Well i just figured this out, some of you may know but some may not know.

When i would export to DVD from Cineform HDV Ppro Timeline i would get a pretty bad interlacey, if you will, look on fine detailed edges. (for instance lips of a subject) well i tried many options encoding one way
exporting another…

HDV>DV(NTSC) LOWER FIELD - NO GOOD
HDV>UNCOMPRESSED DV LOWER FIELD - NO GOOD
HDV>CINEFORM 720 x 480 - NO GOOD
HDV> MPEG VIA PROCODER - NO GOOD

But i found the best results are to...

Reverse filed dominance in the timeline then export to DVD or encode to .mpg using lower fields first.

The results excellent!!!! Finally!!!

Joel

What verson of Aspect HD are you using, because this should not reflect the current experience?

Are you trying to use the Adobe Media Encoder -- that is broken for HDV.

You know it is funny Joel that you should bring this up, I had previously made some great looking DVD's from the Premiere timeline (not sure what Aspect version, I know I had a work around) anyway, just recently tried to go do this with Aspect 3.3 and every which way looked like crap, the downconversion from the camera looked better (did not used to be the case) anyway I am using MPEG PRO 1.06 the new one from Mainconcept. I even exported to DV first and just played it out to the TV and that is when I noticed that downconversion from the camera looked better, I am trying your procedure as we speak (tried everything but that up to this point) hope it works I have trashed 4 DVD's trying out different settings, I will post later.


Mike

I just tried exporting to CFHD and DV and both had the correct field dominance when using Export Movie. One of the difficultly, is the Premiere app. itself has some features to avoid. We simply recommend creating a CFHD AVI SD master first (via export movie) then use that file to create your DVD, either directly within Encore or via Premiere. The CineForm support should have the steps to creating a new DVD.

I just tried exporting to CFHD and DV and both had the correct field dominance when using Export Movie. One of the difficultly, is the Premiere app. itself has some features to avoid. We simply recommend creating a CFHD AVI SD master first (via export movie) then use that file to create your DVD, either directly within Encore or via Premiere. The CineForm support should have the steps to creating a new DVD.

well i find its better to use reverse field dominance even in 3.3.

j-

Trying it as I type David, will report back later

Thanks
Mike

any luck michael?

Hi Joel, tried it your way, it does not seem to work that well for me, the way david described it (the cineform site described it) seemed to look pretty good, I think part of the problem was I was viewing the SD DVD on my high Def TV and it looked worse than my other DVD's that I have rendered, HDV looks so good (even when moving quickly with a Steadicam) the SD conversion did not look quite as good and was a little blurry, compounded with going to SD mpeg2, I think was my problem. What I did to test it is captured the same clip from a camera downconvert and compared it to a cineform down convert and the cineform looked a little better (layed both tracks one on top of another and clicked the eyeball on and off with the top layer. Don't know if this helped you any, but here is the cineform procedure if you have not seen it yet.

http://supportcenteronline.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=614

Mike

i have made several DVD's with my method since i posted this thred... i am sure the results are better.

reverse fields in the Ppro Cineform 1080/30i timeline...then in the export to dvd options use lower field first...

i swear by this method..

i will post results shortly...

Joel

Are there any good options for creating a progressive dvd?

Daniel,

Progressive 16x9 DVD looks great and are easier to do than interlaced. Please ask your question in a new thread, detailing you source material (interlace vs progressive, 720 vs 1080 etc.)

daniel,

try my method to make great interaced dvd from cineform 1080i

1. set up 720 x 480 (1.2) in ppro 1.5.1
2. drop HDV file into timeline
3. scale clips manually or set the option to scale clips in the project settings
4.reverse field dominace
5.export to dvd or mpeg using lower field first....

you'll see the great results....

it is important to not reverse fields in the HDV timeline but the 720 x 480 timeline...

joel

michael

i think you may have tried reversing fields in the HDV timeline....you gotta do it in the DV(NTSC) timeline...

Joel, as David asked, what are you starting with? If its HDV, why would anyone start a 720x480 project??

I just spent the last month working with David to get the process down to go HDV to DVD.

I started with doing all the editing in PPro in HD. I used prospect with 1920x1080, 10 bit, and upper field. 1.0 pixel size, upper fields. My Sony 1440x1080 was upconverted. (Aspect at 1440x1080 would be fine also)>

Then when done, you use CFHD to export a avi movie to a 720x480 project, 1.2 pixles and lower field.

