CS5 CF to Standard DVD

[Bruce Gruber]

Has anyone compressed a CF project with CS5 to Standard DVD 720x480. If so what how did it look.
Thanks Bruce

[David Newman]

I do that a lot, works fine. I generally prefer to use the scaler in HDLink to make an SD CineForm master, then use CS5 to encode a MPEG2 for DVD.

[Robert Young]

Originally Posted by David Newman

I do that a lot, works fine. I generally prefer to use the scaler in HDLink to make an SD CineForm master, then use CS5 to encode a MPEG2 for DVD.

I agree.
Particularly if the HD version is interlaced.
When I try to go straight from CFHD 60i to DVD I get more problems with line twitter and other interlacing artifacts. Downscaling to a master 480 60i CF.avi and transcoding from that to DVD usually eliminates all of the problems.

[Bruce Gruber]

Thanka Dave and Robert,

So do you recomend keeping interlaced all the way? And have you noticed that Encore cs5 does a better job than cs3 converting it to a Mpeg-2

[John Rich]

I just got my CS5 system together (16 gigs RAM, 4 disks including 10,000 rpm Velocoraptor for os, 2 TB Raid 0, and another HD) together with the second latest NeoHD and I noticed some differences from my CS3 system for output. With CS3, I would make the sequence for HD Cineform 1920x1080 60i for my AVCHD and then File-Export Movie- and set the outpur format as Cineform and I could then make the output size 720x480 PAR 1.2 and wind up with a widescreen SD file which I would then import into Encore.

In CS5 I would use File - Export - Media and then Set the format to Cineform .avi and set the Video output format to 720x480 and the PAR to Widescreen to create the downscaled .avi for importing into Encore.

1. Is there any advantage to checking the "Use Maximum Render Quality" switch here.

2. Would you recommend exporting the edited HD sequence as 1920x1080 first and then re exporting the "master" you created to 720x480 or just go directly to the 720x480 and not create the master thus saving a step.

3 If you use HDLink, do you use the "convert" panel (above "master" as source file) and then set the prefs to resize to NTSC 16x9

4. Is there any quality or speed difference in scaling down using the Cineform format in Premiere Pro versus using the scaling in HDLink?

I appologize as I haven't had time to work this out myself, but I would appreciate your thoughts since you've already had experience with this.

John Rich

[David Newman]

1. If you use color correction within Premeire, then yes. Less so if you use color correction in FirstLight.

2. I prefer to make a 1920x1080 master. If you has spatial filter like blurs, that are correctly computed, but incorrectly so if you do a direct scale output. 1% blur could become a 2.5% blur if you output an HD timeline as SD.

3. Yes.

4. Use HDlink for speed, and a tad more quality (I think -- but subtle.)

[Bruce Gruber]

Hi Dave what setting do you use in the prefferences when you down size from 19020x1080 to 720x480?
Thanks

[Stephen Armour]

Hi Bruce, I wanted to weigh in here, as we have a somewhat different experience.

We have found through many tests with our on-going Tetelestai series, that if we want the very best end quality from our CF'HD (1920x1080p) for a normal 720x480 mpg DVD, we use the following workflow:

We output the full size CF AVI master from an editor (progressive).
We then take the full size master into TMPGEnc (or 2nd choice: Adobe Encoder CS4 -CS5) and convert to standard 720x480 progressive standard MPG, using the highest quality settings in TMPGEnc (VBR, 10bit DC component precision, Highest Motion search precision - with error correction, 8Mbps max bitrate, 2-pass, limited to 8Mbps).

It's very fast (20 fps on older quads, realtime or faster on more powerful) and very nice output. Adobe's encoder seems to work almost as well now, so if you don't have TMPGEnc, it's still pretty much the same. TMPGEnc now handles the CF AVIs very nicely, so no more re-wrapping to MOVs either.

Not all people like progressive to interlaced conversion that some players do for old, interlaced TV's, but we've found it far superior to anything else in almost every circumstance. Most modern players handle the output quite nicely and if it's shown through projectors, or on LCDs or plasmas, it is lovely.

We have found only a few circumstances where our progressive output was a little jerky in a few scenes, but overall the quality is quite outstanding, with great fidelity to the original HD master.

