I don't know how you monitor, but I am not seeing what you're seeing. The only "faults" I can see is that the shutter speed used is maybe a bit slow, and there is way too much sharpening. Other than that, the video looks fine to me.

Is there any way you can get the original file to me somehow? Or just a second's worth of it?

-P

Let me go try something...

Ok,

So I grabbed the camera, went around my building and shot a couple 1080/30p clips with the picture profile turned off.

SD Version here: http://www.vimeo.com/6287337

HD Version here: Alias_Twitter Test HD version on Vimeo

Download those and tell me what you see.

For both the SD and HD versions I downloaded the files and loaded them separately into Vegas projects. I matched project properties to the files themselves and changed the default deinterlace method to NONE.

I rendered each of the files to the default DVDA Mpeg2 widescreen video stream template at a CBR of 8000, DC Coefficient 10-Bit, Video Quality - 31,

Brought each into DVDA using a single movie Mpeg-2 720x480-60i, 16:9 (NTSC) template.
Burned each to a DVD and played it through a standard DVD player to a 27 inch CRT television.

Both exhibited severe aliasing with horizontal motion on all objects (especially vertical objects). Twitter was present. I didn't notice the chromatic ghosting I get though, but I think that is part of the aliasing problem.

I tried them on a Plasma TV and the aliasing was gone - replaced by "blurred" edges in the same places where there were aliased edges on the CRT TV.

Thanks for the help Perrone. I e-mailed you regarding sending you an mxf clip.

Can you monitor to that CRT without burning a DVD? I am curious at this point if you are having issues with the mpeg2 burn process or if the trouble is present BEFORE that compression is done.

Have you looked at these on more than one CRT?

John:

A direct cosine (DC) coefficient of 10 bit is not usually good. If it had any effect at all, it would exacerbate your exact problem. The DC coefficient only affects adjacent transitional macro block areas with a value greater than zero. 95% of macro blocks have a value of zero. The "Handbook of Image and Video Processing" is an excellent reference for figuring out how to set up the detailed rendering properties.

The only easy explanation I ever found was here:
Subdivision Into Macro Blocks - Review Tom's Hardware : Video Guide Part 3: Video Formats and Compression Methods

I can also see it on the external CRT monitor if I play those clips directly from the timeline. I have to look closely because it is only a 15 inch 4:3 monitor with an Aspect Ratio switch so it is pretty small and the scene moves really fast. Looks like a blurred edge if you don't study it very well,but it is in fact horizontal aliasing.

http://www.ggvideo.com/jvc_tmh150cgu.php

As far as another CRT TV, yes it shows up on all of them (via the DVDs). ith the DVDds I can slow-mo the video to see the horizontal aliasing better.

Are you saying that you don't see what I described on your JVC CRT monitor or on your CRT TV with those same files you gave me?

John

All I am saying, is that other than the "sharpness" that appears added, I can't see anything on these that I don't see on other DVDs that have been creatd in-house or from other pro sources. BUT, I am not making mpeg2 files. I am just dropping them onto my timeline.

CRTs and Plasma/LCD do not render things the same way. They are progressive by nature. The CRT is going to interlace the footage whether we want it to or not because that is it's nature.

So I really can't say if what youa re seeing is expected and normal, or if it's something else. I suspect that because your issues disappear when you view on a plasma/lcd, that what you are seeing is pretty normal.

This is what I have:
JVC TM-H1900GU 19-Inch Color Monitor (but in 17") Just checked.

Regardless, I may be seeing what you are, but just not as sensitive. How far from the TV are you when viewing this stuff?

Four feet from the TV. The editing monitor is right next to me of course.

I guess I am being too fussy, but I am directly comparing it to the SD DVDs I was producing with my VX2000.

I would really like to be certain that there isn't something wrong with the camera itself as I have a three year extended warranty and it has never been in for service since I bought it in June 2008. It hasn't had that much use though.

If you could look at the two .mxf clips that I sent you whenever you have the time (that I created from the original BPAV folders) this videographer would be truly grateful. Let me know if there appears to be something wrong with the camera. They are 1080/30p with ATW and no profiles. Pretty much all default except for the progressive mode.

John

I looked at the first one. I am going to look at the second one here in a minute. Got an emergency 3 DVD copy job handed to me at 4:15!!! GRrrrr!

