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

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 ;)


I don't know about Premiere (the video you provided scaled with Premiere? was not usable in my opinion.)

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

Canopus Forum Repost
 

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/fo...ead.php?t=5141

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

OK, so what would be the best format to shoot for PAL SD
 

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.

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.

Thanks Piotr

Piotr, Im just wondering what conlcusion you came to which solved your display problems as i know i am having that particular problem (see my thread 'what would you do'). How do you have your setup configured which eliminated the infamous line twitter?

Two solutions exist:

- when palying back from a computer, use an MPEG software player allowing to switch deinterlacing off (like VLC or Nero Showtime), No bobbing !!! (blend is the second best to none)

- when playing from a DVD or BD, use a good player and a truly progressive capable input (usually HDMI on modern full HD, 1080p HDTVs)

Thats good to know, i was hoping for more of a solution for the twitter i see when monitoring on my monitor from my vegas timeline. Maybe a 1080p hdtv hooked up via dvi to hdmi to monitor my timeline would do the trick?

And I'm still hoping I can hand a client an SD DVD have them not see twitter. I can't tell them what TV or cables to buy and keep them as a client for SD DVD delivery.

Piotr,

It sounds like you're addressing problems specific to 23.976p footage. Adam, in his original post, was complaining about issues with 60i footage. With that type of footage, it doesn't seem like a progressive scan DVD player would make much a difference.

And Craig makes a very valid point; we have to deliver content to our clients that works on even the cheapest $25 DVD player from Wal-Mart hooked up to an old CRT, and also works coming off a high-end DVD player going to a 50" plasma.

Adam, any chance to test the files that have been uploaded for you?

Dennis, thank you for you advice. I currently have Adobe Premier Pro CS3 which doesn't import the HQ files. If I've understood you correctly Virtualdub can resize the orginal HQ files to avi at SD resoltion avi 720x540. Will I have to convert the mp4 wrapping to mpeg2 for Virtualdub to do this, if so how? I could then edit this avi in premier then export to DVD. At the moment I will be mainly producing SD dvds. Is this workflow going to produce the best high quality SD DVD? If I record using SP 1080i on the camera is it still worth going straight to Virtualdub then editing in AP or will it be worth importing through firewire then exporting to Virtualdub? I have not tried editing HDV in premier yet, does the rendering of transitions & application of effects loose quality, it this done in the same way on all NLE?

My camera has arrived today I would like to know the best step forward rather than spend days experimenting with different software! Vegas will edit straight from the HQ files, Premier wont, is my solution as simple as that?!

Others may disagree, but it seems to me that re-sizing and re-wrapping all of your individual clips prior to editing would be... cumbersome, to say the least.

I use Premiere Pro CS3 with the Matrox Axio hardware. It handles the MXF files (that Sony's Clip Browser generates) in real-time, be it HQ or SP mode. I always shoot in HQ mode. We paid for 1/2" chips at full 1920x1080... why throw that away before we even get to the edit?

It may be that PPro natively supports the MXF files, or it could be a Matrox proprietary thing. I would play around and see what works with your system.

You also could explore an intermediary codec like Cineform (http://www.cineform.com/products/Aspect-Prospect.htm) to see if that handles the files natively.

But now we're threadjacking. Sorry!

Mostly I would see Virtualdub becoming useful once your edit is complete - edit in the highest quality possible, and then export to your final delivery medium (SD DVD in this case) using Virtualdub or one of the other methods mentioned here.

No need to "manually" export to VirtualDub, you can frameserve to it.
And, I would strongly suggest you edit in HD(v) until you're ready for the final output before you resize. Thus, frameserving to Vdub should be your last step.

Jon, I too have the Axio LE + Premiere CS3 but have been unable to produce decent looking SD DVD's! Have you succeded in any way?

Yesterday I've done a side by side test with my DSR300 and EX1. The EX1 footage was played out of the HD timeline - outputted via the Axio breakout box as analog component and inputted to a DVCAM deck via component in - recorded the playback as letterboxed PAL DVCAM - then re-captured via firewire the SD PAL footage to an SD project. I then imported the SD footage from my DSR 300 and did a split screen between the two identical images (of my son).

