ive done all the methods, im done. if anyone is very happy with their results can you post an mpeg that i can import into dvdsp and burn so i can see what your seeing. im dying to see good ex1 sd downconvert

im starting to think the sd conversion problem is related to he cinealta technology. i dont think people using other hd cams are having the same problem.

One thing you need to remember is that the regular HDV resolution of 1440 is twice that of SD's 720. Thus a simple divide by two or drop every second pixel resize works beautifully when downrezzing to SD. With 1920, you have to do a more complex scaling algorythm which may be beyond what your NLE can do. If you are doing a project that is going to be mainly distributed in SD, you might want to try the 1440 x 1080 mode instead for a smoother simpler downrez.

???

So, let me get this straight, if you have a high quality HD image it's more apt to create poor SD-DVDs?

Hollywood certainly is not shooting movies in SD.

One thing you need to remember is that the regular HDV resolution of 1440 is twice that of SD's 720. Thus a simple divide by two or drop every second pixel resize works beautifully when downrezzing to SD. With 1920, you have to do a more complex scaling algorythm which may be beyond what your NLE can do. If you are doing a project that is going to be mainly distributed in SD, you might want to try the 1440 x 1080 mode instead for a smoother simpler downrez.

thats the format im using, actually i tested it with every format the ex1 can shoot, they are all bad

???

So, let me get this straight, if you have a high quality HD image it's more apt to create poor SD-DVDs?

Hollywood certainly is not shooting movies in SD.

im all ears? bottom line every sd dvd test from the ex1 ive done has landed in the trash and i would never show client the dvd. im dying for someone to show me a way, a "real" way. ive heard over and over for years that hd downconverts look better than original sd, then i hear other say the opposite. dont know what to believe, all that i know is my ex1 downconverted via fcp or compressor or the cam itself is horrible.

I think the down-convert out of the cam looks great. My current workflow is edit and then convert final sequence to HDV and run that back to cam. Then down-convert and dub via the component connection from the cam.

if anyone out there feels strongly about how good their ex1 clips downconverted to sd looks, i beg you to post a small m2v file so i can throw in dvdsp and burn a dvd to see it. thats the only thing i can think of, some say its horrible, some say it beautiful, im ready to jump out a window

preferably 60i id love to see interlaced footage
thank you in advance

Although i use the Sony Z1 i have the same problem as you.
If you find the answer let me know?

Simon

I've had no problems getting great SD DVDs from any of the HDV cameras or my EX1. I do use Vegas. Just edit the footage and render to mpeg-2, need to watch a few project settings to avoid gruesome dog teeth sized interlace artifacts and may need to wrangle resolution to avoid line twitter but these I learned how to wrangle years ago working with HiRes stills
Perhaps if you guys could explicitly state what's wrong with your results some of us from the dark side could give you some tips. This should not be hard, some of the convoluted workflows I've read people going through to get this simple job done stagger me.

I know this is an EX1 topic but you might be able to help Bob.
Recording HD, downconvert via camera to Vegas. Footage has lost sharpness, it all looks low res cheap and nasty. From what i'm reading in the Ex1 fourm it seems the same with the Z1 camera.

I have gone the other way, capture HD to Vegas render out to mpeg-2 using 2 pass render, the rendered footage is low res.
Next step is to record SD in camera and see what happens.

Any info on your work flow i would like to hear?

Simon

Hi Simon.
you're right, this issue is nothing specific to the EX1. It wouldn't matter if the footage was from a F900, A1 or HV20, downconverting HD to SD is the core issue. Some cameras deliver higher resolution, especially in progressive and that can mean problems only surface with those cameras.

In Vegas I just open a 50i SD 16:9 project. You MUST specify a de-interlace method in the project. Take you pick, I use Blend Fields however if you have a lot of fast motion then Interpolate may work better.

