday it was seemed smoother and better looking on my DVD player.

The issue would be moot if I wasn't using HD link to convert my footage first. If Vegas deinterlaced better than I would just render out the format I needed, but to convert to interlaced I have found I need to convert the footage in HD link first, unfortunately.

Well at any rate, I just converted my next project to interlaced, as much as I hated doing it. This customer definitely has many relatives with old DVD players, so it must be done.

[Enrique Orozco Robles]

I always shoot progressive (30p-sony EX3)... work and even render full progressive in vegas... and make DVDs with architect with excelent results.... absolutely no problem ....

my 2 cents

[David Jimerson]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

I am about to burn a DVD for a customer that consists of progressive scan video. Should this be a problem for most people?

My original footage was progressive, and after interlacing it it just didn't look so hot, so I went with progressive. Then I realized I don't know if the disc will play properly for most folks.

I feel confident this particular customer will have a new player, probably bluray, so in this case it's not an issue, at least I hope not.

I would like to follow this workflow for my next project, but feel unsure how wise it would be to do on a regular basis.

If this is the 24p material, then as I said in the other thread, use the DVD Architect 24p Widescreen DVD preset. It will give you a 24p file that DVD Architect will not have to recompress for DVD, and it will be a 24p DVD.

ANY DVD player can play it to ANY TV. It doesn't matter if the DVD player is a progressive-scan player or not; the 24p file will have instructions for a player to insert pulldown for a standard TV. The movie portion of all but the oldest commercial DVDs are encoded as 24p, so you've already watched tons of 24p DVDs. (Also keeping in mind that you can have files of different frame rates on the same DVD.)

[Jeff Harper]

David, this post was about non-24p material. It was 720 60p. Completely different project. I mailed the progressive DVDs and hope they work for the customer!

[David Jimerson]

Originally Posted by Peter Manojlovic

Jeff....

As far as DVD's are concerned...In fact, there's no such thing as progressive output...

Why do you say that?