Bride's Complain
 

I just finished editing a wedding. Recorded with a Sony DSR400 and Ikegami HL-DV7A both 2/3 chips, amazing footage. Edited on Final Cut Studio and Delivered the Final Wedding DVD.
The Bride complains that the video does not look good on her TV (65in Plasma and Playing out of a Bluray). On my standard TV it looks perfect and on my 46in LCD, it is not as good but I understand because the video is 480i and she is playing it on a 1080i. She does not understand my point that the video is not HD, therefore would not look as good on a 65in 1080i plasma. How would you hand this scenario. your comments are appreciated.
Thanks
Jose Dominguez

it's an unfortunate situation that she doesn't understand...and you can't be patronising and get too techy, coz the customer likes to feel right.

maybe tell her about cheap upscaling DVD players, if her blu-ray doesn't already do that?

I'll borrow a line from Philadelphia " Explain it to me like I am 2 years old". Maybe the best way is to ask her to switch the plasma's aspect ratio to 4:3

My 2 cents

480i originated footage shot with high quality cameras should still look pretty good upconverted on a HDTV.

Is her player upconverting or is the TV just scaling up a SD signal? SD blown up to fit a large screen will look like poo, but upconverted shouldn't be a problem.

Good luck.

I'd guess that any attempt to explain will fail - IF - when she plays an ordinary DVD it looks better. Any chance you can get from her a DVD that she thinks looks better than yours, so you can compare them? If she has a large screen this size, my guess is that it will show flaws in even off air material - so what is it she sees that she doesn't like? If the original DVCAM material looks really good, where in the chain is the problem. The TV is so big that she must have seen SD material on it at some point - unless she only watches HD channels?

I'm meeting with her next week at her place (which I hate doing that), I am bringing my DVD player ( maybe my 32in Sony LCD also) to show her that it is not the DVD the problem. She has a panasonic dmp-bd55 bluray player, which I am researching for compatibility with my DVDs
Jose Dominguez

How close do they sit to that tv? Could be part of the problem, but as someone said already you'd think they would have run into the same type of problem before from much pricier productions unless they only watch HD. Even then, some of the HD that comes through my cable box is utter crap.

If a bride has a blu-ray player and that size TV, no doubt she had watch blu-ray movie and should be dissapointed with SD, can't blame her for that, but then again she should have booked you with a HD package or someone else that shoot HD and can delivered BD, that Pan BD55 has pretty good upconversion so don't even bring your dvd player cuz that is no match, what you should bring is a color bar on DVD and do a quick calibrated on her TV for SD material, most modern HDTV will remember settings when it see a SD signal or HD signal, her TV probably was calibrated in HD and could look bad when it showed SD, but this is a slim chance, I think she is just spoiled watching blu-ray alot and now seeing a SD signal.

Khoi Pham, very good point. I could have done her wedding on HD but now it is too late. I will bring color bars, may be her TV set in not calibrated.

I'd suggest making sure her Blu-ray player is connected with an HDMI cable for optimal upsampling of SD content - if she happens to be using some other connection that might be part of the issue.

Another idea would be to offer to up-res the SD to HD (using a Blu-ray disc) and see if that looks better to her. Not something I'd want to do, but it's a thought.

Did she book a HD package? If not then she's just going to have to make piece with it, if she did you're screwed :) No SD signal is going to look good on a 65" TV, how much footage did you put on the DVD? You could try burning a better quality version? HD is the future though.

No, she didn't book me for an HD package only SD. I will try to calibrate her tv to SD and see what happens. There is nothing out there to upconvert the signal from SD to HD.

Nothing out there as in her home or as in the video market? There are things on the market. Red Giant's Instant HD is a plugin that can help, or just an upconverting DVD player should help.

I've seen plenty of SD DVD's upconverted on HD sets and I think many look just fine. Maybe not as sharp as true HD signal, but they certainly don't look BAD.

Good luck with this one.

u can get an upscaling DVD for next to nothing, and the results are seriously fantastic - trust me, she'd be impressed!

I read about instant HD, but it was suggested that it is only good for a few minutes of SD footage but not for an hour long project.