I then edit as normal and render at Best to mpeg-2 Widescreen and author in DVDA 4.5. I render audio separately. Choose audio as ac3 or PCM as you see fit and bitrates etc for mpeg-2 just as I would for a SD project. This process delivers all of the chroma samples available to the MC encoder, something you miss using in-camera downconversion. This isn't such a big deal as PAL's 4:2:0 DV sampling is very close to mpeg-2's 4:2:0. It is a big deal if you're working in NTSC.

Now comes the tricky bit although with the Z1 you probably will not have an issue. You may get too much resolution in your SD! No 50i SD camera will deliver 576 lines of res, by design. In fact 576p is considered HD by our broadcasting standards. Too much vertical res and you get line twitter and possibly aliasing. So you may need to reduce vertical res using the Median or Gaussian Blur FX. Apply only in the vertical direction and just enough, .001 to .003 should do it. Now you final SD may also benefit from a little edge enhancement. Yeah I know it sounds daft to reduce resolution and then try to make it look sharper. Welcome to the mysteries of interlaced video.

Just where in the chain you add the edge enhancement is very important, it needs to be done after downconversion, not before or the aliasing / twitter problem will rear its head. See my post here:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=839498&postcount=51
about how to control where in the chain Vegas's FX work. Monitoring on a CRT while you work is always helpful too. Oftenly HDV seems to need a little tweaking with CC to get the best out of it.

I have shot loads of EX1 stuff that has been downconverted to DV for tx and after that has been burned onto DVD and it looks great.

Adam,

Have you tried what it suggested here:
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=116485

I've had no problems getting great SD DVDs from any of the HDV cameras or my EX1. I do use Vegas. Just edit the footage and render to mpeg-2, need to watch a few project settings to avoid gruesome dog teeth sized interlace artifacts and may need to wrangle resolution to avoid line twitter but these I learned how to wrangle years ago working with HiRes stills
Perhaps if you guys could explicitly state what's wrong with your results some of us from the dark side could give you some tips. This should not be hard, some of the convoluted workflows I've read people going through to get this simple job done stagger me.

ive tried them all in every format the ex1 shoots. can you post a 30sec m2v of 60i footage and i will burn a dvd and see what your seeing. this is the only way i can see what your seeing. thank you in advance if your willing to do this, it would be groundbreaking to me

Adam,

Have you tried what it suggested here:
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=116485

i will try it tomorrow when i have cam in hand but if find it redicualous that we have to set the cam up a certain way so our sd dvd's look good. we shouldnt have to adjust the cam. the problem here is that your saying its good enough, most people say, pretty good, okay, not bad, good enough, does anyone out there say great or better than originally shot sd? i let you know what i think, thnks

I have shot loads of EX1 stuff that has been downconverted to DV for tx and after that has been burned onto DVD and it looks great.

how was it downconverted do you know, im hoping someone has a recipe that "really" works.

update :

i just compressed basic default dvd 90 setting in compressor to make an m2v and burned it in toast as opposed to dvdsp and it looks awesome, im running more dvdsp tests, there might be something wrong with my dvdsp, hopefully. this makes me happy, ill keep you posted

Screens from Liquid 7.2 and EYEON Fusion HD to SD (PAL)
In Liquid usable unsharp mask also
Render to Uncompress and export to m2v
Most important thing - selection resize filter and matrix for filtration

http://www.dvcampro.ru/video/LiquidDownconvert2_copy.jpg
http://www.dvcampro.ru/video/LiquidDownconvert_copy.jpg
http://www.dvcampro.ru/video/DFdownconvert_copy.jpg

Screens from Liquid 7.2 and EYEON Fusion HD to SD (PAL)
In Liquid usable unsharp mask also
Render to Uncompress and export to m2v
Most important thing - selection resize filter and matrix for filtration

http://www.dvcampro.ru/video/LiquidDownconvert2_copy.jpg
http://www.dvcampro.ru/video/LiquidDownconvert_copy.jpg
http://www.dvcampro.ru/video/DFdownconvert_copy.jpg

man i wish i could implement this but im on fcp on mac, the settings are nothing like this.

I wonder why this topic has not come up before?

