DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Two years ago if I captured 1080p with the 5D mk2 it was a nightmare to create a SD DVD disk - first it looked terrible unless you followed a cookbook of steps which involved using VirtualDub and re rendering afterward etc.
With Sony Pro 10 or Studio 10 Platinum is it any easier? Or is it still a task to get a great looking DVD from HD capture?

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

it's still a pita - and probably will be evermore since you're trying to get a pint in a half pint pot....

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

awww shucks - was hoping technology had solved this in the last couple of years. I've got my recipe! ;-)

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

I'm not an expert but I do know about sharp looking DVD's. I can honestly say that up to now, using Sony VMS platinum HD 10. I have edited HDV videos and using DVD Artitecht have burnt DVD's from them and when playing the DVD's back using an upscaling player and a HD TV have been very suprised how good the image was. In fact viewers have remarked that there was very little difference in the quality between the SD DVD's and the blu-ray discs. Best part it only took about 30 mins to burn a 10 min. video.

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Roy,

That's only because you are shooting 1440x1080 HDV which has a Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) of 1.3333:1 - close to that of 16:9 widescreen 576i PAL SD. The 5D Mk2, on the other hand, shoots in 1920x1080 with a 1:1 (square pixel) PAR. That PAR is too far apart from the 1.4545:1 ratio used in 576i PAL widescreen or even the 1.2121:1 PAR of 480i NTSC widescreen. Vegas' own encoder and those of most other NLEs by themselves do a poor job of resizing square-pixel material to a format that uses non-square pixels. Severe artifacts will occur in this type of conversion simply because the NLEs' own encoders do not resize the pixel shape correctly.

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Randall. I take on board what you say, and acknowledge your expertise. However, being in the movie business for 60 odd years, I believe, that although quality of the image is important, the actual content of the film or video is more important.

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Hi Randall

Actually my older HMC70 cameras used to produce an AVCHD file of 1440x1080 with the usual 1.333 PAR... the newer cameras now shoot 1920x1080 with square pixels so the end result despite the "bigger" picture is a bit poorer!!!

Pity there wasn't a solution that was simple!!! Like Roy I like to rely on content as there is no real "one NLE" solution

Chris

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Hi Guys

I actually decided to do a short test with 1920x1080i video using different conversion formats and then checked the results on a DVD PAL Widescreen

All clips were rendered to Main Concept MPEG2 using the DVD PAL Template (16:9, 25fps, lower field first and a variable bitrate...default settings)

(1) Clip 1 - I rendered the Panasonic MTS file direct from the camera ..chose the correct properties in Vegas 9 and then also checked the de-interlace method as interpolate.

(2) Clip 2 - I transcoded the MTS file from the camera with MainConcept's Transcoder from Panasonic directly down to Widescreen AVI 720x576 and chose the correct properties and rendered the same as the above.

(3) Clip 3 - I converted the MTS file in NewBlue Upshift to HDV but still 1920x1080 at 50mbps but also told the program to make the file progressive so I could leave the de-interlace setting in Vegas to none....chose the properties Vegas wanted and again rendered the same as above.

(4) Clip 4 - I converted the MTS file in Cineform to their huge AVI file ...in Vegas again I let Vegas decide on the file properties but set the de-interlacing again and rendered as before.

OK all were written to a DVD and played on my 32" HD TV and watched several times....First of all my wife could not tell the difference between them but if I looked pretty hard I could see a tiny loss in definition on the clip that was converted to SD before rendering....it was very hard to spot and unless someone was looking for it they wouldn't have even seen it.

Just for interest I use Upshift purely because my little Duocore cannot handle big AVCHD files so they are converted to HDV but made progressive and also kept at 1920x1080.

Has anyone else done a test like this???? Apart from filming a perfectly lit resolution chart do you really think that the average person can actually tell any difference in something like a wedding where the content is being watched rather than technical issues ??????

I would gladly welcome any suggestions that have a VISIBLE difference on a DVD !!! Sure the image is absolutely stunning during preview as you are looking at 1920x1080 images not 1024x 576 ones ....however I have yet to see any "method" of HD to SD that sweeps away the rest....

Please tell me if you have anything that does make SD look like HD and is on a normal DVD!!!

Chris

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Have been battling these issues for years now and finally have found something that works pretty well with 1920x1080i footage from XDCam HD, EX1's etc. The SD widescreen DVD's I am now making are by far and away the best I have made to date from HD 50-mbit 422 MXF files. 35-mbit 420 files also work well.

