HD to SD DVD interlace questions

[Tripp Woelfel]

Starting with 1080i 29.97 HDV edited footage in a Premier Pro CS3 project, I output both BD and DVD legal files using Debugmode frameserving to TMPGEnc. The BD side of the workflow works just fine. However, I get a bit wrapped around the axle sorting out the correct field settings.

I know that HD is upper field first and NTSC SD is lower first. My question is where and how to set the field settings to avoid mice teeth/jaggies and other weird interlace settings. In the File>Export>Movie dialog, I am wanting to select a resolution of 720x480 and lower field first. I'll then keep the same settings in TMPGEnc. I'm making the assumption that PP is smart enough to correctly convert the 1080i UFF to 480i LFF, but it doesn't quite work that way. I end up with nasty and weird artifacts and shuddering on fast action.

My temporary workaround is to select no fields/progressive out of PP. This eliminates the artifacts but PP stops using field information to create smooth slomo clips via Time Remapping.

What settings/workflow should I use? If anyone has one that works, I'd appreciate it if you'd share it with us.

[Aric Mannion]

I always interpret footage in after effects, which de-interlaces the video. Then I use the progressive video, whether going to a DVD or Blu-Ray. Since I have to interpret footage anyway to do keying and special effects.
I've noticed that when I give DVD Studio Pro a progressive file it seems to stay that way on dvd, even though it says it's 480i. When I make the same DVD on iDVD, it actually adds interlace lines. With Studio Pro, keeping everything progressive works for me.

[Tripp Woelfel]

Aric... Thanks. My current workflow does essentially the same thing but without going to AE. It works fine and eliminates jaggies but I don't get to use fields from 60i footage for smoother slomo.

I'm still looking for a way to get that smooth slomo and haven't quite figured it out yet.

[Pat Reddy]

I use Vegas and a Virtualdub plugin to generate 59.94p files. I use the "Smart Deinterlacer" plugin which will work in Virtualdub or Vegas to deinterlace the footage and then render it at double the frame rate. This plugin does a great job of preserving detail and giving you smooth crisp "60p" footage:

Smart Deinterlacer Filter for VirtualDub

Pat

[Tripp Woelfel]

Pat... Very cool. I'll check that out tomorrow. It'd be nice if it also works in Premier, but VD will do very nicely. I just hate to give up that nice, smooth slomo.

[Jon Geddes]

My Workflow has excellent results:

1) Export your HD project out of Premiere using Debugmode Frameserver

2) Open the frameserved file in Virtual Dub, and apply these filters in this order:

- Deinterlace using blend fields method
- Resize to absolute: 720x480, Aspect Ratio Disabled, using Lanczos3 method
- Sharpen by 10

3) Save this file out of Virtual Dub as AVI.

4) Turn off Frameserver

5) Open new avi in ProCoder or TMPGEnc and encode to mpeg2, widescreen aspect ratio, using VBR 2 Pass, minimum bitrate: 1.5 mbps, target bitrate: (depends on how much footage you have, set to 7 if you have less than 90 minutes for a single layer disc), max bitrate: 8 mbps

6) Import m2v/ac3 into authoring app of your choice.

The above method yields extremely good quality results, far superior to anything adobe products or final cut studio is capable of producing... and virtual dub is free! You will be impressed. The most important part is what virtual dub does in the resizing process. If your source footage is progressive from premiere, you will want to leave out the deinterlace step. Make sure you export in the full HD resolution out of premiere, keeping it the same size as the source footage, and make sure you don't have Recompress checked.

[Tripp Woelfel]

Jon... Excellent! I'm actually transcoding a short HD project to SD using my standard method now but I'll give yours a go once the coffee's on in the morning. I can transcode with your workflow whilst I'm authoring and then build disks using both methods. It'll be interesting to see the differences between the two. I'll post my findings in a new thread.

Thanks mate! No go on down the The Fisherman and have a good nosh on me. (grin)

[Tripp Woelfel]

Jon... Just wanted to follow up on your workflow. It works really well and I think creates an incrementally better output than mine. I can notice an improvement with your workflow.