I am reading a lot about this on the Canopus forums as well.

HDV cameras have been out for a few years now and the general concensus was that SD DVDs looked better shot on HD sources.

Why the change?

The change is become someone 'noticed', and then others looked for it saw it too. It's apparent in most HD (or HDV) footage downressed to SD at some point, with some shots.

This is a problem only if you make it a problem.

This is one of those things no one saw before because they weren't looking for it. Like, vignetting wasn't noticed till it was pointed out, or Chromatic Aberration, or 1440 vs 1920 resolution, or going back far enough, 4:2:0 vs 4:2:2. Now that people can afford near 1000 lines of resolution, now they're seeing something the pro-pros have seen for years.

I'm surprised that the EX1's holy grail of resolution seems to be being treated as a fault!

This all said, shooting interlaced with a camera with this kind of resolution and then wishing to output SD is asking for trouble, IMO. I'd shoot progressive.

Grigory,

I too am getting very good results using Liquid 7.2. In fact I didn't even know there was an issue with downconvert until I read this thread. Liquid is a very nice editor - a shame that it is poorly supported by Avid.

Also shooting 1920x1080 -- not EX1 -- and the key to avoiding aliasing (and line-twitter) is to filter the HD to match the bandwidth of SD.

Alas, each NLE has a different set of filters that could be used. And, there are dozens of math that can be used to implement any single filter.

With Apple products you have access to a FILTER in the QT dialog box. I use BLUR = 2 or = 3, and it works. But, this is a crude way of softening edges.

Adding to the problem -- interlace inherently has line twitter. And, Sony in the past has under low-pass filtered it's CCD output so as to increase rez. measures. This, of course, allows aliasing to appear in HD recordings. So you can see aliasing in HD. And, it gets passed down to SD. Which adds it own. (Then one plays back SD DVDs on an HDTV it can look bad.)

The reason high-end HD cameras cost so much is because they have far more sophisticated amplifiers and filters. So, one expects them to record a very clean image.

He's using Unsharp Mask. Of course that'll fix it and the cost of blurring the lines. You can certainly duplicate your sequence and apply a very slight blur in one direction. Compressor doesn't seem to have an equivalent filter.

The concern people have is that they DO NOT want to lose resolution to solve the issue which I'm not sure Grigory's workflow is really a fix. It seem more of a band aid that we are trying to avoid.

man i wish i could implement this but im on fcp on mac, the settings are nothing like this.

okay im starting to get the down convert to look acceptable on tube tvs (not as good as my sony dsr390 sd dvcam) but on lcd hdtv, especially the bigger ones, man sd still looks like crap, tube sd blows the doors of sd on hdtv, am i missing something or are we just screwed till all our clients have bluray players?

my dsr390 on lcd looks better than my ex1 or fx1 downconvrt sd on lcd

these are the screens ive tested.

sony bravia 40" 1080p HDTV
Westinghouse 32" 720p HDTV
LG 20" 720p HDTV

the picture on all tests looks the best on the LG ($400 tv) - the bravia surprisingly looked the worse (and yes i have the settings on the dvd player and tv set optimal - actually spent 8 hrs tweaking settings to make sure).
i guess the big tvs will never play sd well (except for hollywood movies). does anyone have 30 second m2v's they could link (if happy with your encodes on lcd) so i can burn and see for myself?

I'm uploading some files to a web server for people to play around with.

One is a .m2t file, set up as a 23.976P 16x9 SD MPEG2 render from original 1920x1080 footage. I'm also including a .jpg screen grab showing the settings I used in Premiere Pro. Another is an H.264 Blu-Ray file @ 1920x1080, so you can see how the original HD looks.

The third is the same footage, except instead of being rendered in Premiere Pro, I took into After Effects, scaled it, and then created my MPEG file. I also experimented with After Effects color space conversions, but didn't notice a difference using that. This render has no effects applied, just scaling.