The software is Mainconcept's 'Reference', not cheap, but even picky clients have been happy with the results. Try the demo download. It's watermarked but well worth a try. I'm PAL based so use the MPEG-2 DVD preset with these alterations. Check the '2 Pass' box and under PQ select '31 Slowest/Best' [default is 16 Balanced]. Under Advanced Settings set Target Bitrate to 8000 [default is 6000]. Leave Maximum bitrate at 9500. Under Auto GOP Placement select 'SCD Fast' [default is SCD Refined]. This forces a new GOP strat on scene changes. Lastly set Noise Sensitivity to '1'. If you have good clean footage this will give you the cleanest encode. Try these as a starting point and see how you go;

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Chris, if you mean Reference Engine: MainConcept, you weren't kidding when you said "not cheap".

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

I find TMPGenc T4 or T5 gives the best downconvert and encode for DVD. I mainly use Edius to edit so then would export a HQ HD file for TMPGenc to use but in Vegas a lossless HD export also works in the same way for the1920x1080 AVCHD files I have now. I also use 2 pass VBR with 10 bit precision and highest motion detection. With playback on upscaling DVD player the picture is almost as good as the Bluray. You can see the difference in fine detail in large sections of colour but the average viewer would not see much difference. This approach is a lot better than Vegas or Edius encode from their timelines.

Ron Evans

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Thanks Chris

I guess the trial version is worth a go if it's that good!!!! Wow!! I see what you mean Mike...get a fairly good camera for that price too!!!

Excuse the ignorance but would one export the timeline from Vegas as an MXF file??? and then encode to MPEG2 in reference.

It is a huge pity to edit in HD with pristine footage only to see the end result on DVD not the same quality!

It would be so easy to just burn a BD for my brides but players in the West seem to be scarce in homes!!

Chris

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Hi

You can achieve something similar to MainConcept using Sony Vegas. MainConcept reference design has a de-twitter filter and possibly a blur for interlaced sources that gets applied during the resizing, the actual MPEG encoding engine in the Reference design is exactly the same as the MainConcept encoder in Vegas, don't waste your cash on it. I find the MainConcept reference rather lacking in detail with a fuzzyness about it.

Try this, from the Sony timeline, export your footage as Sony YUV using the PAL DVD Widescreen pixel ratio settings, make sure under project settings you have selected "Best". Now bring this back to a new project, right click the clip and tick "Reduce Interlace Flicker", then export it using the DVD encoder, up the average bit rate to say 9000, all quality settings to high, and make sure the project settings are set to Best. See how that looks, this will give you an output very similar to the MainConcept one.

After lots of messing around I find there are 2 extremes of HD to SD. One is you have sharp footage but this will show interlacing artefacts/stepping/combing over fine detail, plus some line twitter over horizontals. Or you can have footage without artefacts/stepping/combing with next to no line twitter, but the footage will have much less resolution. You can't have both. Everyone's different methods simply move the slider in between these two extremes to suit their own tastes and types of footage.

For viewing on a computer, the sharper with artefacts end of the scale looks worse as the artefacts show up very clearly, but on a TV, when sat back watching, those artefacts are better handled by most TV de-interlacers plus being sat back you hardly notice them, but you can see the extra resolution obtained by that method. The Mainconcept type approach produces fuzzy but free from artefacts good for a computer, but when watched on a TV, it does lack detail.

The best method I have found so far is using AVISynth and using a Spline36 resize after a smooth de-interlace. This is very near the end of sharp footage without artefacts, but looks great on a TV.

If your final footage is for a TV, don't judge the output by watching it on your LCD monitor is my advice as well.

Regards

Phil

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Thanks Phil

Ok at the moment I run all my AVCHD files thru NewBlue Upshift and save them as MPEG2 progressive files at 50mbps. I am therefore bringing in m2t files onto the timeline (My little DuoCore struggles with the MTS files from the camera)

So am I correct in saying that I need to do an intermediate render out to Sony YUV using the PAL Widescreen template and then imort each clip again into a new Vegas project???

When I render the second time do I simply render the Sony YUV file out to the usual MainConcept MPEG2 and again use the PAL DVD Widescreen template ???? (but enable reduce interlace flicker and increase the VBR to 9000) ????

So you say that using Vegas this way will still produce the end result as fuzzy rather than sharp????

