While people have not generally been too happy with the DV mode of the HD-1/HD-10, I have been looking for a good way to resample HD to SD. That way I can have my HD masters, as well as SD when it is not possible to display HD.

For some time the Tsunami MPG encoder (TMPGEnc) has been my favorite. I have been trying to get a good quality cropped NTSC of my 720P stuff, and was pleasantly surprised to find the Tsunami encoder 2.5 will accept m2t files and render them to the MPG format of your choice. Just choose ALL FILE TYPES from the drop down, and open your m2t file.

Set your favorite DVD parameters (I like constant quality 2000 to 8000 Kb per second). I used a quality of 75 for my tests, which gave me excellent quality at about 2 GB per hour.

Having already defined the output at 720 by 480, go to the ADVANCED tab, and choose CENTER (CUSTOM SIZE) under the VIDEO ARRANGE METHOD. Use 720 by 352 for letterbox, or 962 by 480 for cropped. You could even choose something in between and do a little of each.

I hope you find this useful.

Here is the link for an MPG file with various lighting conditions and motion. This meets DVD criteria, with over two hours going on a DVD. Right click on the link, and choose SAVE TARGET AS... You can then use an MPG player such as Elecard or VLC player to view the file. It's over 14 MByte, so it will take forever on dial-up.

http://www.videosaurus.com/~kennett/shtmpgtst.mpg

Thanks to Andres Lucero for the link.

Yet again TMPGec is KIng!!

I've always used this above even CCE (sorry) its just has more options and functions..

Thumps up for TMPgenc!

Great footage! No one can tell me that standard DV is better than HD10u footage...it's better when downconverted.

Hey, thanks for posting the clip...appreciate it! I love seeing footage from the HD10u...especially belly dancers!

Murph

I don't have a MPEG2 version of TMPGENC, but there should be a way to create anamorphic content for DVD. Rather than cropping the image to 720x480 in 4:3, or lettterboxing to 720x352, use all the pixels in 720x480 16:9. This results in the best image for all playback devices, but particular progressive scan players outputting to 480p plasma screens.

However, this point about the quality of the downconverts is absolutely true. Dave, very nice footage, have any you would like to donate? We are always doing tradeshows yet we haven't had time to collect decent footage.

David - Anamorphic is easy. Tell the camera you have a 16:9 display, and the analog outs will give you anamorphic. The included software can also output anamorphic MPG.

The problem is - if you have a 16:9 display, its probably HD - and I'd really like to show HD on it. And I HATE distorted images!

I use thinking of use the TMPGENC software to encoding anamorphic MPEG for DVD. We already do all on this within Aspect HD, so I was just pointing out that formatting for anormorphic DVD is the best for all display devices 4:3, 16:9, progressive or interlaced.

Vegas Video also does a good job of reformating. I also got some interesting results by custom resizing the video so that it fits just INSIDE the safety borders of a 16/9 SD image. so you see the entire image out to the edges. It almost looked sharper that way on my HDTV.

Also, another interesting observation was that video from the GRHD1U almost looked better than the HD10 when down-sized. The extra edge enhancement actually looked good, and seemed to help the image to hold together better in SD.

Oh David forgot to ask last time


How many passes did you do?

PS the footage looked good, the palm tree? looked great, and the surfer bit too looked stunning,

Also any color correction?

please get back to us.


(also not being picky, but how you tried the TMPgencs noise filters to clean out the night shot of the ocean)

The Tsunami encoder CQ mode is a one pass process. There has been no processing to any of the shots - just encoding.