Frustrated with HD output quality

[Hornady Setiawan]

Chris Palestro,

oh ok, i thought the problem was in the computer to projector signal path...

in vegas project options you can set "rendering quality" to best or draft. Pls try that out.

also, can u try render to quicktime sorenson HD or other HD quicktime codec? Is it still bad?

if quicktime is not bad, then the problem may lie in your VGA card driver, the overlay driver dont playback the HD res, instead it plays in a draft / lowres overlay? If this is so, try newer/other driver version. Or try playing them in another computer with different VGA?

[Paul Kepen]

What is the correct workflow for Sony HC-1 1080/60i video to DVD? I have used the Cineform HDlink to capture the files. They captured files properties appears as 1440x1080i in Vegas 6. I edit, they look wonderful on the computer LCD monitor. Then I render as main concept mpeg2, import to DVD architect and make DVD. The resultant DVD is not very sharp and seems to have more interlaced artifacts then the DVD's I edited and burned from my old SD camcorder. Also it seems to loose color saturation and contrast from what it appeared on the original tape played directly, or the way the mp2t file looked on the computer monitor while editing. I've tried playing with the upper/lower field, but no help. HDV is upper field 1st, vs DV is lower field 1st. I am playing my DVD's thru a progressive DVD player hooked up via component video.

The Cineform FAQ recomends making an intermediate AVI file. I tried that , and the resultant DVD looked sharp, had good color, black level, etc., but had much worse interlaced artifacts/effects. Maybe thats the wrong term, but shooting from the 10th floor at a road with a car coming towards me, it looks like he is driving under strips of a mirror or a desert water mirage. Vertical fence railing look like each side has saw blade teeth in it. I'll try to add some stills.,

Could some one in the know please walk me thru the steps, or what I have to check at each point? Or direct me to a link that gives the info? Thanks - PK

[Jarrod Whaley]

Paul:

You know DVD encoding implies a necessary downconversion to SD, right? Might that be the issue?

[Paul Kepen]

Originally Posted by Jarrod Whaley

Paul:

You know DVD encoding implies a necessary downconversion to SD, right? Might that be the issue?

Jarrod - yes I know that, and I don't expect it to look as good as the hdv tape. From what I've heard everyone say, HDV downconverted to DVD looks better then regular SD DV. My experience is it looks worse! Do I have to make it 24p before going out to DVD? Or can I leave it at 60i? My experience with converting DV to 24p is that it looses sharpness, and movement becomes rather jerky, but the stairstepping, and interlaced flicker go away. With my HDV attempts, it is the stairstepping, flickering, wavy, blurry look to things that I don't like. I attatched photo's. The AVI one is from following Cineform's recommendation to make an intermediate CF avi from the timeline and then use that as the source for DVD. The CF photo is without using the AVi intermediate. You can see that the stairstepping or "saw blade" edje look to everything is not as bad as in the AVI, but you can also see that there is more motion blur to it - but even in shots without motion, it still looks less sharp, less contrasty, less color saturation then the AVi intermediate. These problems make the DVD look inferior to DVD's from SD DV in terms of artifacts and contrast. They still look better the SD in terms of the depth of the color pallet.

Maybe I have something goofed up in my workflow.

In the Uppper left corner of the Vegas editing screen, on the toolbar, If I go up to File-Properties, I get the following. Template: HDV 1080-60i (1440x1080, 29.970 fps) Width: 1,440 Field Order: Upper field first Height: 1080 Pixel Aspect: 1.3333 (HDV 1080) Frame Rate: 29.970 (NTSC) Full Resolution Rendering: Best Motion blurr type: Gaussian Deinterlace: none

If I click on a clip in the timeline and go to Properties I get in the Video Event Tab: Mandalay2006CFHDCap-001-001, Maintain Aspect Ratio, Smart Resample is checked, Playback rate 1.000, Undersample Rate 1.000, and 29.970 fps. On the Media Tab: Timecode=Use time code in file, Attributes:1440x1080x24, 00:01:50;20, Format:CineForm HD Codec V2.5, Frame Rate: This is greyed out but it is -29.970 (NTSC), Field Order: Upper field first, Pixel Aspect: 1.3333 (HDV 1080), Alpha Channel: none

When Rendering your outputing, What settings do you use?

