OK, made 3 minute test video of my cats, shot in 1080i. when I rendered the files in Vegas to 1080 60i avi, it was perfect. Pay particular attention to the shoestring that dangles at just over halfway. Cincinnati Video Production by Jeff Harper Video (http://cincinnativideo.net/Cats.html)

When rendered to vanilla SD widescreeen avi, lines that occur when during pans are quite severe.

Mpeg2 widescreen for DVD, same thing, of course. I couldn't possibly put this on a DVD for a customer.

Do I have to record in SD to get acceptable quality for DVDs? I was hoping to shoot in DVD and give customers an option later on for Bluray, but at this point it looks pretty hopeless. Suggestions anyone?

this thread helped me :)

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/what-happens-vegas/271329-maximizing-hd-sd-quality.html

Good news - sort of. The problem you describe isn't a problem with the camera; it's with your resizing / conversion. What you are seeing isn't moire, it's interlacing and resizing artifacts. I believe you are using Vegas, is that right? What settings are you using?

Well for what you saw I rendered out to .avi widescreen. When I rendered to HD avi it was perfect, but I think I already said that.

Jim, I've played with it some many ways, I am not sure. I believe I used the properties of the footage for editing, then cropped the clips to 16:9, then rendered to .avi.

I did the same thing for mpeg2 for sd video 16:9 and the results were exactly the same.

David, thanks. but that is a VERY long thread!

What does the footage look like played direct to your HD tv via hdmi, if its ok the problem is with the edit.

I had been in this coversation two years ago or so about HD to SD and I kept preaching at everyone it is better to shoot in SD if the end product was going to be SD. I had among the first FX1000, but never used it for HD. I only bought them for the 16:9 picture.

Now I actually want to shoot HD with my HD camera, and I've forgotten what little I Iearned back then. I want to shoot HD and downconvert so I can upsell BluRay discs later, and so I can have HD samples.

Anyway, I'm going to shoot 720p this evening and see if it converts any better. I don't understand the technicalites of all this, I try and learn what will work and leave the debating to everyone else and forget about it.

Or if anyone can suggest something I can do in post to make it better that would be great too. If I haven't given enough information, let me know.

yeah no joke!! it takes a while to filter out whats there...


-bring the video into Vegas(same settings as the footage, ie. 1080, 24p or whatever it may be)
-Render out a uncompressed AVI
-Open in Vdub
-Use the resize filter (on filter mode use Lanczos3)
-Render it out of Vdub using the Lagarith codec
-then bring it back into vegas and it works great

Thats just what I got out of that monster thread hah

David

Thanks David, I'll try it. Hopefully the resulting files won't be too large, my projects tend to be about 1.5-2 hours.

David, the 3 minute video rendered at default uncompressed it 33GB. an hour would be 600GB. 2 hours would be 1.2GB. I'm not a numbers guy, so I might be wrong.

Any thoughts? Wait, I'm going to render it differently to 1080 60i again, and try that, that should be smaller, more like 6gb

When rendered out to 1080i avi the file is only 16GB, still quite large. I'll put into Virtual Dub and see if I can figure out how it works...thanks David.

I tried to consolidate some of the info in the above linked thread on HD to SD conversion. Personally I think it's just too many steps to take and too cumbersome. Maybe there's a plugin or other method?

Have you tried to film in 1080p and then downconvert?

Nowadays I always shoot in HD. As SD can easily be downsized from HD - but not the other way back! So far did not encounter any problems with it.

I'm thinking what I actually might have seen in my video was the effect of rolling shutter, magnified via conversion. It sure fits the bill.

Jeff, the problem you are seeing is 1080 60i interlacing artifacts, not moire.

I would recommend that you either shoot in 24P progressive mode ( which will eliminate interlacing completely ) or de-interlace your video with Sony Vegas Pro, before down-rezing to SD format.

That SD looks pretty darn good. The shoestring looks like a rolling shutter effect to me. If it was a moire problem I think you would see it on the cats whiskers.

It doesn't show up in the original footage, but must be exacerbated in process.

That isn't rolling shutter; it's interlacing artifacts as a result of resizing. That, I'm one hundred percent sure of.

Great, Jim, just when I thought I had it.

If you can let me have a clip of the swinging thread, I will resize it for you. Important - I need the original untouched clip from the camera. A good way to do it is with Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/ You put a file in the public folder in your Dropbox and copy the link to it and post the link. That will allow it to be downloaded by someone else. I won't be able to do it until later this evening. I am about to leave on a job.

