I'm sick of crappy DVD quality...
 

Sort of a sub-thread to Blu-ray vs. DVD.

I'm shooting in HD, and burning to disk using DVD Architect using the optimum settings, and really am sick of the quality drop-off.

I thought of delivering .avi on USB stick, but with Vista not playing .avi natively, this is not a universal solution. I could render as .wmv, but then have issues with cross platform etc.

Has anyone else come up with any other options?

You might find this helpful Precomposed Blog - HD to SD DVD - Best Methods

I use Premiere and AME MPEG-2 export is just pathethic. I ditched it by exporting to Matrox HD AVI codec (btw, their HD codec is free to download and use), then I use Procoder 3 to downsize to MPEG-2 DVD format. The resulting files looks really good even in low bit rate (e.g. 3mbps). I showed my DVD to clients, they thought they were watching BluRay.

DV AVI's will play natively on any Vista box in Windows Media Player.

If you're using Media CENTER, then you may be correct about AVI requiring a plugin.

my fix
 

Had the same thing happen to us. We export the video with apple codec 422 HQ then burn to DVD with toast for raw footage. For our final copies we export with apple 422 HQ to mov making sure we export exactly how we captured, then use Encore and make the DVD. Footage is extra clean. This works for us takes a little longer but we have no quality loss. We got the apple codes with final cut pro.

You didn't say what type of HD, it makes a big difference, especially 60i footage.

For Sony Vegas Pro rendering 108060i to NTSC 480i DV widescreen:

Check which Mainconcept encoder is on your system, 1.6.1 is the latest.

Set render quality to best

When you are going from HDV 60i to SD 60i, the "select deinterlace method" tab needs to be checked so that Vegas knows to split the video into even and odd frames before resizing. Which method you select doesn't matter in this instance since no actual deinterlace is going to happen. What you want is for Vegas to split the video into even and odd fields, resize these fields separately, then fold the two fields back into the new resized SD 60i image. Vegas uses the "select deinterlace method tab" to determine the resize method. This is the source of the vast majority of resize issues. People who want to downrez interlaced video want the resized video to be interlaced as well, so they just assume that turning off the "select deinterlace method" is a good idea since they don't want to deinterlace. It makes sense but it is incorrect and causes poor quality.

The "select deinterlace method" tab functions as a dual function tab where the second function is "separate fields before resize, then fold fields back into resized interlaced image".

In the render dialog box, press the custom button, on the first tab make sure the quality slider is af far right as possible (31), on the second tab crank up the video bit rate as far as the project length and disc size will allow, 8 to 8.5 Mbps is about as high as you can go and leave bandwidth for AC-3 audio.

DVDA will give a bandwidth warning, but your compatability is still over 95% of players.

That's about all you can do in Vegas currently.

Thanks Jeff,

I'm much happier now. Check out this thread. It a Vegas thread, but the problem is universal. And VirtualDub and TMPGEnc are universal solutions.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/what-happ...d-quality.html

I 2nd the TMPGEnc for MPEG2 transcoding. I love how simple it is yet it seems to know always the best settings - you don't need to dig in Advanced settings.

Ken:

That's a great thread, and the few examples show good results. It's a shame we need to resize 60i using virtual dub, but not that big of a deal. Im already using virtual dub in the deshaker script, so using it in a resize script is not that big of a deal either.

I have not done a test of 1080P30 to confirm that the virtual dub resize quality improves like it does in 60i. What do you think, will it also be a big improvement over relying on the Mainconcept encoder only for the 30P resize?

Jeff

Jeff,

From what I understand, it's the Lanczos resizer that both VirtualDub and TMPGEnc use that creates the quality, so I imagine the results from 1080p would also be superior to Mainconcept.

I'm editing on Vegas and burning in DVD Architect.
I've just started converting my HDV footage via the Virtual Dub method with Lancoz3 and the results are markedly improved.
Even though it requires a significant extra step in my workflow, the results speak for themselves. It guts me to lose quality when downsizing to SD.

Hey Jeff...

This is the inherent problem from people like me, who shoot 1080i, and need a proper downconvert to 480..(the 1080P people not so much).
It's just the way video needs to get processed correctly for resizing..It requires a Bob deinterlace (doubling the framerate), a resize, reselect the proper fields and reweave..
Whether you're using Lanczos, Bicubic, Bilinear or otherwise is of no concern to me, since quality is subjective. The bigger issue is correct processing of fields for resizing.

Only via freeware, or plugin can i see this being properly done.
Unfortunately, this takes an extra step, and lots of horsepower to do it correctly.
And this is why i bring up time and time again, that if you've got good glass, lighting, and are delivering for SD anyways, don't trade in your DVX cameras. An HD camera can sometimes feel like an albatross around your neck during edit and export.


I think it's high time that Premiere or any other NLE's allow for this on export. I'm not a coder, but i'm sure somebody should be able to create a software patch or upgrade..

Dennis:

Are you 100% convinced it's worth the extra step?

The screen grabs I have seen so far almost all look better with the exception of a grid pattern showing only on one example. I was also wondering about essentially rendering twice. Im guessing you are rendering the resize in essentially lossless format to minimize artifacts.

Do you use much sharpening to get the detail back?

Did you check your final results both ways on a large size HDTV when you were experimenting?

Sorry for all the questions, Im just trying to convince myself the result is worth the effort. IMO my Vegas only NTSC DVD widescreen output is pretty good, but nowhere near HD or commercial DVD quality.