The resultant picture is a shock - the footage from my 10 year old SD DSR300 DVCAM camera is like HD and the EX1 picture (downconverted to SD) looks like it has been shot with a Hi8 mm - and I'm not joking!

Today I've got hold of a Kramer SDI-Firewire converter and fed it SDI input from the camera and outputted DV into my DVCAM deck. The downconverted picture is unusable. People's faces look out of focus when I was 100% certain that I was focused.

I'm now at a loss - and I'm seriously considering getting rid of my EX1 and continue filming with my faithful DSR300. It is an unescapable fact that till now we still need to produce SD material - so Sony's insistence in filming in HD only is rather idiotic given that cost effective technology is not yet available.

Try downconverting with VirtualDubMod and Smartresize plugin.
(here's a test vid: http://rapidshare.com/files/98564166...Hcenc.m2v.html)
Best software solution so far.

regards Dennis

Are any of you guys having trouble with downrezzing HD to SD DVD's using Vegas set to Best? or is this a strictly an Adobe and Final Cut issue?

Thanks for the input.

Dave

Stay in HDV.
Do the downcovertion at last.


regards Dennis

Brian,

Have you downloaded any of the sample files I posted? I'm curious how the results would compare. Again, that footage comes from a variety of sources, and I don't think the EX1 footage scaled differently than the graphics, stills, etc.

I'm assuming you rendered from the timeline using Adobe Media Encoder, as well as testing the hardware output? How did the results compare?

What are you using to preview your content? Does it look bad on an SDTV, or only when scaled on to a large HD display? CRT? LCD? Plasma? Have you tried the Virtualdub solution described in this thread?

I hope to shoot some side-by-side comparisons between my EX1 and the JVC DV5000 it replaced (similar to the test you described) I'll see if I can upload footage for you to view. Any chance you could upload an .m2t file or something of your split screen for people to look at?

Jon Carles I am realy interested in that shoot out. I currently work with a Dsr 300,and I need more cameras right now so I am looking at some EX1's or Used Dsr's, but "my dsr390 on lcd looks better than my ex1 or fx1 downconvrt sd on lcd" is not very reasuring. Especialy sense I only deliver SD. So I'm stuck until your shoot out.

Here is a download of virtualdubmod with some nice plugins included:

http://rapidshare.com/files/99285984...DubMod.7z.html

Unpack.
Open VirtualDubMod.exe
Drag'n'Drop your .m2v, .m2t, .avi (Canopus HQ, Cineform etc... everything is possible!) etc. on it.
Click "File> Load Processing settings"
Select a preset (from the attachement below) which is ok for you.

Save (you can choose a codec in video>compression before)


regards Dennis

Jon, no I did not have a look at your sample files. I'll try and post an m2t file if I'm successful.

On a previous test (not a side by side comparision) I did use Adobe Media Encoder - the result was the worst I've ever seen for a HD to Sd conversion - worse than the hardware way.

As for viewing I burnt everything on a SD DVD and played it on a Philips 21" / Panasonic 21" / Panasonic 36" all CRT's and a Bravia W3000 40" LCD. The Bravia picture was a good laugh - my VHS recordings of 10 years ago on a CRT was x5 times better than the picture of both the DSR300 and the downconverted EX1. The CRT's were slightly better.

Andrew I suggest to go for other DSR's rather than the EX1. The quality of the DSR's is fantastic. Mine is the early 300 - I've heard that the 490's are incredible in quality - they are in fact 2/3" as opposed to my 1/2".

When one mentions VirtualDubMod - how is it used? Once I finish editing on CS3's timeline what happens then? How do you downconvert?

I've already mentioned the workflow above your post. ;)
Have you seen the .m2v NTSC file I've uploaded?

regards Dennis

Dennis, I've just seen the test vid - wow it's nowhere near what I've been doing - it is really good. Please can you kindly tell me step by step what are you doing. Please bear with me that apart from CS3 I have no idea of other editing programs. Thanks

Edit - I was still typing out this reply!. Thanks for the workflow

what is your output of Adobe CS3?
Are you filming progressive, if not it will be much more complicated ;)


Edit: Ahh, ok :D

I suggest that VirtualDubMod is about 2-3 years old and hasn't been updated by Avery lee to his latest configuration. The newest vesion of VirtualDub, v1.8.0, contains plugins for both wmv and mpeg files.