I agree $4500 is a little harsh to have slightly better video..all my projects are weddings so the end product is always DVD. Admittedly I have never had a bride complain about quality and most own decent LCD or Plasma TV's at least 42" or larger too!!

I'll certainly try a test clip using the double render and see if the extra effort is worth it!!

Great advice

Chris

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Hi

The Mainconcept reference encoder uses the Mainconcept SDK, this SDK (for MPEG2/4) is the same as supplied with all software that uses Mainconcept encoders, that includes Sony MovieStudio for £40.00! Mainconcept's main revenue is from selling their SDKs and not the reference encoder, which is simply so over-priced it is untrue.

What the Reference encoder is doing is better resizing and removal of interlacing artefacts before it sends the footage to the encoder (although at a cost to detail), however if you feed the Reference encoder progressive footage directly, as will happen with your de-interlaced source, it will bypass any of the filtering for these artefacts as it just does a resize under the assumption it is true progressive footage, then extracts the fields, so it will probably look little different to Sony Vegas default output.

What I would do is give this a go:

1) Export your finished edit by Render As... then select Save as type as Windows AVI, select PAL DV Widescreen template, then click Custom.

2) Field order needs to be Top field first, pixel aspect should be 1.4568, Video format select Sony YUV Codec. Under the Project tab video rendering quality should be Best. Save it out.

3) Now bring this back to a new project, right click the now single clip and tick "reduce interlace flicker", then this time render out as MPEG2 DVD, check the Project is set to Best again, and under Video make sure a tick is in Prioritize quality over speed, Video Quality slider all the way to High, and I'd go for Variable bit rate, with a maximum of 9500 and average 9000.

The reason I would recommend doing it this way is the "reduce flicker" has little effect on HD footage, which I assume is because it applies the filter before the resize takes place, but the interlacing roughness is created after the resize when the SD footage is turned into interlaced. So by these separate steps the "reduce interlace flicker" is forced to act on the SD footage.

Whatever you do the end result is never as good as what you might expect or would see from commercial DVDs. This is because commercial DVDs are normally from progressive sources, and the initial capture can be made at the correct resolution from the film, not to mention they will encode scene by scene on very expensive equipment.

The problem is to get to DVD interlaced resolutions from HD interlaced, it has to be de-interlaced to 50fps, then resized to non-square pixels, then those 50fps are re-interlaced to 25i by taking odd lines from frame 1 and even lines from frame 2 and so on, but this isn't really interlace footage, by now its more pseudo interlaced. Those fields when turned into progressive again on our TV or computer screens just rattle around inside one another making it hard to be de-interlaced cleanly, so we either get very rough and artefact strewn footage, or these artefacts are essentially smudged out by removing detail giving cleaner footage without the artefacts but with less resolution.

You can see this by a quick test. Take some of your progressive 50fps footage to the time-line, right click on it and set the sample rate to 0.5, this gives you true 25fps and avoids Sony Vegas merging 2 frames to get 1 which doesn't look good! Then go straight to MPEG2 DVD but select progressive, then watch this back. It should look pretty good, except for stuttery movement due to the lower frame rate.

Regards

Phil

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Hi Phil

Thanks...I have just one issue...when I save the timeline to AVI using the Sony YUV Codec it saves the file perfectly but when I bring it back into Vegas it looks like a 4:3 clip???? When I saved the PAR was definately 1.4568 yet the image seems to be almost square????

We are rendering to a 720x576 file here are we not??? or should we be rendering out to the same size AVI as the source???? It defaults to 720x576 but seems to ignore the PAR for some reason ...quality is great on the AVI but as I said it has 4:3 dimensions in preview with black pillars each side.

BTW : I'm actually shooting 1920x1080i and have been stripping the interlacing in Upshift..I can also leave the converted footage as interlaced if you think it's better to do so???

I must be doing something wrong here?????

Thanks for any help

Chris

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Chris, when you bring that clip back into Vegas, what if you manually change the PAR back to 1.4568?

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Hi

Sorry yes missed out some details. I'd set the project settings to DV Widescreen PAL but keep top field first, and then when you right click on the clip set it as suggested by Edward Troxel, this will give you the correct preview as well.

The AVI will probably look good in the 4:3 aspect ratio as this is keeping with the square pixels, it's when you stretch out those square pixels to get a 16:9 aspect ratio that the interlacing doesn't quite match up giving rise to some jagged edges etc.