Sorry that is so long, but if anyone can see anything wrong or different with those settings, please let me know. Thank You very much for your help. Sincerely - PK

[Fred Foronda]

I have the same problem too. But by the pictures you posted it looks far worst than mines. This is my properties after I have printed back to HDV tape. I reload the m2t edited file on the time line.

Field order: Non progressive
Deinterlance method: Blend Fields
Motion blur: Guassain
Res quality: GOOD

Everything else is set to what it is defaulted when I printed to back to HDV tape. I tried both Good and Best and I yeild the same results on DVD. The final product looks awsome just that it still have some of the jaggy, wavy, artifacts but its not as bad as the clips you posted.

[Chris Barcellos]

I don't know if this will help, but it seemed to work for me some time back. What happens when you try 1st or 2nd in the field order selection ?? The DVD is being made from an interlaced file, into an interlaced DVD, so the problem might be in the order the fields are set up. Try the 1st field order selection.

[Steven Davis]

Originally Posted by Fred Foronda

By the way congradulations!! Not only having a baby but caputring the moments on HD!!!!

I would ad congradulations on not only the new child, capturing it on HD, but not passing out during filming!

[Paul Kepen]

Originally Posted by Fred Foronda

I have the same problem too. But by the pictures you posted it looks far worst than mines. This is my properties after I have printed back to HDV tape. I reload the m2t edited file on the time line.

Field order: Non progressive
Deinterlance method: Blend Fields
Motion blur: Guassain
Res quality: GOOD

Everything else is set to what it is defaulted when I printed to back to HDV tape. I tried both Good and Best and I yeild the same results on DVD. The final product looks awsome just that it still have some of the jaggy, wavy, artifacts but its not as bad as the clips you posted.

Question - By "non progressive" - are you using Upper field or Lower Field first?

If I click on a cineform clip in the Vegas project media bin, I get the following:
General
Name: Mandalay2006CFHDCap-001.avi
Folder: I:\My Video\Mandalay Feb2006\HC-1
Type: Video for Windows
Size: 11.07 MB (11,336,704 bytes)
Created: Monday, May 22, 2006, 3:02:32 PM
Modified: Monday, May 22, 2006, 3:02:34 PM
Accessed: Wednesday, June 14, 2006, 5:09:44 PM
Attributes: Archive

Streams
Video: 00:00:00.868, 29.970 fps, 1440x1080x25, CineForm HD Codec V2.5
Audio: 00:00:00.696, 48,000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo, Uncompressed


Question: What is the x25 in 1440x1080x25?
Cineform HD Codec V2.5 - Is this the current version?

Thanks for your help. And I guess I missed the post, but my Congrats' to the new Father as well!!!

[Fred Foronda]

For projects going to dvd i use "non-progressive" as the field order.

[Gian Pablo Villamil]

I've been getting very decent, very cinema-like quality going from HDV to DVD.

I use the standard HDV project template, except changing rendering quality to "best" and deinterlace method to "interpolate".

If you are rendering to progressive formats, set the project property to progressive. If rendering to an interlaced format, set the project property to interlace (use the default for the template).

I use the MainConcept MPEG2 DVD Architect WS template as-is. The only setting I would consider touching there is the bitrate, but 90% of the time I leave it alone.

I do change the color curves on all the footage, specifically crushing blacks a little. I do this for the look, but apparently this avoids multiple (invisible) shades of black and dark grey, which makes things easier for the encoder.

I've prepared several DVDs this way for very large format projections (6 meters across) and many people assume they're watching HD.

[Paul Kepen]

Originally Posted by Fred Foronda

For projects going to dvd i use "non-progressive" as the field order.

Where do you see a "non progressive" choice? All I see are: 1. Progressive 2. Upper field first 3. Lower field first.

Both choice 2 and 3 are the interlaced options, but you have to choose one or the other. Unless you are referring to some other place to select options that I am unaware of. Thanks Fred - PK

[Paul Kepen]

Originally Posted by Gian Pablo Villamil

I've been getting very decent, very cinema-like quality going from HDV to DVD.

