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.

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

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.

Sorry...

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Peter, take a look at this article and see what you think. Progressive scan DVD player - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_scan_DVD_player)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.)

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!

Jeff....

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

Why do you say that?

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!

OK. :)

Then it's a matter of motion -- do you want the movement to appear live, like the 60p footage? If so, then 60i (standard NTSC) is your only option.

If you want it to look like 30p, then you'll have to render it out as 30p BEFORE you render it as NTSC, else it will simply appear as 60Hz motion.

Or, if you want it to have 24p motion, you can render it out that way, too. However, footage shot at 60Hz will often not look so good when converted to 24p simply because whoever was shooting was probably moving the camera too quickly for 24p motion -- you really have to keep the conversion in mind while you're shooting to get a good conversion (and if you are keeping it mind, you're probably shooting 24p anyway).

You may also see similar motion problems if you convert it to 30p, but it's a bit less of a problem.

David, do you have knowledge of what will likely occur with a progressive dvd, without flags?

I'd like to be able to convert my 720 60p footage to 16:9 for DVD and keep it progressive, but from what has been recommended it seems to be a bad idea. Any thoughts?

Just saw your post. My intention was simply to avoid interlacing, not going for a look per se. I shoot four cameras with 720 60p.

Will the DVDs I mailed out work on the customers bluray player? I hope? I rendered out of Vegas using Widescreen DVDA template progressive. God they'll be pissed if it doesn't work.

Here's the thing on that project that I mailed already. I had three types of footage, FX1 HD footage was upper field first natively. Then another cam GH1 was 1080 60i (upper field first) then another was 1080 24p. BTW, this workflow will not have to be repeated, the camera situation was an anomaly, thank God.

When I converted it all with Cineform to interlaced it flickered badly, it was no good. So I re-converted it all to progressive 16:9 and it looked great.

I've got to go but will look for any feedback when I return.

You really only have two options for standard DVD -- 24p and NTSC. (I'm not considering PAL at all here.)

24p can be on the disc native; it will have the flags. It can't be on the DVD without the flags, so DVD Architect will always encode it that way. But if you use the DVD Architect 24p template, flags will be in the file you render from Vegas.

NTSC doesn't need flags. It's just played straight out.

You cannot have 60p on a DVD; it must be NTSC. For all intents and purposes it will appear identical to the original 60p footage, just at SD resolution, but it will actually be 60i. But the motion will be the same.

30p will be encoded within a 60i stream. It will still appear to the eye as 30p. Flags are unnecessary. But there's no reason to do this unless you want the look of 30p.

Will the DVDs I mailed out work on the customers bluray player? I hope? I rendered out of Vegas using Widescreen DVDA template progressive. God they'll be pissed if it doesn't work.

Any DVD that you author with DVD Architect will play on a Blu-ray player (unless there's a media issue with burned DVD-Rs, which happens now and then -- but that's because of the physical disc, not the video).

Ahhh,

" You cannot have 60p on a DVD; it must be NTSC. For all intents and purposes it will appear identical to the original 60p footage, just at SD resolution, but it will actually be 60i. But the motion will be the same.

30p will be encoded within a 60i stream. It will still appear to the eye as 30p. Flags are unnecessary. But there's no reason to do this unless you want the look of 30p."

I wrote this many months ago and I was jumped on about it, I reckon you write much more clearly than I do!!!



thank you for clearifying this for others!!

David...

I don't want to drag this post any farther..
Jeff seems to have his questions answered...I just got confused by the statement "My original footage was progressive, and after interlacing it it just didn't look so hot, so I went with progressive".

I was trying to convey the message that shooting either progressive on interlaced is fine. As far playback is concerned, the DVD ouput is always in fields...

Interlaced downconverts, progressive outputs to the TV, and progressive encoding are all separate issues.
They have nothing to do with the native ouptut of a DVD disk..I was simply hoping that Jeff didn't pin his hopes on progressive scan DVD players.

DVD's can have progressive images on them (like 24P material), but the DVD players will always ouput them as fields..
Yes, Jeff is right. There are players that output progressively, and up-convert, but this is separate issue, in that the DVD player reassembles information to the display..It has nothing to do with the original progressive footage on the DVD itself..(since i've been away from the DVD community for a while, this could be an outdated statement).
The only reason you have the option to encode progressively on a stream, is to allow the encoder to do ZigZag scanning, rather than Alternate scanning.
Encoding progressive material allows for better allotment of bitrates to the image..

The header in every Mpeg stream has information on how to output these fields. BFF and TFF.