Thanks Jeff,

I'll change it back to the default value of 9-bit.

John

Second clip, telephone lines... twitter galore. Aliasing on the telephone pole.

So, I added just a touch of gaussian blur and the twitter stopped and the pole cleaned up a bit. If this MXF is straight out of the camera, then you've got the detail settings in that thing JACKED up.

Do you have access to the camera right now?

Yes, I do.

Thanks,
John

Ok, go make a picture profile like the one I linked you too. I have a bunch in my camera but the one I pointed you too should be a great place to start, and should prevent what you are seeing in this footage. Your camera is not broken, it just has the default settings which really aren't that great.

I set that one up yesterday Perrone.

I just switched to it. The white walls in this room look amber.

John

Did you do a white balance?

You posted before I did. I fixed it. I had it on PRST which is 5600K according to the PP.

So I guess I shoot some stuff tomorrow and post back?

John

Yep. And put a clip up like you did today, and I'll take a look at it.

I can't thank you enough.
Regards,

John

Perrone,

I'm working on a project that was shot in 720 60p and will be delivered on standard DVD.
I'm going to assume that the work-flow you've described should also work well for me, correct?

Bob

Yes, should work fine. Not sure what the temporal movement is going to look like going from 60p to 60i though so report back! :)

It is usually a good idea to sharpen to reduce the softening that occurs when resizing from HD to SD. Does it matter if the sharpening is done before or after the resizing? In a similar vein, I use TMPGEnc to resize and sharpen in one operation. (I load Cineform HD into TMPFEnc and output resized SD MPEG) If it should be resized before it is sharpened, is TMPGEnc smart enough to do it in the right order?

I believe it is best to sharpen after resize from what I was told more than once.

John

Can someone please explain this workflow, if I don't have Cineform. I've downloaded TMPEG ENC 2.524 and Virtual Dub I was going to download AviSynth, but I am not sure how it functions. I currently have a edited project that has hd and sd clips on my timeline. The final input is for SD DVD. I rendered the project to .avi using NTSC Widescreen format. Was this the proper step? I need help. Also, it appears that TMPEG is used to convert the footage to Mpeg-2. How is this more effective them converting the footage in Vegas? Please describe the process/purpose of each step/progam in each step in the process. Thank you.

re: Maximizing HD to SD Quality
 

Hi Everyone,
I just want to thank Perrone Ford for sharing this information with us.
It's opened my eyes to experimenting to improve the HDV to SD/DVD (and
maybe BR/MPG4) output.

I've only been playing with a 120s clip of a Christmas tree zooming/panning.
Besides improving the sharpness there seems to be better contrast, and
when played I don't think I see as much blocking/creeping of dim colors during
pans. I noticed this on the walls besides the tree which were illuminated mostly
by the tree lights. Before the HDV->720x480 always seemed to have creeping
(not sure of the right term) wall colors. Now it seems much more consistent,
much less distracting, your eye stays on the tree being panned and is not
pulled away by seeming movement the wall.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed. It took several readings of
these 10 pages, and most of a day without other pressing needs to work
out was explained and examine the results along the way.

thanks
jim cowan
Pointe Vicente Recording and Post
l

Jim, You might be able to take your video quality up yet another notch by using Cineform as an intermediate editing format. It is a much more appropriate editing codec. IMHO any form of MPEG (or AVCHD) doesn't belong on the NLE timeline because of the block compression method that is used. There is a lot of technical information on their web site that explains the issues involved. http://cineform.com

While i still am using Cineform NeoScene I think it was Perrone saying it was lossy - is this a big penalty in using it?

It is VERY close to lossless. Completely lossless video results in enormous file sizes that are unwieldy.

Agreeing with Jim about Cineform; their marketing-speak is that it is "visually lossless", which I think is by and large true for everything shot with a camera.

If I remember correctly from previous posts, Perrone does some work with animation, in which he has found he must use a truely lossless codec to maintain the original quality.

With content shot with a camera, you have to go down many generations of Cineform before seeing degradation, although it is a "lossy" codec, by definition.

However, only you can decide how good is good enough for your projects. There's always one more step that will increase quality, at some increase in time and/or money .

I don't do animation, but I don't find the file sizes of lossless files to be all that bad. Cineform works and works well. I just can fit it in my workflow. So if it works for you, then have at it.