As for the starting out point, you need to turn interlaced to progressive in order to resize, so if you hadn't done it, Sony Vegas would have, so I'd continue with what you are doing. It is possible to take the top field as a picture of 1920x540 and resize that to 720x288, then take the bottom field and do the same, then weave them back into an interlaced 720x576 field using AVISynth in order to avoid the progressive step which can in itself add artefacts, but believe me, this looks a whole lot worse.

Regards

Phil

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Hi Phil

Thanks!! That works fine if you right click the clip and change the PAR from 1.096 to 1.4568.

Thanks to Edward too!!!

The only thing seems like Vegas 9 doesn't have the prioritize quality over speed??? Video is set to max and rendering to best.

I run off a couple of clips and dump them on a DVD tomorrow (so I can compare a render direct from the timeline and one using your method on a TV) In Aussie here it's sorta coming close to bedtime!!!!

Many thanks for your expert guidance!!! I'll post my comments in the morning once I have viewed the results....it would be great if there is a marked difference!!!

Chris

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

I've had good luck with TMPG also. Great value for $99. I used to go the Virtual Dub route but felt it was too many hoops to jump through and I didn't like the user interface of VD.

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Chris H. Yes I just use the rendered out MXF files from the time line in Reference. BTW. You can buy the MainConcept codecs individually... not all $4.5K's worth! I just love it for it's simplicity and speed. Doing weekly TV shows doesn't leave me much time for experimentation so a quick turn around for the DVD releases is big for me.

Phil L. Very interested in your approach and method. A rainy holiday day here in Sydney and nothing on so will give your Vegas treatments a go.

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Hi Chris and Phil

Thanks for the responses ..OK I have done a test using 1920x1080i footage from a wedding last weekend that went thru Upshift to make it Progressive and 50mbps MPEG2 m2t files that look pretty good on the monitor.

I made two test MPEG2 clips ..the first was a direct render to MPEG2 using the DVD PAL Widescreen template...the second I first rendered to an AVI using the Sony YUV codec ...dropped it into a new project (and had to correct the aspect too) I did all the suggestions too Phil and then rendered that out to MPEG2

I put both clips on a DVD running sequentially and watch them at both normal seating distance from the TV (32" LCD) and I also sat real close as well on a second run.

Gosh!! It's really hard to tell if one is better than the other...and normal distance I really couldn't tell at all and close up the 2nd clip (with the intermediate AVI) might have been a fraction sharper especially on closeups of the groom and groomsmen.
I honestly have to say that I don't think that the average viewer could spot and difference at all, especially considering that they wouldn't be looking for sharpness etc etc but appreciating the video and listening to the audio.

I have to look at the fact that I will need to render each edit twice and I probably have around 16 clips total in a wedding so that is extra time involved. It's hard to watch a soft image directly after you have been at the computer watching the same footage at 1920x1080 resolution so again it already looks fuzzy on the TV..... Chris Y ????? Would you say that your methods would allow the average viewer to say "Wow!!! that is so clear and crisp" ????

I'll wait for results once Chris Y has tried a few clip using Phil's method....maybe I was looking just for sharpness and expecting razor sharp edges from an upscaled PAL SD clip????

All this effort, of course is still greatly appreciated guys!!!!!

Chris

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

i just have to throw in my luddite's 2cnts worth....

i've followed this thread, and many more of similar ilk on a number of forums, and even tried quite a number of workflow suggestions that promised a 'real' hd experience in sd...

quite frankly i find it all a bit of a black cat in a dark room - sd isn't hd, and never will be.
going from hdv (pal) to sd dvd via vegas's normal route (and even from avchd source material), gives me results that are almost indistinguishable from some of the most convoluted workflows listed and experimented with.

at the end of the day this is NOT broadcast material we're talking about, and i would say that among the many end viewers of my work there's probably not a single one who might even / ever question whether the pics could be even sharper.

i think a lot of time seems to be spent nowadays in searching for the perfect picture, regardless of content. rather like watching 'the human planet' with it's endless, breath-taking photography and meaningless chatter passing as narration. after a while one simply tires of pretty pictures, but NEVER of an interesting story.

shields up.... ;-)

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Hi

I quite agree, it's a black art and I've not found any method that produces great interlaced SD from HD, just methods that trade off one negative for another, even then it depends on the footage.

