The quest for HDV->DVD :(
 

Hey all.

Found a million threads on this, but seems like none contained an answer. So my story is the usual - I'll keep it short. Captured HDV via HDVSplit, edited in Premiere (tried both CS3 and CS4) and tried to export to a DVD format. First tried the *.m2v export, then straight to Encore. CS4 is slightly better then CS3, but still not good. At this point, I'm at a loss. I can't spend much more money, the last option I'll try tonight will be Sony Vegas.

Has anyone been able to achieve a good HDV->DVD conversion in a simple way?

Thanks in Advance.

*shrug*

I use Sony Vegas. Y'all are making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be.

I captured AVCHD, edited in Vegas, output to uncompressed AVI (though this'll work for .m2t - both as input and as output - as well)

The free route would be to use DVDFlick, which will do the conversion automatically (though you'll have to make sure that the project and video aspect ratios match - so create and mount some ISOs to check before burning your master.) Paid route would be DVD Architect, which comes with Sony Vegas Pro... though I think Sony's more consumer-based DVD authoring software will come in handy as well.

Basically, do the editing in the NLE, let the authoring software worry about the conversion to .m2v.

This is the kind of answer I'm looking for. I will give Vegas a try tonight - if it doesn't produce a good quality DVD, I may have to got the "complicated" route.

Good Luck
 

I'm hearing the same thing as Brian is saying about making it overcomplicated... I've been about 3 months, from FCE 4 to FCP 6 and still haven't gotten a satisfactory output. A lot of my issue has been the fact its HDV 60p. There are way too many options with only simple differences in each. My advice is trial and error and trust me ... I've been there.

Good luck ... I'm getting pretty close to getting something to DVD. I shot using JVC HD200U and using FCP, Compressor and DVD Studio Pro to get to disc. When I get it done ... I'll try to remember to post my workflow.

Some good advice I can give you is to trust Tim Dashwood's contributions. This guy knows his stuff!

I'm with Bryan on this one - my experience personally and reading from others is that the hoop jumping that has to take place when using any other NLE besides Vegas is a major time and money waster.

I shoot with a pair of SONY HC7's, edit now with Cineform NEO Scene AVI's and then I use a free script from VASST called DVD Prep in Vegas Pro 8. Run the script, it automatically creates the necessary mpg and AC-3 file right from the Vegas timeline - I then import into DVDA and burn as widescreen DVD and it looks great - highly recommended.

If I need an up to 30 minute bluray disc, I can also burn right from the timeline to a standard DVD and it plays great in a SONY PS3 - I have yet to find a less is more solution than Vegas Pro for my editing needs.

I'm going to have to differ with your somewhat myopic view. I'll grant you that Vegas is a quality product that many use every day with great results. But there are needs where other products may better fill the bill. Or, there are people who have developed uncomplicated and functional workflows that others may not have found. Like they say, different strokes...

To the OP's question, I'm not sure exactly what your issue is. I go from HDV to BD with no issues and without excess hoop jumping. You seem to be following conventional workflows. Is it the output quality that you're not happy with?

Procoder does a very good job, and it works as a plugin in Premiere Pro, no need to render separately. Handles interlacing and field order automatically, has filter for color standard conversion. No mice teeth, no blurry video. Fast, and affordable too at $0.5K.

Slightly better is the Virtualdub method but that takes so much work, it's not worth it - unless you work with exceptionally high quality source material, much higher than HDV.

The OP is asking about HDV to (SD) DVD, not to BD.

My issue was is that using PPCS3/4 to convert HDV to Widescreen SD looked really bad on my DVD player. I bought an HDV camera with the plan that I'll work in HD but for now output in SD and when the rest of the world has a BluRay player, I'll re-render the projects in HD. I've tried several setting in PPRO3/4 and have not gotten a satisfactory result.

Following advice in this thread, I downloaded trials for Vegas and DVD architect. The result is excellent. It's no HD, but a very decent SD conversion, close to what I was getting with my former VX2100.

It's a shame really. I've used Premiere since version 6.0 came out and I hate to give up on it, just because it can't perform a simple task. We'll see what CS5 will be like :)

Firstly, sorry for getting the OP's intent wrong. I was trying to get back on track and missed the track entirely.

Igor, Am I correct in understanding that you used the trail of Vegas and DVD architect to create a DVD from SD DV and not HDV? If that's true you're kinda comparing apples and armadillos. Making a DVD from SD video takes fewer steps to make since you're keeping the same basic format. For example, NTSC, standard def, 60i (lower field first) as both input and output.

Going from HDV to DVD is virtually a format conversion. You're changing resolution and how it's interlaced (assuming you didn't shoot progressive). By definition this will be more complex and more than a bit tricky. Although I too am still working out the best workflow for this, I've come to learn that there are certain steps that must be taken in a specific order or things go pear shaped very quickly. For example, if you're going to deinterlace, you must do that before you down-res.

My main problem with Adobe on this is that they strew the parameters for doing this across several, sometimes non related screens. It makes a non-intuitive process even more complex.

I apologize if I didn't explain this well. The source footage is HDV, captured as HDV(m2t files). I edited the footage and wanted to create two types of output: HD (Blu-Ray compliant MPEG) and Widescreen SD (DVD compliant MPEG)

The problem was is that PPRO did not do the second step well, at least without those extra steps you mentioned. I don't mind the extra steps, if someone told me what they should be. I combed the Internet all day yesterday, found a thousand threads complaining of the same thing, but almost no answers. There was one, but it involved downloading AviSynth, TMPEGEnc, VirtualDub, Plugins, Scripts... This should not be that difficult of a process.

Keep in mind; you don't -need- to use Vegas as your NLE, though it does make things easier, I guess.