To Peter:
I TOTALLY hear you. Field processing is key. I have been learning and fighting with HD material/NLEs since 2003 when I got the first HDV camera out, the GR HD-1. Most things are far better, but the scaling issues still going on are crazy. It has come to a head again now in August 2009, but if you search you will find all the old threads and the virtual dub scaling solution discussed back in 2005. I mostly shoot progressive, and partially because of the way interlacing is handled, I don't think the scaler interpolation method is as critical in the downconvert, but does still matter. It seems it was more of an issue with my old 720P camera actually than my current 1080P camera, but I don't know why.

I am using mostly Premiere and the downconversion was not satisfactory, at least in my eyes, but recently I tried a demo of Mainconcept Reference. The encoding during the downconversion was far superior to that of Adobe's. It's also very fast (in a quad core at least). I think I should give away some hours of my life experimenting with that software.

Jeff, both the Lagarith codec and Virtual Dub are free, so I think ultimately it's best for you to just give it a go and compare the results.

Hi Guys

I tried the Lagarith codec at one time and found the the resulting AVI was massive!!! (Around 850mb from 24 secs of HD video) Also on the DuoCore machine the AVI behaved worse that the original AVCHD raw footage!!!
The Canopus HQ codec works very well and runs on my DuoCore without too much effort but I still seem to get better SD DVD's if I transcode the original to M2t at 50mps and then edit and make the DVD file directly from that!!

Chris

Jeff,

I spent the entire last weekend on this and am absolutely convinced it worth the extra step. I'm the one that started this thread, so bear in mind I was really not happy with the quality of SD-dvd from HD source. Now that I have spent so much time figuring it out, it is a pretty straightforward work around.

All we are doing in virtualdub (which I use) is resizing the video from HD (1440x1080, 1920x1080, etc.,) to the SD-(DVD) size of 720x480. The Lanczos resizer is used to do this. For whatever reason, the resizing tool is far better than any NLE standard resizer. In my case I render from Vegas as 1440x1080 Cineform .avi and open it in VirtualDub - Video-Filters-Add-Resize

Settings for Resize

New Size: - Check Absolute (pixels) (720x480) Though my setting is 720x405 (??? it works for me)

Aspect Ratio: - Disabled

Filter mode: Lanczos3

Interlaced: Unchecked (works for me)

Framing Options: Do not letterbox or crop

Codec-friendly sizing: Do not adjust

Note: once you figure out your settings, click 'Save as Default'

Select OK - close filters - go to Video-Compression-select Lagarith Lossless codec-OK

File-save as AVI

I export out of VirtualDub using the Lagarith codec, which is a high quality (lossless) codec. The resulting .avi file is still nearly as large as the input .avi file. The quality of the resulting .avi is nearly as good as the source.

From here you would bring it into your DVD authoring software for mpeg-2 encoding.

Some people use TMPGEnc as it is an Mpeg2 encoder - I had issues with it opening my cineform .avi files. So I import my 720x480 (in my case 720x405 - I don't know why but it works beautifully in the proper aspect ratio. I suspect it is the HDV PAR of 1.333 vs. HD square pixel), into DVDA and prepare my dvd project as normal.

The extra workflow in my case was not nearly as bad as I thought. once I tested and re-tested, and re-re-tested. I probably spent about 16 hours rendering and re-rendering last weekend. To me the results were absolutely worth the extra step in the workflow.

If you're as sick as I was about crappy HD->SD results, then you owe it to yourself and your clients to try to improve it.

Ken you should under no circumstance allow DVD Architect to re-compress your footage! DVDA does a horrible job at compression and your product will look very pixelated. I calculate the bitrate rate I'll need using a bitrate calculator and render my projects of from HD to SD with video quality set on "Best" in Vegas. Once rendered out I import into DVDA, if for some reason my bitrate calculations was incorrect (happens quite often) and my video won't fit on the DVD I do a new render through Vegas at lower bitrates. Looking back I can't believe I gave out videos after DVDA re-compressed it to fit on DVD! DVDA is your weakest link. You won't believe the quality you get from doing a proper render through Vegas, looks close to HD on my HDTV.

I concur.
I take my resized Lagarith file from Virtual Dub and import it into a PAL widescreen project in Sony Vegas (I'm in PAL land).
Then I render out an .mpeg using the DVD Architect PAL widescreen setting. You get a whole bunch of extra options with variable bitrate etc for large projects that DVDA doesn't offer you.
It's a pity Vegas doesn't use the Lancoz3 algorithm for downsizing HD projects. In future, they need to incorporate something a lot better than what they have, since HD -> SD is such a common part of many people's workflow.

None of the NLE companies provide Lancoz-3 (or any good resizer) that I am aware of. Sony and Adobe collectively hold the majority market share of NLE's and they apparently can't be bothered.

Here's your chance NLE manufacturers; DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS. To ignore this considering the price you are charging for your products is ridiculous. HD to SD DVD workflow has got to be one of if not the most common use of an NLE. It's time you worry about the core functionality of your products and not just the screen glitz and bling. We don't want to see CS5 or Pro 10 until this has been taken care of.

This issue is significant enough to switch NLE's for. I currently use Vegas Pro 8. I like it overall and I wouldn't like to switch to another NLE primarily because of the learning curve. But this is important to me. I would seriously consider changing if another product solved this problem.