Going from HD progressive acquired footage to SD progressive you can get fantastic results producing something akin to commercial DVDs, it's just that with interlaced HD made progressive, resized then made interlaced again just doesn't work that well as the interlaced fields will not knit back together cleanly.

Regards

Phil

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Who says it's not going to broadcast? I do a lot of DRTV, most of the world is still SD, so this stuff matters to me.

And for a lot of us, there *is* a major difference between what Vegas yields from it's MPEG2 and what you get from something with a better scaling engine like TMPG.

But if staying in Vegas meets your requirements, then by all means hang with it. But for some of us, it just doesn't look that great so we look to other programs to get us where we want to be image wise.

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Hey Leslie

No need for shields at all from my side!!

I agree entirely..if you want pristine HD video then use a BD player with a BD disk ..end of story. I really don't think there is any "magic formula" to make a downsized image look as good ..no matter what you do!!

I put a post up on a local Ozzie Wedding Forum to get the answer from the horse's mouth (the bride's themselves) and the general concensus seems to be that they don't really care and when hubby has insisted on watch HD they say that they really can't see the difference!!! ("Maybe it's my eyes" was one comment!!) The bottom line is that most viewers tend to be following the storyline, admiring the bridesmaids and shedding a few tears along the way and generally enjoying the re-living of magical moments. They are not squinting at the screen 6" away muttering that the resolution could be better or the editor might have done a better done with the colour matching. It's all content related and if you do a good job on the content and audio, any technical aspects are thrown out the window.

I have been shooting now for 3 seasons in HD and supplying every bride with an SD DVD and never once have quality issues ever arisen..even when the light was suspect ... I have done photoshoots in mid-day sun at 40 degrees with the harshest possible shadows and the sort of conditions that we would never shoot in unless we had to....and what did the bride have to say??? " Chris, I was absolutely blown away when I watched the photoshoot video..it was awesome!!!"

Sometimes I truly think we are way too technical for our own good but really Phil, Chris and others your efforts were indeed still gratefully appreciated!!!

You end result may look like a "crap shoot" to you but to the viewer it's an Oscar winner..so what's wrong with that????

Chris

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Mr Wand! You are getting as cynical as me :-) How are you?

Just tried Phil's method in Vegas 10. MainConcept PAL DVD, 9000 av, 9500 peak, 2 pass VBR from 16:9 SD YUV .avi with reduce interlace flicker which was rendered upper field as suggested. Rendered the same file in MC Reference using the PAL DVD settings with the noise reduction and SCD set as per my previous post. Sorry to say Phil the MC Reference mpeg kills the Vegas one in all of the following areas. Sharpness, aliasing and noise on either the PC or TV. The MC Reference DVD is well above anything I can get out of Vegas, Edius, TMPG and numerous other mpeg encoders including the much vaunted CinemaCraft encoder.

The end user answer I guess is for Chris in WA and Phil in London to to Sendspace.com me some 250~300MB HD files which they are familiar with and let me encode them. I can then upload them as MPEG-2 files so they can download and compare results with what they are getting and comment back to the forum. Have to restrict it to just a couple of examples in case I get swamped with requests.

Sendspace<dot>com will take uploads of up to 300MB free of charge. If Chris and Phil want to try this experiment just upload some HD files I will then download, process and re-upload them as MPGEG-2 files. Before uploading you will need to contact me first for my email address. I will also need your email addresses for the MPEG uploads. I can be contacted via email through:

CYV Productions, Chris Young Camera Crews - Equipped Cameramen/Videographers Australia - New South Wales/ACT - film tv production

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

I started this particular thread and of course SD won't look as good as HD. My experience was that SD converted from HD 1080p looked terrible - worse than any video I'd ever seen!
I finally found this recipie but was wondering where I could do it less painfully. (burning BluRay is a piece of cake!)
Video: HD to SD DVD Workflow
*******************
1. 1920x1080p .MOV from camera (Canon 5dmk2)
2. Cineform HDLink
Maintian source frame format
High Quality
Render to 1920x1080p .AVI
3. In Vegas bring in the .AVI file to the timeline
4. Edit video, titles, filters ect to the movie
5. Render from Vegas to file using format: Video for Windows (*.avi) using the Lagarith (create a Custom template) Keep the video full size 1920x1080p Pixel ar of 1.000
6a. In VirtualDub, pull in this AVI file and set resize filter added to Lanczos scaler to 854x480 (match origianl AR)
6b. In VirtualDub, also choose Compression for output to Lagarith (or HuffYUV AVI though I've not testing this)
6c. In VirtualDub still - now save the AVI file
7. Open Vegas up and pull in this new 854x480 .avi file (did notice that sound did not make it back from VirtualDub in the 854x480 .avi ??) So added sound from an earlier file.
8. Rendered out to MPEG2 by Selecting the Make DVD option from the Render Movie screen.
9. Select send to DVD Architect at the prompt.
10. DVD Architect opens up with the one file as the one chapter.
11. Prepared and burned the DVD to a Memorex DVD-R.
12. Tested the DVD in my older DVD player.
13. Loaded great, colors looked a little over saturated from the original. Sound sounded great and was synced.

