Just spent the last 10 days editing two videos, color corrected, levels adjusted, noise reduced, and 5.1 surround effects applied.

For the grand preview I get buses with window posts scattered through out, a jumping fish with three bills, rods sticking straight up with the jaggies. Oh sure all the locked down static subjects look great, but movement is 99% of my subjects. This just isn't working.

OK, feel better now, guess I will go back to the XL1 S.

Jim

Sony FX1 - AspectHD - Vegas 6 - AVI Uncompressed - Procoder, preset DVD Master - DVD Architect

could you post these vids? i'd like to see what's so bad.

How about some stills take from the Vegas timeline.

http://bellsouthpwp.net/j/m/jmmnt/Fish with many bills.jpg
http://bellsouthpwp.net/j/m/jmmnt/The Bus.jpg
http://bellsouthpwp.net/j/m/jmmnt/The bus windows.jpg
http://bellsouthpwp.net/j/m/jmmnt/More bus 2.jpg
http://bellsouthpwp.net/j/m/jmmnt/More bus 3.jpg
http://bellsouthpwp.net/j/m/jmmnt/More bus 4.jpg

Sound like you having a bad day Jim!

Did you do it like you have always done, down-convert to DV from HD and with the same settings on the Sony? Didn't you use to use Adobe Premiere Pro? Did you try burning them or is this just off of the time-line? Just thinking, you have a hot computer but maybe not quite keeping up?

Anyway, good luck with it and have a great 4th!

Mike

The double images you are seeing is because you are deinterlacing the frames and presenting to fields summed together -- Vegas and Premiere with Aspect HD will present interlaced images this way only while previewing (Aspect HD gives you for option to turn the de-interlacing off so you can see the interlace fields in all their glory.) In either package, when you do your final HD export this should not be present. The shots you uploaded are 960x540 (half horiz. half vert from 1920x1080) -- to create a 960x540 from a 1080i source will require deinterlacing -- you need to be careful with the deinterlacing you apply OR shoot in the CineFrame modes and forget all about interlacing (it would be nice that interlace didn't exist.) With this long holiday weekend it might be hard to get good support, but contact your NLE tools vendor Tuesday to get the help you need. Your pictures otherwise look very good.

If I were to take a guess, it would be that your shutter speed was not fast enough. When you set iris and gain to manual, did you also set the shutter speed to at least 60? Or higher?

David

It actually looks good(?) in preview, it really falls apart when I burn it to DVD.

Steven

Actually the shutter speed was set to 250.

Actually I have had a bad day Mike, I guess I was expecting the DVD images to look as good as it does on the camera LCD.

OK, my guess was way off. Are you deinterlacing for the DVD? Losing resolution at the larger frame size isn't much of a problem when you are using such a small frame size for the DVD.

Forgive my ignorance, I think I know what you mean, after watching that wonderful "RAZOR SHARP" HD video, then when you down-rez it to SD it looks really soft right?

If so, yep thats exactly what i've experianced (using wmv sample files various FX1/Z1 stuff found from the web),

one thing that I tried just 3 days ago was this little trick:

In the HD timeline go add a sharpen filter and apply hard, now this will make it look nasty (i know), NOW down-rez to SD DVD, voila the down -rezed should look ALOT sharper than before (granted it ainted gonna exactly the same as the HD source, but it will be a whole lot better).

Another thing you can do is down rez using some really expensive stuff the BBC used (in their FX1/Z1 experiments) an Snell and Wilcox thingy-ma-gig, they reported great results, they concluded that you have to use expensive donw-rezers to get good results (perhaps Vegas native down-reser aint that good).

Anyway try out my little trick and tell me how it goes
(say on a 30 second test clip, and do an A/B type test, you know apply the filter to say the clip, then put the same clip without the filter and down-rez the two clips together)


Anhar Hussain


PS, just forgot to mention , you may want to actually play around with the amount of sharpen you use (to get best results, i said use hard, because thats the only setting i attempted and didnt get to try other levels due to lack of time)

Any kind of deinterlace attempt on 250fps footage sounds like it would not work well to me. It is the same effect I get when I tried using the 30fps mode to get a frame doubling effect that sony use to give me with my vx-2000.

The vegas 6 24p widescreen dvd render template works well for me and gives very smooth results. But I always shoot at 60fps unless there is a reason to shoot at another speed. And it had better be a very good reason...

Did you choose upperfield first for all of the work?

He said his shutter speed was 1/250. The frame rate continues to be 30fps regardless of the shutter speed. You mean any attempt on a shutter speed of 250, right?

Any kind of deinterlace attempt on 250fps footage sounds like it would not work well to me. It is the same effect I get when I tried using the 30fps mode to get a frame doubling effect that sony use to give me with my vx-2000.

The vegas 6 24p widescreen dvd render template works well for me and gives very smooth results. But I always shoot at 60fps unless there is a reason to shoot at another speed. And it had better be a very good reason...

Did you choose upperfield first for all of the work?

1/250 shutter right, not fps. my bad.
I am not going to do the math, but deinterlacing 1/60 to 30p should be much easier.

Et all.....