The footage from multiple sources: After Effects compositions (created from a client-supplied PDF file with vector graphics), EX1 video, and even two 8MP stills shot on a Canon Digital Rebel XT. The reason I sent you mixed footage is so you can see the issues of resolution and scaling aren't EX1 issues, they're issues inherent to the limited resolution of SD.

You'll see that the SD down-res looks like... well... SD. When you're taking a 720x480px image and spreading it across 42" or more of LCD screen, it's not going to look like HD. My clients have been happy with the output of our EX1 so far.

Just for comparison's sake, the results I'm getting from my MPEG2 renders are almost identical to results achieved using the hardware scaler built into my Matrxo Axio system.

After Effects scaling does seem to create better results (marginally) than Adobe Media Encoder. I'm not sure if the additional hassle and rendering time is worth it for most projects.

I haven't shot a whole lot of stuff interlaced. Maybe someone else can upload some of that.

Footage can be downloaded from:

http://www.actvonline.com/HD_SD_Test_Files.zip

I don't know how long I can leave the footage up. If it starts getting a lot of hits and eating into our bandwidth (the file is 214MB), I'll have to take it down.

Please let everyone know how these compare to your own renders. Any chance you can post some files from your workflow for people to look at?

@Jon
I think the AfterEffects Resize looks much worse than the one made with your hardware.

But the hardware resize has the wrong aspect ratio and doesn't use the full resolution.
It would look even better if it has the right A/R.

The HD-source (which I had to remux to an avi to work with) looks stunning :)



Edit: compared them again.
The hardware encoded one has the right A/R (but black boarder on the sides) and has many artifacts...

regards Dennis

@Jon:

I did a convertion myself.
It looks incredible good!

I used Virtualdubs' smart resizer with avisynth and Hcenc for M2V encoding.


I will upload the resulting file (with proper pulldown) in a few minutes.
If anyone is interested then I will do a howto.


regards Dennis

I'm curious to see how it compares to Premiere Pro or After Effects.

Looking forward to it!

[QUOTE=Adam Forgione;840092]okay im starting to get the down convert to
the picture on all tests looks the best on the LG ($400 tv) - the bravia surprisingly looked the worse QUOTE]

The Bravia line is known for its soft upscaling. I picked up the 52" 1080p at a good price just as stores were clearing their inventory in August 2007 for the new models. Sony announced some new models in fall 2007 (some have been in stores for a couple of months), but I haven't confirmed if they are any better at upscaling. I think you have to rely on your DVD player to upscale for the Bravia.

Sooo, here's the link.
http://rapidshare.com/files/98564166/WithSmartresize_Hcenc.m2v.html

sd dvd from ex1 : not horrible ;)


regards Dennis

I just downloaded some clips around here (Renaissance festival, Woods, Aquarium and some others). I loaded them onto my thumb drive and plugged it into my XBox 360 (a DVD-R also works equally as well.)

Viewing them on a 32" Sony Trinitron TV, the SD quality of the EX1 is absolutely gorgeous! Lifelike colors...sharp resolution. It easily matches HD-originated footage from my Korn: Live from the Other Side DVD (the only other DVD I've tested so far...I recently purchased the system and haven't messed around with it much).

I've also viewed the aquarium footage on a 57" HDTV (projection) and it looks ALMOST as good as broadcast Discovery Channel stuff. And that's coming from files made for the internet...I wonder how it'd look at higher bitrates? This camera is absolutely amazing at its price point.

From that I extract that it is the software encoders that are not doing proper downconversion. If the XBox can handle it well in realtime downconversion then it's either the software you're using is poo (I always hated Compressor which I know a lot of you are using...it never looked as good as my Canopus Procoder conversions) or you're not using the proper settings to get good footage. If I knew what techniques Microsoft used in their Windows Media/Quicktime H264 downconversion schematics I'd tell you! But be rest assured it is not a waste of time to shoot in HD with this camera. As another user said earlier we are in a transitional period with all this HD stuff and it's an issue that has yet to be ironed out.

I'd like to say more but I'm going back downstairs to watch that lovely EX1 footage again!