Now, I pulled this clip into a new project. I then used Procoder to export my elementary stream. Lower field and 16x9. (I kept have issues with AME so I will not use anymore!)

I then converted my wav file into an ac3.

Pulled the mv2 and ac2 into reeldvd and exported my DVD.

Works great!!!

David, does this seem okay?

Dave

Joel, as David asked, what are you starting with? If its HDV, why would anyone start a 720x480 project??

I just spent the last month working with David to get the process down to go HDV to DVD.

I started with doing all the editing in PPro in HD. I used prospect with 1920x1080, 10 bit, and upper field. 1.0 pixel size, upper fields. My Sony 1440x1080 was upconverted. (Aspect at 1440x1080 would be fine also)>

Then when done, you use CFHD to export a avi movie to a 720x480 project, 1.2 pixles and lower field.

Now, I pulled this clip into a new project. I then used Procoder to export my elementary stream. Lower field and 16x9. (I kept have issues with AME so I will not use anymore!)

I then converted my wav file into an ac3.

Pulled the mv2 and ac2 into reeldvd and exported my DVD.

Works great!!!

David, does this seem okay?

Dave


well,

after you have a finished HDV project... i am not working with HDV in a SD timline that would be stupid.... i am talking about the finished HDV project ready to be down converted to SD DVD...
if you read some of my earlier posts i was complaining about a "interlacey, if you will, look around some of the fine details, like lips and eyes... i found using my method to be the best quality..

joel

So, I gave you the process I got from David and works perfectly.

Yep, I spent a month getting from HDV to SD.

Just do as David says, works great.

So, what did I post that you say does not work?

Dave

great! i didn't see a disagreement...

happy editing :)

Thanks David, Dave, Joel, and Michael:

I appreciate all the help. I think we've all discovered that surviving in the world of low cost digital video requires approaching many tasks from different angles.

Of course, getting a great product in the hands of your client after you've slaved for months, is a pretty high priority for all of us. So let's entertain all possibilities.

Maybe a few of us can do some comparisons.

David, as requested, I will start this as a fresh post. Let's go from there everyone.

Thanks for your quick responses.

Daniel, I found that as I was asking questions to David, we were not on the same page a number of times. This caused me to restart many times.

One thing I learned is I never will put DV material in an HD project again!!!!

The way I ended up using was do a std DV project for the DV clips I needed.
I then did a HD project for the HD stuff. I then used CFHD to convert the HD into SD. I then made a new project with both sets of these clips.

I also no longer will use AME. Just too many issues that I could never figure out, where procoder worked perfect.

There are not many of us on the bleeding edge. This is why this site is great to share info, and hopefully save some folks time!!

Another key trick, USE SCENE DETECT when you import clips!

Dave

AME?

Also, I thought Scene Detect was just capture clips according to where you start and stop your camera. Is this correct?

AME is adobe media encoder.

Yep, scene detect makes one clip per stop start. This way NO AUDIO lipsync issues!! Plus, it is so much easier to edit this way!!

Dave

I see. Thanks for the tip.
My type of production hasn't required me to capture anything very long, so I hadn't had any issues with lip sync yet. I usually only capture about 20% of the footage on my tapes so most of that is taken care of when I use batch capture. I will keep this in mind though.

Daniel

Hi

Is this my own experience, or someone else's too?
During export (exactly as Cineform's site says) I scale down to 720x576 (PAL) with pixel aspect ratio 1.422, and final result looks terrible. Sure it's not a field issue, rather a cineform's bad down-sampling engine: I mean ugly jaggy edges on high contrast material.

As opposite, I prepare Cineform AVI (w/o resizing), create an ordinary standart widescreeen project, put a file here and resize it to 53,4 %, then I reverse field dominance (in file properties) and export a timeline - final result is always excellent!

It was in 3.4 version, and now in 4.0..
Am I doing something wrong?

Anton,

That’s exactly what i do!!! Finally someone agrees with me! Everyone thought i was crazy i didn't explain myself clearly in previous posts... Glad you are finding excellent results with the method you (we) are using!!!

Joel

I look forward to Davids comments.

Dave

David has already addressed this method earlier.. He did not agree but i think it is because he used the method i explained wrong...

So I urge David to please try again with the proper method!!!

