When you did the comparison, you viewed the test footage in SD how?

Both camera convertion and Vegas converstion was both delivered onto DVD

I now have 3 20 second shots. One from down conert, one from HD Connect and the other from direct transfer of HD to computer and then to cineform in vegas. Am putting them on DVD as I speak. Kind of crappy shot so to speak...since it was done in my computer room and basically a very slow zoom in on some colorfull boxes. Should help shed some light so to speak. Will post my sad eyes findings...

John -

When I watch the 3 videos on my TV (dvd) I notice the lettering on the boxes starts flickering. When I pause it looks like each line of the sentence on the box is going every which way (horizontal S shape). This happens with every clip but definately more pronounced with the Connect HD and Cineform in Sony. The downconvert is very subtle but still there. To me, this shows the connect HD and Cineform to show more detail in the shot which is a good thing. My question...what is causing this? I am using 60i and I have a DLP HD tv which is based on 720P but can do 1080I. Not sure on my dvd player. Could this be a tv/player issue or something else? I wil say that I use VLC player to show my shots on my computer and it does not show up there. Maybe it is in the dvd process as well, but I play the dvd on my comp without this issue.

Michael, you're not alone. I too am experience flickering on my final dvd using Connect HD. A sales rep once told me thats the norm for videos..."cannot help". Can someone shed some light on this??

One procedure which you already may be using...

Scaling (changing video resolution) is one of the processes that benefits from going into "custom" in the rendering dialog and changing render quality from "good" to "best".

This would apply to any render to SD from HD or HDV.

Maybe I am to meticulous when it comes to videos..but I yeild the same results. Also it takes longer to render when its on "best"

Already have it set to best. I have read and re read everything in these groups about quality and thoughts on hd to sd conversion. I have gone over everthing again and again, but the basic items are not it. Best was an obvious one...I need something that I am missing here. I really do appreciate the responses, but it is something not obvious.

Thanks again guys

I am realy leaning towards player now. The dvd will play on my computer without the flickering...on my home dvd player it has the word/phrase flickering etc as mentioned. Either way...very frustrating. Is it the camera? not sure. Vegas? not sure. DVD authoring? Well...hmmm...possible, but why would it play fine on the computer via dvd and not the player? If it is the player...what now. So I have to find out what everyone dvd player is before sending? LOL...I am not actually that uptight, but I think it is something minor, yet not obvious, that I am missing. I have the Best setting, no blend unless Progressive, etc...

HDV to SD/DVD answers and workflow
 

I just finished two big projects that I shot in HDV with the final output to DVD. I searched the forum and a found a little information to use as a starting point for my projects. After a little experimentation here is what works best for me with the best quality (my opinion only).

1. Using the HVR-A1U, I recorded in HDV 1080/60i mode.
2. I used Cineform to capture and convert to a Cineform intermediate avi file.
3. I used Vegas to render a MPEG2 NTSC DVD file, using these custom settings: video quality set to BEST and PROGRESSIVE instead of interlaced.

Here are the results when using the above method:

1. No funky or wavy lines with artifacts.
2. Black bars at the top and bottom of the screen just like a widescreen DVD you would buy at the store.
3. A very crisp, almost film-like look far surpassing standard DV to DVD quality.

Problems I encountered:

1. When rendering 1080i to 480i, I got horrible jagged and wavy lines.
2. When not using the best method, the picture was not as good.
3. You can get the same result as rendering progressive by right clicking the media in the timeline and selecting reduce interlace flicker. But if you have 20 clips, you have to do that 20 times. I think its easier and quicker to change the render settings to progressive.

Additional observations:

1. I watched the progressive DVD on an interlaced TV and a progressive scan TV. It looked great on both. I think there are plenty of pixels to go from interlaced to progressive while still maintaining high quality resolution.
2. I'm guessing that alot of the problems that everyone has encountered are how Vegas handles the downcoversion for different settings and how the TV's perform interlacing.
3. I really don't have the technical expertise to explain #2 in more detail, but I am very methodical. I rendred multiple files using multiple methods. Each time I recorded the settings and took notes to determine the best method. This is how I arrived at the workflow listed at the beginning of my post.
4. If you see the lines on your TV, but not your PC this is probably due to your DVD software deinterlacing your video and/or your PC monitor being progressive scan.

I hope this helps out. Some of this I figured out on my own, some I found out searching this forum so I don't want to take all of the credit :)

Last time I posted video files, you guys used up all of my bandwidth and shut my site down! If someone would be nice enough to let me FTP a few files to their server, I can post a few videos that demonstrate my findings.

Thanks,

Michael

Great job Michael! Are there any other settings in "BEST" mode? Like selecting the 2 pass or etc?

I just leave everything else the same and the results are excellent.

To Michael May:

Michael, I'm just curious.

I just tried your 'best' settings on some footage of mine. Do you not see any interlace flicker or 'stutter' on panning or movement when using your 'best' settings (when put on DVD and viewed on a normal TV of course)?

Regards,

Dale.

I followed this .... render from "best" and "good" yeilded the same resuts, I see no difference. I still see "wavy, and funky artifacts" especially with movements of the camera.

fred,
those wavy funky artefacts are the result of scaling an interlaced frame.

interlaced frame is comprised of 2 image fields. These 2 image fields is interlaced 1 line (1pixel horizontally) of each other to create a frame.

if u scale down this 1 pixel lines interlaced frame, you'll mess up the 1 pixel line construction, cause they'll be resampled or averaged together. Hence the wavy artefacts.

to avoid this wavy artefacts, & to downconvert interlaced material correctly (eg 60i or 50i), you have to first seperate the fields, scale them down, the re-interlace them.

I haven't tested vegas to do this, but most compositing app like after effects, combustion, shake, can do this.

I suspect in vegas, ther'll be no field separation step. I suspect vegas will deinterlace the frame to the best, that's why your camcorder's downconvert is better than vegas's... it's because vegas deinterlace the material, while camcorder does the separate field method.

to test this, try downconverting a 25P or 30P (cineframe) material both in vegas & using the camcorder. Use progressive project, with no deinterlacing. I think the result will be identical.