Adam, Compressor 3 is a major improvement over previous versions. It's ability to down convert, change frame rates, etc. is quite good in most respects. The one area I have issue with is line twitter on certain shoots which is likely due to the source resolution and that it's not being intelligently blurred (or equivalent).

I've also done test encodes in Episode Pro which, according to most reviews is competitive with Procoder if not Rhozet. I can the same results with Episode although I continue to experiment. Episode Pro is far more "tweakable" than Compressor. Episode Pro (and it's network version, Engine) are broadcast level apps. I've used it to create MPEG2 Program and Transport streams for broadcast and it does an excellent job.

I do think software compression apps in general probably have not been optimized to handle some aspects of HD to SD downconversions.

Keep in mind that, in my experience, there is only certain shots that Compressor and apparently Episode Pro are not handling. Most look great. It's thin horizontal lines that twitter when the picture moves up/down. The same shots look fine stationary.

I loaded them onto my thumb drive and plugged it into my XBox 360...
Viewing them on a 32" Sony Trinitron TV, the SD quality of the EX1 is absolutely gorgeous! Lifelike colors...sharp resolution. It easily matches HD-originated footage from my Korn:

I wonder if you record Xbox 360 HD footage through RGB out into a DVD recorder and then compare the mpeg2 files from the software conversions mentioned how it will compare.

Dennis can you give me more details on your latest workflow, I also have a cinema craft encoder will this be better or worse than HCenc? It has been a while since I used it so I am very rusty in that sort of workflow.

Dennis can you give me more details on your latest workflow, I also have a cinema craft encoder will this be better or worse than HCenc? It has been a while since I used it so I am very rusty in that sort of workflow.

You can resize the m2v or m2t files with Virtualdubmod + smartresize.
The resulting .avi file can be encoded with cce of course.

But I don't know whether it looks better or worse than Hcenc.
Hcenc is free. It does offer better quality than squeeze (sharp with artifacts) or even procoder (very soft).


regards Dennis

Using virtualdub resize filter:
set to Lanzos
Tick the "Interlaced" button
Even if your footage is progressive. It seems counter-intuitive, but trust me on this 'til you try it.

Just burned a SD DVD with the mv2 file Dennis shared, using DVD Studio Pro from FCS2 - looks like HD footage even when played back on a SD 4:3 50" TV... albeit letterboxed!

Using virtualdub resize filter:
set to Lanzos
Tick the "Interlaced" button
Even if your footage is progressive. It seems counter-intuitive, but trust me on this 'til you try it.

Virtualdubmod is my favourite.
Contains nice filters, easy interface and is open-source.
I'll try your suggestion later.
(have you seen the .m2v file? created with virtualdubmod and hcenc?)


regards Dennis

I'll try your suggestion later.
regards Dennis



UGLY!!!
Looks like a very bad deinterlaced video with this filter applied (tested with HDV 25f Canon A1).


regards Dennis

weird...works beautifully for me. but I shoot real progressive, no faux.
could it be that frame mode on the canon?

It looks very unnatural even with EX1 25p 1920x1080 material.
Horizontal lines get stretched and are flickering during pans.


regards Dennis

@Dennis:

Thanks for posting that clip! I would agree that it looks better than either of the SD clips I rendered. (At least on my 42" LCD).

I do notice some differences in color... I haven't yet figured out which looks closer to the original HD. My grading was crap, as well, which certainly didn't help things.

I still think that my AVI scaled in After Effects (before being exported as MPEG via Adobe Media Encoder), looks the best. However, if I can't maintain that quality across the workflow onto DVD, your solution may be best.

There really are only two places where the process can go wrong:

1. Scaling - it seems that Premiere Pro, AE and VirtualDub generate similar results, with VirtualDub maintaining the highest quality.

2. MPEG encoding - Here is seems that your process beats Adobe Media Encoder. Kind of frustrating, given what CS3 costs compared to what these other tools cost... :-)

@Adam... did you get a chance to test the files that have been provided to you, per your request?