Joel

yes, this method (Joel's and mine :-) beats cineform's downscaling so far.
I'm just wondering don't anybody see the difference here?! Just compare two rendered files - the result is obvious.
Even Liquid's render engine downscales CFHD files far better. Another great method is to render to the targa sequence, then downscale the sequence using Photoshop (batch, of course) then put the changed targa sequence back into premiere and render once again. But it's not the easiest method, I swear :)
So just do it like Joel and me, and keep waiting for a great downscaler from cineform people. Oh don't get me wrong guys - your program is amazing, i love it so much.

I am pleased to see that some one agrees!!! i spent a lot of time using many different methods....

Joel

I have tried Joel Corral´s method and I got the best results so far!
Thank you Joel! (very much)
Cineform downconverting method simply doesn´t work to me. And it´s not
a field-order problem. It´s so frustrating spending so much time in something
so little creative...
Regards
Josema Herráiz

Joel, you ever get any thoughts from cineform on this yet?

Dave

nope... I think they think I don't know what I am doing because when i first posted this thread I explained how to do this but I was wrong, the key is to load the HDV file in a SD timeline in Ppro then on the timeline choose reverse fields dominance.. Then export lower fields first to a sd avi file.
eariler i said to reverse field in a cineform HDV timeline... oops wont work like that. needs to be in a SD timeline...

and of course you need to resize the footage to fit.. :)


joel

"Then export lower fields first to a sd avi file. "


Yes, I made the change in a SD timeline but...I downconverted to a mpeg file
without intermediary avi files. What codec did you use to make that avi?
Thank you, Joel. Until I get a decent dvd out of my hdv files, I won´t stop

"Then export lower fields first to a sd avi file. "


Yes, I made the change in a SD timeline but...I downconverted to a mpeg file
without intermediary avi files. What codec did you use to make that avi?
Thank you, Joel. Until I get a decent dvd out of my hdv files, I won´t stop

Ok... follow closely....

Import Cineform HDV file (Upper fields first) into Premiere Pro SD Timeline ...(lower fields first)
In the time line right click>field options>reverse field dominance...
Export To mpeg using LOWER FIELDS FIRST!!!!!

Should be very crisp & nice...

Joel, what are you using to export to Mpeg? I have had lots of issues with AME. It looks like for my long project Pro Coder is going to work.

Dave

AME.... once in a while it crashes but for the most part 90% of the time it works great!

joel

This is what I have done:
Project in Ppro, 720-576, DV PAL, Lower field first
Import HDV files, resize 53,4%
Canopus encoder mpeg file, lower field first, 16/9,

NOW it´s really crisp!!

(changing field dominance in the ppro timeline and
exporting to make a mpeg file with upper field first ends in the
same result)

(changing field dominance in the ppro timeline and
exporting to make a mpeg file with upper field first ends in the
same result)

do not export upper field first, LOWER!

if I use a lower first SD Premiere pro proyect
change field dominance in the timeline, resize hdv files
and export mpeg lower field first...

I have got field problems,
my graphic card is a matrox p650, I believe
Anyway, lower or upper THIS IS THE WAY
My dvd´s can be watched in a interlaced TV set without any problem

daniel,

try my method to make great interaced dvd from cineform 1080i

1. set up 720 x 480 (1.2) in ppro 1.5.1
2. drop HDV file into timeline
3. scale clips manually or set the option to scale clips in the project settings
4.reverse field dominace
5.export to dvd or mpeg using lower field first....

you'll see the great results....

it is important to not reverse fields in the HDV timeline but the 720 x 480 timeline...

joel

michael

i think you may have tried reversing fields in the HDV timeline....you gotta do it in the DV(NTSC) timeline...

Joel,

I have since seen other posts in other forums that address this issue, but yours was the first I saw and it saved me weeks of additional frustration. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

I (and I can't be the only one) need SD DVD from my HDV clips for friends and family around the world. I also don't like the letterboxed default that Premiere Pro will give you when outputting an HDV project to DVD, so I resize HDV clips in an NTSC DV project. Here's what I'm pretty sure happens:

1. Premiere Pro imports the Cineform Intermediate AVI clips into the project and assumes they are lower field dominant because you have defined them as such in your project settings!

2. From then on, all output, no matter how defined, will exhibit jerkiness, etc., especially for rapid movement, rapid pans, rapid zooms, etc., since the frames are being assembled incorrectly to start with.

I suspect you can more easily solve the problem with a custom NTSC DV project preset specifying upper first (instead of having to operate on every individual clip to reverse the field dominance), but I haven't specifically tested this yet. I wanted to thank you right away.

Regards
Wayne