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

I just tried a test of Main Concept Reference V2.2 from the WEB site with the trial MPEG2 pack. I edit in Edius mainly so my starting point was a 40 min ski holiday Canopus HQ fine file. 1920x1080 60i NTSC.

I had already encoded/downconverted with TMPGenc T4 so used the same settings in Main Concept so that I could compare like for like. Settings were video VBR 2 pass, max bit rate 8000, average bit rate 7000, 10bit precision.

There is very little difference that I can see. Honestly I prefer TMPGenc. The TMPGenc has more sparkle.

At 5 times the price I would like it to be startlingly different. The difference to TMPGenc is not obvious to me whereas the export/downconvert from Vegas or Edius is clearly inferior.

Playback was from an upscaling PS3 to a Panasonic 1920x1080 plasma over HDMI and a Sony BDP-S360 to a Sony 240hz 40" LCD again upscaled over HDMI.


Ron Evans

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Hi Guys

When doing commercial stuff like weddings I also need to consider time!! If a particular method makes the end DVD look say, 10% better but takes me an extra 10 hours in the workflow then it's hardly worth the effort!!!

ChrisY??? Thanks for the offer but I have an aquaintance that says he has Version 5 of MC that works well for him. I'll pop over with a file and see what the result is???? Would you suggest that I export the timeline to MXF for this test???? If so, any particular setting that need to be adhered to????

I'll let you know the results later as I have a whole bunch of Realty shoots to do today!!

Thanks

Chris

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

TMPG adds a little time to your workflow versus staying purely in Vegas. But in Vegas I always render the audio separately -- not so in TMPG. If a person is happy with the image quality with a 100% Vegas workflow, then no need to change. If you don't want to spend, but want better quality, Virtual Dub is your boy. If you want to spend a little for better quality the $99 TMPG is your ticket. If you have more money, Cineform has solutions and it goes up from there.

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

I guess what I am saying is that everything we do for the networks is shot in XDCam HD, edited in XDCam HD and finally delivered as a program to the network as a 422 50-mbit program master on an XDCam disc. The last time I tried TMPGEnc it could not accept a 50-mbit MXF file as an input file. I have had great results out of TMPGEnc but not when I had to go through an intermediate step just to be able to input a file. If that has changed I will give it another go. What I need is the minimum of transcoding loss and what most certainly works best with these files with only one step with minimal loss to MPEG-2 is MainConcept's Reference. It supports the following codecs.

■Blu-ray Disc MPEG-2
■XDCAM HD
■XDCAM EX
■XDCAM IMX [SD]
■DVD
■Video CD
■Super Video CD
■HDV

Everyone’s workflow is different and as the bulk of the footage we work with comes from the XDCam and EX range of cameras it works well for us. Admittedly not super cheap at $510 but over a thirty odd show run more than worth its price. In the end what works best for each individual's workflow is the best answer. Happy encoding!

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

Missing from this entire discussion is the CRT TV. They are still plentiful. Lots of homes in the world have them.

I think if you send these tests from a standard (non-upscaling ) DVD player to a CRT television, you will get very different results. Most will look really bad.

John

Re: DVD Rendering From HD Still a Crap Shoot?
 

In my previous post I said how the audiance thought there was little difference (for them) between a blu-ray disc and and SD when using an upscaler and an HD TV. Since then I have invited an audiance to view the same SD videos on a 6 foot screen played with an SD cheap player through an SD projector.
Without exception they thought the images were very good. (obviously the images weren't as good as a Blu-ray projected image) but the point is, without anything to compare with, the audiance were very happy with the result. It goes to show that all the striving for perfection by certain video producers is not always appreciated by audiances. Actually I have never been asked for Blu-ray copies when giving the client the choice.