I did not deinterlace anything that I know of. I captured and then converted the m2t file with AspectHD, split scenes. Did the editing in Vegas 6.0 and rendered as avi uncompressed. Took this to Procoder and converted using MPEG2 - DVD - Mastering Quality preset, throughout the whole thing I did not mess with any of the preset(s) settings. Burned a DVD with DVD Architect and ended up with poop.

Jim

gotcha, I see. The field settings in procoder need to be set to upper first if it does not auto recognize it that way. If it did default to upper, then I would guess a field got set to lower somewhere in your workflow.

Jim,

Somewhere in the workflow something is scaling the image incorrectly. Converting HD 60i to SD 60i while converting field dominance from upper to lower is not easy. Unfortunately I can't determine if it is Vegas (my copy will not start today -- it has taken the 4th off) or Procoder that is at fault (I don't have that.) If you exported uncompressed in HD from Vegas, try scaling to SD in the export or if you did that try an HD export. One of the tools will need to scale HD to SD, I'm hoping only one them has it wrong.

Jim,

I have had good luck (notice I said LUCK) using lower field first throughout the process. Neverless. if the fields get inverted, the motion will be VERY stroboscopic on an INTERLACED display. I have an option for field order in TMPGEnc (MPEG encoder) as well as my editor. Think about it, if the fields get reversed, then the motion between fields will be reversed, causing, well stuttering - the best name I can think of.

ANYTIME you display interlaced scanning on a progressive display you will get the effect in your pictures. Evaluate your DVD on a regular, interlaced scanning CRT (a TV set). Obviously, your editor AND your MPEG encoder must BOTH treat the two fields properly. If it is de-interlaced at any time, then you will have two progressive frames (with the artifacts in your pictures). There then is no way to get rid of those artifacts.

The problems you are having exemplify the difficulties in converting interlaced to progressive (and vice versa). Since the CRT is the only truly interlaced display (where interlaced stuff looks GREAT), it seems to me that interlaced scanning will die with the CRT. (If you haven't noticed, I've said this elsewhere.) At any rate, you should be able to properly reduce 1080i to 480i. Good luck!

1. What are your specific template settings in Vegas during edit? During Render?
2. Uncompressed using what codec if any? What do the frames look like while looking at a parked frame in Vegas with the uncompressed?
3. Render/encode settings in Procoder?

Converting CineForm to SD is very easy IF you don't mess with the Vegas templates. But as soon as you start playing or manipulating, it gets squirrely. I've converted hundreds of CineForm avi's to 4:2:2 YUV, and then to MPEG 2 SD, and I assure you, if you use the templates provided by Sony, you'll not have problems.

ha! been there dun that! yep i can never tell which field is which , thats why i gave up a long time ago and just burn my dvd as progressive mpeg's (after de-interlace of course) and its become of force of habit.

Ok, I think I got it. I tried using David's suggestion and shooting with Cinefram 30 on. I was real careful when tying my shoes (interlacing, OK bad joke.

If you got a minute or 10 let me know how I did.

Thanks again guys.

Jim

http://bellsouthpwp.net/j/m/jmmnt/July 4.mov

Jim,

I am not someone who can judge the technical part, but I do like your work as always. It played poorly on my laptop and I am firing up the desktop to take a better look at it.

It looks like you are posting your clips to you Bellsouth personal web page. If so, how? I have been on the phone with Bellsouth several times and they can't even figure out how to get me thru to their FTP server! I see no way to post it directly from my website using editing tools or new page or anything!

Anyway, great work again.

Mike

Nice job. Quite stirring.

If I may make a technical comment, for next time, I suggest you experiment with keying out the flag so you can put the fireworks behind the flag using a matte made from an AVI of the flag video turned to black and white.

Ok, I think I got it. I tried using David's suggestion and shooting with Cinefram 30 on. I was real careful when tying my shoes (interlacing, OK bad joke.

If you got a minute or 10 let me know how I did.

Thanks again guys.

Jim

http://bellsouthpwp.net/j/m/jmmnt/July 4.mov

Whoops, bandwidth level exceeded when trying to access the site.

How much resolution is lost when shooting Cineframe 30 and is the lost rez unoticable when converting to DVD widescreen SD?

For shaper images, try an Unsharp mask (can't remember if vegas has this) using a large area setting (80-100) and a low amount setting. Very nice effect.

Jeff can you expand on that unsharp mask method, in Vegas the unsharp mask has three properties:

amount

Radius

Threshold

What values should I try? (I'm assuming you apply the filter to the HD clip before downrezzing to SD?)


Thanks!


Anhar Hussain Miah

High Radius
Low Amount
Threshold is probably fine but should be set to affect the whole image

This is a technique often used in photoshop work.

OK, I think I got it up on a web site.

http://www.sightseeingfishinggroupproductions.com/index_files/Page350.htm

Jim,

back to you original issue of double images when exporting to DVD. As a Aspect HD user you should download the new Aspect HD 3.2. For the any upgrade the down conversion scaling engine is much better. Simple take your 50i or 60i Premiere project using version 3.2 create scaling interlaced output with any field dominance you need (DVD -- lower field first) using the Adobe Media encoder.

Another user has already found scaling so much easier with the new release : http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=47455