Shimmering after render to DVD
 

I have really been struggling with this one. I have searched for answers all over the place.

I'm getting some shimmering on church pews and brick only after rendering to SD DVD from 1080p footage.

I shoot in 1080p60. After all edits are done, I render the project to a 1080p avi file. Bring that into VirtualDub and use the resize filter to 720x405 avi. Bring that back into Vegas 11 720p project and render too 720p mpeg for DVDA.

VirtualDub has helped a bunch with the shimmering and flickering I was getting but I'm still getting some.

The only way I've been able to completely get ride of the shimmering, is on the final render to mpeg, change the frame rate to 23.976. This gets ride of all shimmering. Just wondering if I'm sacrificing resolution though. Can't tell a huge difference when viewed on 60" TV but can't really compare side by side so it's hard to tell.

Anyone else having this problem and is there a workable solution?

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

It sounds like aliasing on straight lines (pews and bricks). This is common when down-rezzing from HD to DVD. Some people shoot 720p when going to DVD. If you find a workflow that works, stick to it.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Yeah, after all my research I found that seems to be preferred. Only one of my three cams will do 720p. :(

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

"I shoot in 1080p60. After all edits are done, I render the project to a 1080p avi file. Bring that into VirtualDub and use the resize filter to 720x405 avi. Bring that back into Vegas 11 720p project and render too 720p mpeg for DVDA."
Tim, why all those steps to do a DVD?
Seems to me, that you are re-sizing too many times.
Why not just render to one of the DVD templates in DVD Arch?
If you feed anything to DVD Arch. than mpg2 @ 720x480
it will re-compress it.
What I do is the following: Edit in Vegas Pro 11-12
and before render I apply a sharpen filter set to 0.001
to the video track.
And always get nice results.
Hope this helps you.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Actually, I'm only resizing once. I use VirtualDub to resize the 1080 to 720x480 instead of letting Vegas do it. VirtualDub has helped a bunch with the shimmering or aliasing but still getting some.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Tim,sorry I misunderstood your explanation.
what version of Vegas Pro, you are running? 11 or 12?.
Try to do a test with the sharpen filter applied and see what happens.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Man Jose, this stuff is so confusing. All I've been doing the past two days is trying to figure out the best way to go from 1920x1080p to 720x480 with the least amount of resolution loss and the least amount aliasing.

My conclusion, without spending hundreds, what I'm doing, to my eyes seems to give the best results.

Here's what I have found if anyone is interested.

From a Vegas11 1920x1080p 59.970 project when completed with all editing

Render using Lagarith Codec RGB with all setting same as project properties to avi file

Bring that avi file into VirtualDub and use the resize filter set to 720x405 Lanczos3 filter mode

Bring the 720 file back into Vegas with project settings to match the 720x405 video and render to mpeg
using the DVD Widescreen template changing field order to none and bumping up the 2 pass VBR

Bring that into DVDR to author to DVD

I've tried Disabling resample on the clips and on the 720 avi video....not good. Using the 24p template on the final render takes care of any aliasing but shows a little loss in resolution and doesn't seem as smooth as 29.970, which is to be expected I guess.

After spending hours trying to figure out HCencoder, I never could get it to convert the 59.970 frame rate. I read somewhere during my research that VirtualDub shouldn't be used for frame rate conversion. So that would just add another step to the process to change it before bringing into HC.

So until someone comes up with a step by step guide for dummies, I'll just keep doing it the way I have been. I haven't had any complaints......just trying to please my old self!!

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Tim, actualy you twice resize vertical size - 1080p to 405p and 405p to 480i or 480p.
And you don't use correct color space transformation from 709 to 601 what causes some color shift in DVD.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Ok Juris, thank you. I'll look into that. I did try YUY12 on output to avi but something in the process didn't like it, don't remember what.

Also, VirtualDub does not want to re-size to 720x480 just 405, got to work on that two.

Found this somewhat older tutorial: Bellune Digital Video Services - Tutorials - hd2sd - High Quality Scaling From HD to SD

I'm gonna try and figure it out sometime in the near future.

Been gettin some pm help too, thanks for that!

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Tim.

I am making a wild guess here prompted by your references to shooting on "1080 60P" and only one of your cams shooting "720P". If I am wrong here please ignore my following comments.

Perhaps tell us what your cameras that shoot 1080 60P are. If they are Sony Z1/FX1 or other Sony models of around that time, they only shoot interlaced (1080 60i) not 1080 60P. Please also tell us what your 720P camera is. My guess is it may be of the JVC GY-HD*** camera family.