I do notice some differences in color... I haven't yet figured out which looks closer to the original HD. My grading was crap, as well, which certainly didn't help things.

I don't know wether I should downgrade color to BT.601 or not, but it looks different then...


I still think that my AVI scaled in After Effects (before being exported as MPEG via Adobe Media Encoder), looks the best. However, if I can't maintain that quality across the workflow onto DVD, your solution may be best.
AEs (at least V.7) scaler is much worse compared to smartresize filter. Tried Avid Liquid and Procoder 3, too, but the results were pretty bad - esspecially the graphics in the beginning ;)



There really are only two places where the process can go wrong:

1. Scaling - it seems that Premiere Pro, AE and VirtualDub generate similar results, with VirtualDub maintaining the highest quality.
I don't know about Premiere (the video you provided scaled with Premiere? was not usable in my opinion.)


2. MPEG encoding - Here is seems that your process beats Adobe Media Encoder. Kind of frustrating, given what CS3 costs compared to what these other tools cost... :-)

Hcenc is free, fast and produces very clean video.
The .m2v file didn't look much worse compared to the uncompressed avi I created with Virtualdubmod.


regards Dennis

This is a repost from the canopus forum dealing with this subject. It is a very hot topic there as well. It is a step by step that starts with a Canopus HQ avi file as the source. Any NLE high quality barely compressed file should work as the input file to this process! It uses free tools for conversion and has had great feedback so far!

Mark

http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5141

I tried doing a REC709 to REC601 conversion., Looks pretty bad...greens get really juiced...almost neon in appearance.

I along with many of you have not yet been satisfied with SD downconverts. HD is incredible. I will be spending more time soon to figure this out. I am sure there is a formula that works. A combining of a certain shooting format with a method of downconvert.... But...

I am about to start shooting a project today. The final project will be PAL broadcast via Satellite. If you had to reccomend a shooting format, what would it be? I am leaning to 720/25p HQ. I am wondering if this will work. Before I had my 2 EX1's I had three HVX cameras. I always shot 720/24p and was pleased. I even converted this to PAL SD and was pleased. (It was a pain, but I had a system that worked) I am wondering is part of the problem is going from 1080 down to 480. Anyway, let me know if any of you have reccomendations on what format to shoot in a few hours.

Guys, I've been following this thread with great interest. Last year I had similar problems with the V1E line twitter; I spent a couple of months before - "with a little help from my friends" - I definitely concluded the problems were all connected with the display devices/connections I was using. And not the sharpness, as Sony's own support was suggesting!

Ever since, neither my HD nor SD DVD Vegas projects, basing on the V1E recordings, needed any special treatment...

Same with the EX1 now: I am shooting HQ 1080/25p (mixed sometimes with 720p for over/under cranking); I'm editing in Vegas, rendering out without any unsharp masks, Gaussian blurs or alike, and burning two versions of disks (BD or SD DVD). No problems - and certainly not anything I could call "awful", as in the title of this thread. A bit of flickering here and there perhaps - but no worse than what I can see in Discovery HD broadcast!

Just keep proportions...

Has anyone tried 1080/25p with different shutter angles ? If so what are you findings ?
Or are people sticking with "speed" and shutter off ?

Paul.

Has anyone tried 1080/25p with different shutter angles ? If so what are you findings ?
Or are people sticking with "speed" and shutter off ?

Paul.

Paul;

With 24p (or 25p in our area) shooting, the 180 degrees shutter is traditionally associated with the "film look". However, my experience is that it's OK to go waaaay up with the shutter speed - even as high as 1/250th - because otherwise you would need additional ND filters to keep iris open above f/8, which in my opinion is the diffraction-imposed limit.

Shutter off (i.e. 360 deg shutter) you may want to use in low-light conditions, to get that one stop of exposure more than you'd be able to use with 50i without introducing too much of the motion blur.

Speaking of motion blur: this is the only factor, in general, affected by the shutter speed. The shutter does NOT have any influence on the line twitter/flicker that have been the main subjects of this thread.