That depends on the lossless codec. HuffYUV and Lagarith both produce relatively small file sizes compared to even some of the "mostly lossless" codecs such as Sony YUV. I use HuffYUV when I want results fast or Lagarith when I want the smallest file sizes possible in a completely lossless codec. Most of my HuffYUV and Lagarith files are roughly half the size of the same footage that had been converted to Sony YUV.

If on the other hand you take "completely lossless" as to mean "uncompressed", then yes, the file sizes will be large and unwieldy.

First, I've read this thread and searched a bit unregistered and have just registered to dive in a bit deeper.

Perrone,

Could you point me in the direction via threads that discusses "ways around this..." regarding replacing Cineform Neo Scene? I have a 5D MkII and I use Sony Vegas 9 and so far I've done some short clips and rendered to MP4 for youtube and SD DVD and it seems okay, but I'm not confident that longer clips will be okay nor am I confident that all the other aspects are normalized for best quality output. I'm running an i7 920 core a bit overclocked because I use 12gb DDR3 RAM with Windows 7 64bit and editing a 1 minute .mov clip in 64bit Vegas 9 seems okay but it's probably due to the processing. I would like find a way to circumvent Neo Scene if at all possible. I've used Virtual Dub for a very long time so I know it well enough.

Update: Perrone, I found this thread where you stated some suggestions with 7D/5D footage (5D II in my case) as far as NLE editing: http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-eo...ml#post1449181 So if these 1min clips play well in my NLE timeline (Vegas 9) and I'm okay with the raw .mov file, then my next steps would be 2 fold:

1. Render as MP4 for web i.e. youtube (I need to determine the best settings here for downscaling to the most appropriate size etc.). I'm fairly new to HD.
2. Render as a file such as MP2? to create the best quality SD DVD. I would be using TMPGEnc Express or Authoring Works.

Thanks,
Roy

I'm not sure if you're asking me a question here. Any file in the .mov container is going to take a speed hit in Vegas. If you can live with that, then the Avid DnxHD codec is going to get it done for you most likely. If you can't live with that performance hit, then you're going to need something like Cineform.

Another VERY speedy option is to transcode your footage to the MXF container. Vegas Pro 9 now includes a very good 50Mbps 422 codec. It should be sufficient for preserving most of the quality of the 5D footage. I may do a test of it tonight or tomorrow and see what I get. With an i7, that codec should move nearly like SD. Only drawback is that I don't know any way to batch encode to it outside of Vegas. So you'd have to do the conversion inside Vegas.

Yea I was kind-of asking a question, but certainly not very direct. My struggle is piecing all the great info on this forum to make it work for my particular situation. For starters, I need to understand more of the basics instead of diving right in, but I rarely do that. Like I said I’ve used Vegas for awhile and essentially it has been my one-stop-shop to capture DV video from our old Canon Elura 80 Mini-DV (firewire), edit, and then render as MP4 and SD DVD. I feel good about my past MP4 renders as far as decent web Youtube video, but after reading some stuff about SD DVD here, I feel I had flaws and/or errors in my previous SD DVD workflow (specifically in the setting source footage correctly and using the correct codec and its associated settings). In other words the several family DVDs sitting on our shelves may very well play just fine, but most likely not at their optimum settings. Now that I have a 5D MkII and I sold our Elura 80 I want to get a firm grip on the tools and methods to render compliant MP4 for web and SD DVD as far as best practices go.

I still need to install my screen capture utility so I can post some screen shots in my replies and I plan to do this so I can ask specific questions about codec settings etc. For now I’ll ask a few broader questions.