As an easy first step before you start answering questions about camera types etc., --- try to find a preference in Vegas which suggests "de-interlace". De-interlacing may likely remove the "shimmer" or "jitter" on hard horizontal edges but maybe not all of it. I don't know how you find that option in Vegas.

In Premiere, right-clicking on the clip after it has been placed on the timeline prompts a dropdown list.

One of the menu choices offered is "field options". Vegas may be set up similarly. If it is, select "de-interlace" for all clips.

If this works for you, then to preserve that bit of extra quality you might examine the Lanczos3 filter option to see if that has a de-interlace function. It might be worth converting the capture files from all cameras to de-interlaced before final edit in Vegas.

Others here may prompt you in this better than I can and in fewer more sensible words too.

There is another issue with interlaced footage and exporting to DVD for display on interlaced television screens, - "field order". You may find reference to "upper" and "lower". It may be best to export as progressive if your DVD players and displays can cope with it.

My guess is that some of your end-users may have older DVD players and displays. If some recepients of your DVDs cannot replay progressive DVDs, then you will need to enquire as to which "field order" is correct for your country's broadcast standards.

The incorrect field order for exports can cause an ugly image that is very jaggy on motion. Vertical edges look like a munted comb.

I suspect that by using the 24P preset, the software has been forced into de-interlacing the troublesome clips as you have observed an improvement.

De-interlacing however reduces the apparent sharpness of 1080 interlaced footage. That observation I think you also made. In effect, de-interlacing strips every second line. It gives something back by taking some sampling from the stripped lines where it can where there is not much movement within the image.

Editing software has moved on a lot since the Sony Z1/FX1 and the JVC GY-HD*** camera families with their separate HDV1 and HDV2 schemes. At the time however, the only practical way of editing mixed HDV source footage was to convert camera capture files to a common codec. Consumer-level computers then lacked the horsepower to edit from multiple codecs.

For ease of editing and conserving the performance of my editing computer, I still prefer to convert my vision to a common type and edit in that.

Pretty much the only game in town was Cineform CFHD in its guises of AspectHD and ProspectHD, which functioned as plug-ins for the popular editing softwares of the time. So far as I recall ( maybe wrongly ) Cineform licenced the Lanczos application for converting interlaced footage ( i ) to progressive ( P ). It was I believe at the time as good as it got.

Nowadays, most editing software and computers can cope with multiple sources in a single project and export them in whatever form you want - mostly.

I hope this is helpful and does not send you into a dead-end. Heed the comments of others who may be prompted by my wordstuff above.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Bob, the two cameras that shoot 60p are Canon XA-20 and Panasonic AC90. The GH2 is the 720p cam. I'm trying to stay progressive all the way through to DVD.

The shimmering is not that bad really. On a 12 minute highlight video I only saw two scenes that bothered me.

Thanks for jumping in....all help is very much appreciated!!

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

I shoot 60p.

I set the clip properties to Disable resample and Undersample rate to 0.500 to get 29.970 fps progressive and the project properties also to 29.970 fps for NTSC instead of 59.940 double NTSC. Deinterlaced method is set for none. I set the sharpen filter for light with the broadcast filter set to lenient to make sure the video is 16 to 235.

I render using the Sony mp4 at 5,000,000 bps instead of using an intermediate and HandBrake for online videos. And just Main Concept with settings of progressive for DVD's.

I spent many hours messing with the VirtualDub method and was never really happy with the results. The results were good but not real good probably because I was working with the type of progressive videos I have.

I did get great results using the VirtualDub method with interlaced videos.

The big problem resizing in Vegas seems to be a lot more with interlaced videos than progressive videos.

One other BIG problem I had with the VirtualDub method is the excessive amount of time it takes to do it all!!! Hurry up and wait and wait and wait! It gets so old and unproductive!

I have found that resizing in Vegas using progressive along with my above settings gives me great results!

Why use a method that takes seemingly forever instead?

Note: I am not using my NLE computer so out of memory I typed the above. Ummm memory??? LOL!

I hope this helps.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Handbrake!

It uses the best in class Lanczos rescale method.
It uses the best in class Yadif deinterlace method.
It encodes to the best in class x264 codec.
It has a reasonable GUI, a reasonable worflow, some job management, and was recently upgraded to include the common h.264 standards of Profile & Level.
It's free!

Nothing against Virtualdub, AVISynth, & etc., but Handbrake is very, very good at h.264 encoding.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

+1 handbrake

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

I do not think Handbrake will be of any help for rendering to DVD.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

That was gonna be my question Danny, what Leslie and Seth are using HB for. All I've ever herd about HB is how good it is for web base content.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Because I start with 60p and go to 720p for online I now use the Sony mp4 at 5,000,000 bps instead of HB and all the time it takes to multi-render for it. Multi-render includes the rendering in HB.