That isn't rolling shutter; it's interlacing

That's what I thought. But hey - maybe we see it because Jeff put interlaced video on a webpage instead of making it progressive..?

The flash video you see looks exactly the same as the avi file for the most part.

What is your Vegas version? For flawless HD footage editing you should use 9 or 10.

I am. As Jim says I'm not resizing it properly.

I have been away all day and will play more with it tonite, or tomorrow. Jim I will send you the clip as soon as I catch my breath and get done with dinner.

Jim, here the clip. Right click on it. http://cincinnativideo.net/PriceList/Cats/00012.MTS

Hi Jeff, Here is the resized MPEG file. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8731209/0012%20resized.mpg

As you can see, it's very clean. NLE's do a bad job of resizing interlaced video. They leave some pretty bad looking interlace artifacts. I used HDLink which is part of Cineform NeoHD. It does a great job as you can see. When you look at it, you are going to have a hard time believing that it's just an SD MPEG video clip. Let me know what you think.

I rendered it out of Vegas as an MPEG file AFTER I resized it with Cineform HDLink. Cineform HDLink doesn't convert to MPEG. It creates a Cineform .avi file.

Hi Jeff, Here is the resized MPEG file. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8731209/0012%20resized.mpg


I rendered it out of Vegas as an MPEG file AFTER I resized it with Cineform HDLink. Cineform HDLink doesn't convert to MPEG. It creates a Cineform .avi file.

So HD Link is a good solution for resizing hd to sd? Have you integrated it in to a SD DVD authoring in DVDA or some other program? The Virtual Dub solution is just too many hoops to jump through.

I've been offline since yesterday, glad to be back.

Thanks for the imput, everyone.

Guy, you were correct, as Jim was.

Jim, that is perfect, VERY nice. HD link did an amazing job. Guy recommended deinterlacing in Vegas before editing, is that enough?

I've been swamped with editing, time is limited, so I haven't studied this as much as I wanted to.

Virtual dub has been recommended also. I will go back and look at those posts to see what was written, as Neo HD is not in the budget at this time.

Does anyone know if Virtual Dub will match the performance of HD Link for resizing?

David, you suggested rendering out in uncompressed avi with Vegas, then resizing in Virtual Dub. Jim's workflow with HD Link is to take source footage and resize first. Wouldn't I want to do that with Virutual Dub? Just spitballing here...trying to clarify my options.

David, never mind, I've found Virtual Dub doesn't seem to work with HD files, so I would have to do as you said, render to uncompressed then resize.

I rendered the video to uncompressed avi, three minute video was 33GB in size. Not very practical. I need to play with this some more.

Brian L, don't have 1080p option.

Hi Jeff,

I downloaded your MTS file, then brought it in to Sony Vegas Pro 9, and then exported directly from Vegas to SD wide-screen format using the MainConcept MPEG-2 CODEC. I also made a few tiny tweaks for color and gamma which is more to my taste.

Overall the whole process took about one minute, and you can judge the quality yourself. This is SD wide-screen with no AVI exports or intermediary video files.

Let me know what you think:

Export Directly from Sony Vegas Pro 9 Timeline (https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0Byy1CMO9ZfmrNjZhYTg2NGYtN2I2Ni00MzE1LWFkNGYtMzkzNjM0NjEwMjhk&hl=en&authkey=CLKM26MI)

For Virtual dub, I believe you have to be in an AVI format for it to work.

I do whole weddings this way, I end up with some pretty big files but if you think about it they are just go between files and you can delete them after you render out of Vdub...

I would love to use NeoHD, but I just haven’t gotten around to buying it because I have Vdub for free... It’s a little more of a pain, but the quality is good, and if I can save money without sacrificing quality then I’m all over it

David, whole weddings? As I mentioned I rendered a 3 minute video and it became 33GB avi...2 hours worth of footage would end up being zillions of terrabytes...can you guide me on this seemingly simple task...I choose:

1.Video for Windows (avi)
2. Uncompressed is what I chose before. Is there a custom setting needed?

Thanks, Jeff

1. Video for windows (AVI)
2. Lagarith Lossless codec


I forgot to tell you I use the Lagarith codec, it makes about 2.5gb per min of video ( I have a 28min video that is 74gb)

Here is a link to the codec
http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

David

Thank you, very kind!

I can't get the coded installed, it "installs" but isn't showing up...grrr.