1. Rather than searching, since I know a search here or via Google will answer it, I’ll humor everyone here. What does NLE stand for?
2. My understanding of the driving source to normalize the 5D MKII .mov footage using Neo Scene is to make it more standard for a Windows editor so it plays back normal. Is this the only reason? I know I said my 1min .mov seems to play just fine in Vegas 9 but I wonder what a 30 minute clip(s) would do and I also wonder if I may end up with video/audio sync issues? I need to know whether if I need to convert my .mov files to a more compliant windows standard avi for editing.
3. I tried out MPEG Streamclip and downloaded and installed the Avid DnxHD codec but when I opened my .mov footage and performed the convert to avi and selected this codec (there were several and I’m trying to recall as I’m not at the computer now, but I chose the DnxHD one and then opened the properties and selected the 797? for color, not RGB and then the buggy dropdown window to the resample/sizes… I tried all of the 1080/24 ones, the 10bit one and the 4 or so 8bit ones and none of my players nor Vegas 9 would recognize it and it would only play the sound). This is where I’ll speak to this later and provide screen shots for clearer help. So then I went out to Cineform and grabbed their 7 day trial of Neo Scene and installed it and converted the .mov and it was fast and simple and I recall seeing in the output log something to the extent of converting to 29.97fps and something else to do with color maybe. That resultant avi loaded fine in Vegas 9 and it also seemed to play a bit smoother but I also noticed the gamma seemed higher and the contrast/color a bit more washed out.

Once I determine whether I need or do not need to convert my .mov footage, I’ll then take each step for a proper web render (MP4?) and proper SD DVD render and ask specific questions with screen shots. BTW, I want to use Vegas since I’m comfortable doing my simple edits such as deleting clips, cross-fades, and titles.

Thanks,
Roy

*update...verified forum uses img bbc tags, yet the screen shots didn't resolve...only link...perhaps it's my account status since I'm new...sorry I guess the link will have to do.

Okay first few steps...taking the Cineform Neo Scene route for starters.

Source is HD .mov from 5D MkII

I ran Cineform Neo Scene and selected two short .mov clips and here are a few screen shots:

http://www.motleypixel.com/public/posts/cineform_5D.jpg

Looks good, any changes?

Then I fired up Vegas 9 and went to File>Properties Dialogue then clicked on the yellow folder in the top right and selected one of the resultant Neo Scene avi files and it gave me this source template settings:

http://www.motleypixel.com/public/po...properties.jpg

Leave these as-is or change some things? Starting at the top, should field order be "none progressive"? Pixel format is 8bit...okay not sure what this is about but the Neo Scene log mentions 10bit but the only other two options are 32bit video levels or full range. I assume full-resolution rendering quality should be set to best? Motion blurr and deinterlace method set okay?

Alright this is enough for the first couple of steps...once I get these down, I'll move onto rendering (I'll skip edit since I'm okay with these steps).

Thanks,
Roy

Someone who is familiar with Cineform is going to have to review this stuff for me. BUT, the Vegas stuff is all wrong. That stuff SHOULD be coming in as 1080p, Progressive Frames, Full Resolution Rendering should be best, Deinterlace options should be none. The "Adjust Source" checkbox shouldn't be on either.

As for 8-bit or 32-bit, I always work in 32bit unless I am just cutting. 8-bit gives more speed on the timeline, but if you plan on adding any effects, doing any color balancing or grading, etc, then this should be 32 bit. So it's fine to leave things at 8--bit while you sort out your timeline, get the clips in place, etc. After that, and before you do any finishing work, change to 32 bit.

Hopefully, someone can tell you why your Cineform files are triggering these crazy settings in Vegas.

I had the same question, about the Cineform files and here was my answer

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/cineform...ml#post1463836

So yes manually change it...

Rest follow Perrone's advice, I do :)

I get an error message every time I try and render out with this.

Well I know why the Cineform files show as interlaced thanks to Thomas for providing the link that explains it. So I just need to manually change these settings in Vegas and save the template and make it such that all future source files use these settings.

Perrone, thank you for the help too; just a bit more clarification please. The pixel format defaulted to 8bit but had two other 32bit settings (I forgot and don't have access to the app right now). Do you know what the other two 32bit choices are and what you recommend for final render as MP4 for web and SD DVD? Also, you said it was okay to leave as 8bit while moving clips around but any editing change it to 32bit. So I can simply go to File>Properties and change it to one of the 32bit settings and I'll be okay?

Last, just to cover all settings, what about Motion blur type?

About the only thing I might want to get checked out like you said was my Cineform Neo Scene settings, but it seemed pretty straight forward.

Seems to me that I really need Neo Scene to convert my .mov 5D files otherwise my resultant footage may not look right, correct? I’m just trying to figure out the utility of having Neo Scene.

Next few questions and steps will be screen shots of the render settings for MP4 (web) and SD DVD.

Thanks,
Roy