I'm in Pal Area and use 1080 50i - is it a problem? If needs be I switch to 720 50p.

So once I have the edited footage in a HD timeline, do I export movie as one whole .avi sequence? When I drop this .avi movie to VirtualDubMod how long does it take to render?

Why no David, this is a Vegas problem too, but only if you don't use best.... wait... I don't know... I'm the same person who asked the question. :P

Anybody? Anybody?

Dave :)

It seems like there are varying definitions of "acceptable" floating around... if you want to compare Vegas to Premiere to Virtualdub, I would suggesting posting an MPEG2 file for people to look at and compare.

As I don't have Vegas, that's the best I can do. :-)

Thanks Jon, I'm guessing since no-one posted that I can see in here that is using Vegas it's not been a big problem for them, though they might just not define it the same as others. I'll do just that with some footage that's been posted raw on the net, and ask others to do the same with the same footage ( in a new thread ) so that everyone can see from a common ground.

Dave

I've made the thread (can be seen at link below)
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=116958

Hi David,
I'm using the Sony Z1 and i have just found a good work flow With Vegas.
First thing is make sure all your footage is in focus looking real sharp.
Render to the best setting,upperfield fist, two pass Variable bit rate, max bit rate 8.5meg, Avg bit rate 6meg, Min bit rate 4.2meg

This should produce a HDv to SD mpeg -2 DVD that looks good.

Good luck
Simon

Hi Simon, the reason I'm doing this is because it seems that some people are having problems specifically with the EX-1 (or that's what I've gleamed with my brief reading of this thread, not sure if they've mentioned having trouble with HDV or not), but I most certainly appreciate the feedback and suggestions.

Dave

sorry for the delay i am the original poster.

Here are some raw hdv files straight from the cam. i had to wait for it to load and then control click save as source (on mac):

http://pennylaneprod.com/1.mov
http://pennylaneprod.com/2.mov
http://pennylaneprod.com/3.mov

Here are m2v files already compressed with compressor :

this is what jpivideo (on vu) saw at my studio and agreed it did not look good. we played his a1 footage wihtout changing a thing on my setup and his stuff looked much better:
http://pennylaneprod.com/163_0046_01-mbps8.m2v


this is what mr. ed (on vu) burned and said looked great when he played it on his setup on 37" plasma, on my setup it wasnt good. He came over yesterday and saw it at my studio and agreed it looked bad.
http://pennylaneprod.com/163_0035_01-MPEG.m2v


this is an example showing store signs. the signs look horrible and digitized.
http://pennylaneprod.com/163_0013_01-MPEG-2.m2v


now i will say when i watch all these clips on the link from my computer they look stunning, go figure.

if anyone can burn these and view them on their systems, please let me know what you are using. the 1st 3 files are HDV so you would have to use your system to encode, but maybe the problem is with my system FCP, compressor, and dvdsp.

all footage shot on 60i - i noticed 1080 30p looks great on sd, so im convinced this is an interlace issue

I would like to know the best workflow before resizing in VirtualDubMod:

1) Is there a way VirtualDubMod can convert the orginal mxf files, it doesn't recognise them? I have read the HQ mxf files are actually MPEG2 files recorded at 35mb/s at VBR. Is there a way to convert the filename or rewrapped the codec so it is MPEG2?

2) Is it more advantagous to convert the HD footage to uncompressed avi or a lossless codec (I have huffy & Mainconcept's ProDV codec: DV50 - not sure which is best?).

3) Is the quality worse if I export from my NLE to MPEG2 (It only gives me mainconcept's encoder option).

I'm assuming version 2 is best but my previous background has been editing DV. I am new to editing HDV!

Frameserving was also mentioned- is this like transcoding? My understanding of this is an NLE uses the virtualdub plugin as it renders to avi? Is this possible in vegas or premier?

I would like some light shed on this issue - ideally I want a method that doesn't eat into my harddrives but I'm willing to sacrifice this if the quality is noticeable better.