[David Newman]

Originally Posted by Bruce Gruber

Hi Dave what setting do you use in the prefferences when you down size from 19020x1080 to 720x480?
Thanks

Resize video to NTSC 16x9 and Keep source Aspect ratio checked. Quality set "Film Scan" -- this is overkill but the file is going to be smaller. Always I-frame now.

The reason I prefer the HDLink downscale, it never goes through RGB. It is a 10-bit 4:2:2 YUV pipeline. It handles the 709 to 601 conversion automatically and scales using lanzcos3 YUV 4:2:2 scaler. Having an SD master is nice so you can proof it in progressive 23.976, before the MPEG DVD output which injects pulldown to 60i.

[Bruce Gruber]

Hi Stephen, I was almost at the same settings as you were using. What target bitrate do you use?
Dave I am going to try that 2.
1question don't either adobe or tmpegnc compress more or should I say screw things up converting to mpeg-2 or does it just convert it.

[Bruce Gruber]

Originally Posted by David Newman

Resize video to NTSC 16x9 and Keep source Aspect ratio checked. Quality set "Film Scan" -- this is overkill but the file is going to be smaller. Always I-frame now.

The reason I prefer the HDLink downscale, it never goes through RGB. It is a 10-bit 4:2:2 YUV pipeline. It handles the 709 to 601 conversion automatically and scales using lanzcos3 YUV 4:2:2 scaler. Having an SD master is nice so you can proof it in progressive 23.976, before the MPEG DVD output which injects pulldown to 60i.

Dave do you mean check the iframes only box

[Stephen Armour]

Originally Posted by Bruce Gruber

Hi Stephen, I was almost at the same settings as you were using. What target bitrate do you use?
Dave I am going to try that 2.
1question don't either adobe or tmpegnc compress more or should I say screw things up converting to mpeg-2 or does it just convert it.

There's not much gain (and can be problems) trying to push the standard DVD spec beyond it's max, so we just use the standard 8 Mbps max for video and uncompressed 1536 kb/s PCM for audio, so it adds up to the 9707kb/s max. Seems to be less problems and better that way.

This is the highest quality setting we've ever found for standard DVD's. Compression engines for both prog's seem to be pretty close now, though I still find TMPGEnc a tiny bit better overall. Probably not enough diff to warrant buying TMPGEnc, but worth using if you have it.

If quality is an issue and space is still at a premium, you can go Dolby, but otherwise it's the best overall for the old DVD standard.

I have also done 35Mbps BRMV output from the masters, but have not really done extensive testing. It looks good compared to the CF masters, with just a bit of artifacting at times.

[David Newman]

Originally Posted by Bruce Gruber

Dave do you mean check the iframes only box

Yes, but I'm doing a lot of 3D stuff lately, the primary reason to use I-frames. Most use cases the non-I frame sequence is perfect (saving you 15-25%)

[Kris Koster]

David,

Here we are in 2011 just about. Has this workflow that you recommend changed any in the last several months since you posted this? My system is CS5, 64-bit with Cineform Neo3D. I use Encore for the DVD rip and my clips are all CFHD 1920x1080p with a lot of Cineform colour correction in the Premiere CS5 timeline. I'm downscaling to DVD widescreen.

At the moment, I've tried importing the Premiere timeline directly into Encore. It's a 2 hour show and the transcoding has been going 12 hours already and still isn't half way (8GB RAM, quad core 64-bit system).

To clarify for best PAL results, is the workflow:

1. Export the full size (1920x1080p) CFHD master from Premiere CS5 (.mov or .avi?)
2. Create an SD master using HDLink to downscale the resulting .AVI or .MOV to 720x576 (for PAL) - Don't know if there's a selection for widescreen here, or HDLink does that automatically.
3. Open encore and import the 720x576 SD master for output to DVD.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but whenever I try to export a 2 hour 1920x1080 movie that is CFHD with cineform colour correction, premiere gives me an estimate of 11 hours to export this. Is there any way to make this faster? I only have 2 video tracks and 2 audio tracks.

Many thanks for any help,

[David Newman]

Kris,

FirstLight color corrections are faster than the Premiere filters. The biggest issues is the export doesn't thread very well. However your exports still seem very slow. Please contract support after the holidays.