While quite possible to get lower bit rates with HB which I used to do the detail quality does suffer at those lower rates when there is a lot of movement which I have on my videos.

As for DVD, starting with 60p means there is no de-interlacing needed and I also avoid the problems and time consumption all that takes to do.

So I get great results just using Vegas and Main Concept.

If you are shooting interlaced then the slow method with VirtualDub is the best way to go. I used the AVI with the Sony codec for the first render and then the Go-Pro for the second render from VirtualDub and then finally to mpeg with Vegas. I did do something different than what others suggested in that I had VirtualDub resize to 720x480 instead of 720x405. Doing it this way I let Vegas do the aspect ratio for 16x9 and make the video DVD Arch compliant. Also check to not crop the video. I start with the Sony AVI because it would give me the best quality. It is slower to work with but since the whole thing was slow anyway and quality is the goal, I went with it.

The final results were great.

I really love the time progressive saves me from having to deal with all of that extra work and time needed for interlaced!

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Ack. I'd been following the thread from the beginning, but had forgotten the desired output is MPEG2/DVD.

Quite right, unless one wishes to create a hi-bitrate MP4 as an intermediate file (to be avoided if possible), HB isn't really a good tool for DVD output.

Strange that Lanczos scaling methods for MPEG2 aren't more accessible.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Danny, have you tried hd2sd - Avisynth/VirtualDub with your 60p conversion to DVD?

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

My MUCH faster workflow that I am using now gives me great results that I get nothing but complements about from those who get the DVD's so I have no desire to mess with anything else such as Avisynth/VirtualDub to DVD. I noticed that the workflow suggestions I can find are for interlaced instead of progressive videos.

For me it is just one more way to take a lot more time to get the same (Visual) results. Note: Visual not necessarily actual.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Am I understanding this right, you render to mpeg, for DVD, from your finished project's timeline?

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

"Am I understanding this right, you render to mpeg, for DVD, from your finished project's timeline?"

With those settings, Yes!

And I love the time it saves me!

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Ok Danny, I tried with all settings and it was fast but the aliasing was un-watchable. I double checked everything but there's got to be something else to it, I know there's no way your videos are turning out the way this test did.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

I wonder if the differences could be from our source videos. I have the Sony HDR-PJ710 which shoots Progressive segmented Frames which is like shooting interlaced but every line is the same instead of different.

Progressive segmented frame - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to them, "Technically, the segments are equivalent to interlaced fields, but unlike native interlaced video, there is no motion between the two fields that make up the video frame: both fields represent the same instant in time. This technique allows for a progressive picture to be processed through the same electronic circuitry that is used to store, process and route interlaced video."

If your camera(s) is/are shooting progressive differently then that might be the problem?

Just a wild guess...

Do make sure that de-interlace is set to none in the project settings as well. Also, with some videos it is best to not use the sharpen filter or use it with the minimum amount of sharpening.

Maybe if we had access to a few minutes of your original video file you are working with and at the point where you are having the most problems we can play with it and figure it all out.

Meanwhile and off-topic, I need to get ready to head out to get some groceries before the snow starts and it gets super cold! Brrrrrr.

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Thanks Danny for your help.

I am putting this to rest. Using hd2sd, VirtualDub/Avisynth and HCencoder has completely removed all shimmering/aliasing. That was the purpose of this thread. Agreed it does take longer. I can see if someone is doing this everyday it quite possibly could be too much.

Final updated workflow:

From a Vegas11 1920x1080p 59.970 project when completed with all editing

Render to 1920x1080p 29.970 avi using Lagarith Codec YV12 changing project properties to 29.970

Bring that avi file into VirtualDub with script: hd2sd("video.avi",interlaced=false, NR=7, GrapeSmootherAmount=20, FFT3DAmount= 128, OutputColorSpace="YV12") setting VD to fast re-compress, Lagarith codec set to YV12

Bring that 720x480avi file into HCencoder and render to m2v for import to DVDA

Using free tools, IMO, this is as good as HD 60p to SD is gonna get.

Anyone see anything wrong with this please let me know. The final results are very good though, no aliasing at all, sharp, no blurring, smooth as silk with nice smooth slow motion.

Thanks to everyone that has responded!

Tim

Re: Shimmering after render to DVD
 

Being that you got the results you want, I say stick to it.

The goal is to find the workflow that gets the job done. Preferably the fastest one possible.

I spent many hours finding what works for me.

I am glad you got the help you needed! I hope you can eventually find a faster workflow. Maybe a miracle will happen and the next version of Vegas will finally get it right?

I did some reading and I noticed that those who use other NLE's have the same problems.