Trick is - don't worry about making the DVD out of the NLE, wait till you get to the DVD authoring software to do any transcoding.

I use Edius to edit but use Vegas to set chapter markers with naming, encode to Bluray preset to go to Architect 5.0 for Bluray authoring. I then use the master file( HDV or Canopus HQ) from Edius and use TMPgenc to encode for SD and substitute in the Architect authoring so that both the Bluray and SD DVD have the same menus though Architect does have a problem with "return to last menu" at the moment. I find that TMPGenc encode is the best of all the encoders I have and is easy to see data rate and effect on filling the disc etc. With TMPGenc Authorworks 4 you could do the whole thing in one program too.

Ron Evans

I don't get it maybe I'm still a newb. Is this consensus of this thread suggesting that footage encoded in Vegas and footage encoded in Premiere can be visually deciphered? Given they are both .mpeg files?

I am not sure what you mean by deciphered. Mpeg encoders are definitely not all equal. There are some good ones and ones that are really poor. Most have all sorts of parameters that can be changed by the users too. I want one that encodes a very good image and is fast and TMPGenc meets both these requirements better than any of the others I have. Encoders run from 1 pass CBR, 1 pass VBR, 2 pass VBR etc using 1 CPU core using multi cores etc, all providing very visibly different quality levels of the output. Frankly the ones included with Encore or Architect for SD encoding are not the best for quality or speed when compared to TMPGenc.

Ron Evans

Igor... I've been there myself. It shouldn't be that painful. My guess is that interlaced video is crossing you up. Remember that NTSC SD is lower field first. HD is upper first. If you don't make that conversion, you'll end up with really weird mice teeth. In the down-res, you might not even see them as such. It'll just make the video look like mud.

I'm going to do a lot of dual format (BD & DVD) output this year and I'm still working out the details. I'm seriously considering shooting everything progressive. That will solve a lot of issues.

Another vote for not doing the mpeg encoding within your NLE.

I render out to a 60i avi, retain that as a Master for later use, then encode to mpeg2 or H.264 using Procoder, which is great, or TMPGEnc which is also great and 1/5 the price.

When I had my Canon HV20 I captured in HDV, edited in HDV, and output to standard SD on regular DVD, it generally tended to look a bit better than DVD's produced from MiniDV. For HD output I did a couple of Blu-ray compliant renders to standard DVD and those played very well on a Blu-ray setup in Best Buy (I don't have anything to play Blu-ray at the house).

For my own HD viewing I rendered from the same timeline as all the above to HD WMV and HD MP4 file formats, watched those on my computer and 21.6" Samsung monitor for a while and now play those from thumb drives plugged into a little WD TV box connected to my 42" LCD 1080p TV.

All of the above renders were done on the same HDV timeline in Pinnacle Studio 11 (now 12) with no separate transcoding, intermediate, or de-interlacing steps. No hoops to jump through, just simple editing (a bit of patience on the 1920x1080 HD WMV renders).

Now, I fully understand, the Pinnacle product is not the darling of most folks. I've stuck with it from early versions because it has given me the most features for my buck, and I've been pretty lucky with it, it has done most of what I've asked of it and I still produce training videos in support of the Defensive Handgun course I teach, I submit to video challenges and just plain have a lot of uncomplicated fun with it.

Right now I work with a pair of AVCHD cams (Canon HF100's) and the only complaint I have is my quad core computer was not purchased with as fast a processor as I need.

I don't fault anyone elses NLE choice (I read that Sony Vegas Pro 8 does an excellent job of editing AVCHD) but just wanted to point out that there were some other choices that don't involve transcoding or intermediate codecs.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but a render to avi is best if you do it uncompressed, which makes for huge files. If you go to DV avi, quality will be lost as it's a lossy codec.

Other lossless options are Quicktime with the Animation codec or DNxHD codec from Avid.

Now that`s an answer everbody would love to hear! ;) It`s been my dilemma since I started to look for an HDV camera...but all this jumble and mumble of encoding problems and variations are putting me off. I set my eyes on the canon XH A1, but some ppl seem to have problems with it, and others dont (when it comes to editing in a NLE of course..) This is exactly what I want to hear Bruce. If you can delve deeper into how did you actually output your HDV footage to a DVD and which settings did you use to render as a Blu ray footage, I would greatly appriciate! :)

Clayton shooting in HDV will give you a lot more opportunities for output than in DV and a better quality in whatever your output format. Shooting in HDV gives you the opportunity to crop to a 4x3 image for SD output or stay 16x9 as well as stay in HD for Bluray output. The post in my mind is not about the merits of HDV. The issue of encoding comes up when one wants the best output rather than just an output as most of the simple NLE's have a DVD output option anyway and the more Pro NLE's either come with an authoring package or simple DVD output. All have presets for encoding so there is no need to get into any fine encoding parameters. As I mentioned in my earlier post though there is a difference in the quality that these encoders output and I have stated my preference. Where the final image will be viewed is also important as for WEB or PC the issue of deinterlacing or shooting progressive is important. Igor didn't like the output from CS3 and I agree, hence my use of Edius, Vegas and TMPGenc. For authoring I use DVD Architect 5 or DVDLab 2.0.

Ron Evans

Personally I've found Vegas to have the cleanest and simplest path to DVD. It's a simple export, directly from the timeline. Make a few tweaks to the basic settings to get it just right and the video looks great. It is possible to get fantastic DVD video in FCP/Compressor & PPRO, but the hoops you have to jump through, seem unnecessarily complicated ...

You know I might get a few loughs here, but I use Corel VideoStudio Pro X2 for editing as well as to output whatever you want, DVD,Blu-ray, SVCD,MPEG,DV e.t.c. and so easy too. The results are outstanding!!!

Stelios