I use the standard HDV project template, except changing rendering quality to "best" and deinterlace method to "interpolate".

If you are rendering to progressive formats, set the project property to progressive. If rendering to an interlaced format, set the project property to interlace (use the default for the template).

I use the MainConcept MPEG2 DVD Architect WS template as-is. The only setting I would consider touching there is the bitrate, but 90% of the time I leave it alone.

I do change the color curves on all the footage, specifically crushing blacks a little. I do this for the look, but apparently this avoids multiple (invisible) shades of black and dark grey, which makes things easier for the encoder.

I've prepared several DVDs this way for very large format projections (6 meters across) and many people assume they're watching HD.

That must really be cool to see you work on a screen that size. I see you use interpolate for your de-interlace method. I think mine is set up at default, which I believe is Gaussian. I assume you've tried them all and found "interpolate" to be the best?

Thanks for the info - PK

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by Paul Kepen

Where do you see a "non progressive" choice? All I see are: 1. Progressive 2. Upper field first 3. Lower field first.

Both choice 2 and 3 are the interlaced options, but you have to choose one or the other. Unless you are referring to some other place to select options that I am unaware of. Thanks Fred - PK

I'm guessing that was a typo- and selection being suggested was "none: progressive".

I tried the different project settings as suggested here, but I am probably rendering different than the others. I'm using Vegas Movie Studio and I am editing and rendering from a native .m2t file, but it sounds like every one esle is working from a Cineform intermediate file. Using the native HDV file, I am not getting any significant difference when I render or output the movie to a DVD compatible mpg file using any of the project settings. It is obviously DV lower resolution, as you would expect in a down resolution, but I don't see it as any lower quality than rendering from a DV project.

I've also rendered from native HDV to DV, and then placed that into DVD Architect for transcoding and burning.

I'm curious if everyone is rendering to something else, then dropping it into DVD Architect to do the conversion and if that transcoding is where things are going haywire. Thoughts ??

[Paul Kepen]

Originally Posted by Chris Barcellos

I'm guessing that was a typo- and selection being suggested was "none: progressive".

I tried the different project settings as suggested here, but I am probably rendering different than the others. I'm using Vegas Movie Studio and I am editing and rendering from a native .m2t file, but it sounds like every one esle is working from a Cineform intermediate file. Using the native HDV file, I am not getting any significant difference when I render or output the movie to a DVD compatible mpg file using any of the project settings. It is obviously DV lower resolution, as you would expect in a down resolution, but I don't see it as any lower quality than rendering from a DV project.

I've also rendered from native HDV to DV, and then placed that into DVD Architect for transcoding and burning.

I'm curious if everyone is rendering to something else, then dropping it into DVD Architect to do the conversion and if that transcoding is where things are going haywire. Thoughts ??

Thanks chris. I'm curious, you use movie studio, but you have DVD architect? Why do you use studio and not Vegas 6? Yes I have been using the cineform codec. I also tried capturing hdv dirctly into vegas6 and that seemed to work the same, same quality, etc. I don't believe though, that even that is editing the M2t, as I think the Vegas hdv capture uses a stripped down version of the cineform codec. I would suspect movie studio does as well, I'm not sure.
Anyways, late last night I made another go of it and I ended up with beautiful output. In Vegas you have to render the mpeg2-DVD file, and then output that dvd architect. I think I had the render as set to "Main Concept HDV". Last night - in Vegas I set it up to render as"DVD Architect widescreen DVD" and it worked great. Pretty stupid on my part to have missed that! I also have the Adobe Video Collection (the old one with PPro 1.5.1). I had been experimenting with that and Vegas and getting equally bad results. Not sure what my problem is with the Adobe, but I'm happy that now at least I can get a great DVD from my HDV tapes with Vegas.

[Fred Foronda]

Yes I made a mistake, I use NONE as the field order. I have tried both good and best as the render quality and get the same results. Looks good but I still see these wavy jaggy artifacts especailly during movements..its very faint though the average joe won't be able to tell. You know back in the days when I had my FX1 with Vegas 4 I downconverted using the camera and I had great results from it...no wavy jaggy nonsense. I am gonna try to swap out my CF files to the "downconverted from cam" DV footage instead and see how it turns out.