Jim, that is perfect, VERY nice. HD link did an amazing job. Guy recommended deinterlacing in Vegas before editing, is that enough?

Virtual dub has been recommended also. I will go back and look at those posts to see what was written, as Neo HD is not in the budget at this time.

Does anyone know if Virtual Dub will match the performance of HD Link for resizing?

I agree that you should deinterlace. I do it in HDLink at the same time I resize. Most editors do a ROTTEN job of deinterlacing as well as resizing. There are a number of Virtual Dub filters that do a lot of things including deinterlacing. No doubt some are better than others. HDLink (NeoHD) is so convenient, you may want to consider putting it on a Santa Claus or birthday list. ;-)

Attached is a screenshot of where I select the lagarith codec, just in case I left something out...

Also I run Win 7 64bit... and vegas 10

I would assume that you re-booted after installing, but that would be to easy haha

David

No, I hadn't rebooted, but I just did, and there it is! Do I set the Pixel Aspect Ration to 1.333 as you did in your screen shot, or leave it as square pixels? And then do I wait to deinterlace till I go into Virtual Dub?

Edit: I went back and saw you said use the same settings, so no I wouldn't interlace in first step.

downloaded your video, and here is what I got using my method (I would use the Lagarith to render out of Vdub as well, no sense in losing any data until you have to)

then I dropped in into vegas and rendered out a Mpg2 like I was making a DVD

here is that file

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8051517/Resized.mpg

I did de-interlace in Vdub, I think it does a good job, or at least better than vegas.

here are the settings I use in Vdub :)

David

Jim, Videoguys has HD Link for $399 right now, it looks tempting!

David, I see what you have done and am downloading your file now. As I wait, I want to tell you I rendered out of Vegas into uncompressed avi last night, was not too good, so I'm thinking my settings were wrong, I'm re-rendering now. I tried 1.333 PAR, but it left bars on the side, so I"m back to square pixels, and it's is processing now.

I'll let you know as soon as I see yours. This will be very interesting, to have side by side comparison of this method vs HD Link as Jim did it. Battle of the codecs!

Guy, I'm absolutely red-faced, I had not seen your post and had not know you had re-encoded my clip, thank you, I JUST saw it.

Thanks a ton, I have wanted to see what Vegas could do directly in the right hands. I'll download your version after David's. This is really shaping up into a codec fest.

Well gentlemen, I have seen all three versions: Guy's, Jim's and David's.

Well, they all looked comparable!

It would seem the artifacts from my original edited video two sources: From resizing AND from the interlacing.

Guy, you didn't resize to fill screen complete, correct? But the bars on the side are negligible. So if I had no need to resize and I needed to do a quick edit, your method would work very well: just render out without interlacing, correct?

I have wedding June 25th that is a same day edit, and that method would seem to work best as time will be at a super premium.

For customer DVDs, I would need to use HD Link or David's method for proper resizing, it would seem.

David, I will finish trying out your workflow with Virtual Dub later this morning and report back!

Guy, you didn't resize, but the bars on the side are negligible. So if I had no need to resize and I needed to do a quick edit, your method would work very well: just render out without interlacing, correct?

Actually, if you download the rendered MPEG-2 file you will see that I did resize your HD video down to SD wide-format which displays as 873x480 pixels but is stored in 720x480 format with a pixel aspect of 1.333. If you bring it in to an editor it looks virtually identical to David's and Jim's MPEG-2 file. Same format size, same aspect ratio, same display size.

I find that I can do just about anything with Sony Vegas Pro without having to resort to any intermediary files, you just have to know the editor really well.

You can do a great job in Virtual Dub if done correctly. I used to use it but I switched to HDLink because it is easier and faster. It comes with Cineform which I also use as a near lossless intermediate codec.

Vegas 10 has the cineform codec as well

Earlier versions of Vegas has a basic version of Cineform but Cineform in any 'variety' isn't included with Vegas 10.

Well maybe I’m wrong, wouldn’t be the first time haha

Here is what I was referencing as cineform in vegas 10

oh and I agree with you Jim on it being easier and faster, but I just can't justify the money... sure it takes time but its just render hours, I just leave it to render while I sleep :)

Guy, I only saw your online version, which had tiny bars on the side, and I didn't realize you had resized it....I didn't download it, didn't know I could, I'll go back and download it and check it out.

Thank you!

Jim's right David, I happened to read somewhere on the Cineform website that they stopped shipping Cineform codec with Vegas in 10.