The only native progressive scan coming off of a disc, is 1280x720P...

As far as downconverting goes, and this should be a sticky...
HD interlaced material, unless properly Bob deinterlaced, resized, and rewoven back, will never produce a sharp enough image IMHO.
HD progressive material always look good resized, since it's just a simple bicubic resize.

And this is why progressive HD material always looks better donwconverted.
Not because the DVD player supports a progressive scan...

Some authoring software can force 720p60 into an otherwise standard DVD structure. The resulting disk will not play on a regular DVD player; however, it will play on Toshiba HD-DVD players and with VLC on a computer.

For a standards complaint DVD transcode 720p60 to 480p30 with 2:2 pulldown flags. The advantage of 30p with flags as opposed to 60i is better encoding efficiency and higher spatial resolution on fully progressive systems such as LCD monitors. You can verify what actually went on the DVD by checking the VOB files with mediainfo. Mediainfo will detect progressive files flagged for 60i compatibility with the seemingly contradictory lines:

Scan type : Progressive
Scan order : Top Field First

Note that Bottom Field First would also be okay.

Peter, if you meant that whole pictures are not output all at once, then yes . . . they are "scanned" line-by-line. Just wanted to clarify whether you meant output is always interlaced.

The advantage of 30p with flags as opposed to 60i is better encoding efficiency and higher spatial resolution on fully progressive systems such as LCD monitors.

There's no option to do that from Vegas, though.

In any case, if you have software with the option, do keep in mind that the conversion to 30p *will* change the motion signature of the footage and it will no longer look "live." If that's what you want, then fine, but if you want to keep the "live" look, you shouldn't do 30p.

So, make the choice based on what you want the footage to look like.

Peter, I am not done with this issue, yet, unfortunately.

Eric, I am running 4 cameras, sometime 5. So I must encode my 720 60p footage for editing purposes, if for no other reason. Besides that, it's going to DVD so at some point it must be made DVD compliant at some stage in this process.

HD Link, which I have, can convert it to 1280 X 720 60p AVI or 480 60p, or 480 60i, but not 30i or 30p. It doesn't offer a way to change the frame rate.

When I choose 480 60i the footage flickers. It sucks. It's happening on my timline right now.

But if I choose 480p in Cineform (HD Link) for my conversion there is no way, that I can see, to add pulldown flags in Vegas when it's time to render later.

So what to do with 480 60p footage in Vegas? Can anyone spell it out for me? If I'm missing something I do apologize, but this is driving me nuts.

There's no standard for 480/60p. It technically doesn't exist. In 480, there's only 60i, 24p, and 30p.

You can create an uncompressed 480/60p AVI, but there's no delivery format (MPEG, DV, etc.) which carries it as a standard, so you can't make a playable DVD with 60p. Any authoring sofware will convert it to 60i.

It probably flickers because the detail is too high. Try a slight vertical blur, like 0.002 or around there.

David, so when I rendered out 480p in my last project and put it into DVDA, you're saying it probably it converted it to 480i?

Thing is, there was no re-encoding at all in DVDA, it seemed to be compliant as it was.

My DVD and Bluray players are all dead and I'm going to buy a new Bluray player today or tomorrow. I need to buy a DVD player though to test these discs. That's what I really need to do.

Here are the steps I've been told will work for anyone else who needs to edit 720 60p for SD 16:9 DVD delivery.

1. Start a new project using 16:9 DVD and 30p settings. Be sure to change interlaced to progressive. In other works field order should be "none", not upper or lower field first.

2. Bring footage into edting program, and if you want to, then crop the footage to fill the screen. When you first bring it in it will have black bars on the sides, cropping will fix that. This is optional and up to you.

3. Edit footage

4. Render out to 16:9 for DVD, settings should be 30p and progressive just as the project settings are. Make sure to render progressive not interlaced, to match your project settings.

Done. If this sound wrong to anyone, please offer feedback. No pulldown flags needed for 16:9 SD 30p right?

Yes. You are correct.
Pulldown flags are only needed if you're encoding 24F footage. Unless you're shooting and editing film framerates, it's a no go..

Good luck!!!

Peter, I really appreciate yours and David's (and anyone else's whom I'm forgetting. I actually have been bouncing back and forth between this thread and and a plea for help in the Cineform Showcase. Same problem, but I needed to also run this by there since I was using Cineform and was confused.

Thank God this is over.

Addition to the settings that were previously recommend: for Bluray your timeline should be 59.94, not 30.