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.

It seems to me that you're talking about SD cameras and source footage - you can't create what isn't there. Perhaps some sharpening in post or a plug in, but again you can only work with what you started with.

If the bride wanted HD, she should have asked for it so you could explain the difference. But to me I can't figure out how you can take 480-576 lines of resolution and fudge it up to 1080 lines without losing something in the translation? I know "upconverting" players supposedly do this sucessfully, but I'm guessing it works better from a commercial DVD that started at a higher source resolution so somehow there's more to interpolate?

no, no, no....i can watch any of my old SD-shot DVDs, from 2 years ago, with my upscaling DVD player, and it's brilliant! i know it sounds impossible, but just try it! it fills inbetween the lines, so you're gaining, not losing.

that's my experience too, wonder why some people are saying SD could never look good upconverted to HD. I don't get it. Sure HD, edited as HD, encoded and burned as HD to a Bluray looks better, but in no way does any of the SD stuff I've shot and seen upconverted look bad or unacceptable. Maybe if you're sitting 2 feet from the screen, but at normal viewing distances it's fine.

The problem could be stretching and playing it in the right aspect ratio. Especially if it's 4:3

Here is what i did to fix it
 

I had the exact same problem.

Here is what you can do to fix it. Use the codec apple422 hq and it WILL improve the look. It does take a long render. You might have to upgrade your software.

"Here is the real problem" , so many are watching hd tv that they think there wedding is going to look like HD TV and it will not. You have to be up front with your brides and make it known before hand other wise this will bite you many times.

Remember vhs c, then Hi 8, then we all went to Mini dv then to hd. I just give them a blu-ray any way and there happy.

For the future:

Im not familiar with your cameras, but if they shoot in widescreen, capture, edit and author the project as NTSC DVD widescreen. Even if the B&G are not widescreen now, they will be in the future. A wedding DVD is a forward looking product.

Be sure that the video render uses CBR at the maximum bit rates you are comfortable with, say 9,500 video, so you essentially have a super-bit DVD product. My agreement has a disclaimer that the DVD may not play on older players.

The super-bit DVD gives a "good as you can get" SD product. However, a 65" screen is a challenge beyond what could be expected from any non-HD wedding video. A 65" HDTV is probably rear projection if it is even a few years old. Those are just not flattering to non-studio produced SD video.

Also, like Monday said, make sure she is watching in the right aspect ratio.

No, the original footage is 16/9 DVcam format from a 2/3-3CCDs cameras. I believe the problem is on the setting on her 65in Plasma. Her blu-ray player is a panasonic and as per my research it is very good and it has upscaling in it.

Agreed if it was shot 16X9 on 2/3" CCDs. I bet ya it's the darn composite cables going to the tv from the bluray player ^_^ that'll ruin the picture quick.

I don't know how good magic bullet instant HD is, but for $100.00 I am going to buy the plugging for FC and make her a blu-ray to get it over with. The bottom line she did not booked me for an HD package and now she is not happy with SD.

My guess is the problem lies more with the player's/television's deinterlacing than with the upscaling. I'd suggest delivering a (high quality) deinterlaced version.

This is veering off the original point but if you have a HD package to offer then I'm curious as to why are you still shooting and offering SD packages? It's the same effort for the most part to shoot in HD and future proof it and keep something like this from happening again.

Instead of spending the $100 on Instant HD you could buy a Western Digital Media Player for your client and you could play the video without any DVD compression.

I have a WDTV, I've done some scientific tests (well actually I just watched some TV one evening).

Test #1: Play a 300Mb SD episode of Lost on my 32" LG
Test #2: Play a 1Gb HD episode of Lost on my 32" LG

Results: Both looked identical, I don't know if its the WDTV or my 32" LG doing the up-scaling both versions look pretty decent, from my viewing distance I can't really tell them apart. On my 22" PC monitors the difference is night & day.

I would ask her how does it look compared to Blockbuster's DVDs, it should be very close to your wedding DVD on the same screen, regardless of size, SD is SD. And by the way, I always make progressive DVDs, to keep up with Blockbuster's...