One thing I notice that is different is that the gamma with my workflow appears to be a tiny bit higher than yours. Again, the difference would not probably be noticeable even in side-by-side comparison. It's only when I click between the two in the same space do I notice it.

I've extracted nine pair of comparative images and I'll try to write up a detailed post over the weekend.

Again, thanks for your help in making my DVD better.

[Jon Geddes]

Great, I'm glad to hear you were successful.

[Markus Klatt]

I am just at the same point that I need to film with my EX1 in 1080/50i (I live in PAL-coutry, want to have a 1080-resolution and need 50 frames because of movements of my filmed objects, so 720/50p or 1080/25p is not my choice).
So I think I stick with 1080i - that is a valid resolution within Blu-ray standard? So I should be able to use it with Encore CS4, am I right?

But further I need to downscale it to 576/50i for PAL-DVDs too. As a lot off people, I run into problems when downscaling it to 576/50i DVD-PAL-resolution.Although I've tried exporting an AVI from PP CS4 with HuffYuv codec and resizing+encoding that AVI in TMPGEnc I still have some jagged and flickering horizontal lines. Much better then directly converting in PP CS4, but still not perfect. After reading your post I have the slight hope that this can be improved.

As you mentioned, my beloved debugframeserver is not working in PP CS4 anymore. Same with the frameserver from videotools.net. But I cannot use my old PP 1.5 for first steps since I need to use mp4/mxf-streams from Sony EX1.
What I tried is to export a "Microsoft AVI" with lossless HuffYuv-codec from PP CS4. Although everybody says, that HD footage is UFF, the only playable video after exporting 1080i was LFF. What reason could that have - is EX1-footage LFF?

The resulting files are huge, 12GB for say 3 minutes, but it is a way at all.

I will try your mentioned Virtual Dub process to deinterlace -> downscale to see if it is better quality than just scaling in TMPGEnc. But where do you interlace again in your process? Do you use interlaced or progressive streams for DVDs? Shouldn't they be interlaced as used from DV-footage?

Further: to avoid the rerendering as AVI from virtual dub one maybe could use avisynth as importing frameserver into TMPGEnc. The process would be like this:

PP CS4 --> exporting as "Microsoft AVI" with HuffYuv Codec as 1080i temp.avi --> convert temp.avi in avisynth on demand --> while encoding in TMPGEnc.

Does anyone have similar settings as used in virtual dub for an avisynth.script, please?

Thanks a lot for any hint!

Markus

Ps.: I use Windows XP and do not own After Effects CS4, just PP CS4, PP 1.5 and AE Std. 6.5 and a Trial of Neo-CineForm PP1.51-HD-Plugin.

[Tripp Woelfel]

I can address a couple of bits here. SD PAL and HD PAL are both upper fields first. Unless Sony have done something different in the camera, which I doubt, stay UFF.

Once you deinterlace, I cannot see any advantage to re-interlacing. I don't know if 25p is legal in the BD world. I know 24p is but 30p is not. I know nothing about SD PAL DVD standards so I cannot comment on that.

There's a bit of an art, I think, in knowing where and when to deinterlace. It's also key to know how your software tools perform deinterlacing. For example, when one tells PP CS3 to deinterlace on export, it seems to throw away one field and or looses any ability to deal with the 1/60 candence. I'm guessing the same is true for 1/50 in PAL.

[Markus Klatt]

Is there a simple tool to find the filed order from a mp4 or avi-container? MediaInfo won't do this, I guess?!

I could swear that PAL-DV was LFF and the with the experience of yesterday (only LFF playable when encoding in HuffYuv) I would guess this for HD from EX1 too. So better check with an appropriate tool. Is there any? Does PP CS4 shows such information, maybe somewhere hidden?

And you are right - deinterlacing in PP CS4 is throwing away lots of information.

[Jon Geddes]

Markus,

Regarding the field order, HD is upper field first, so keep it that way.

You can use avisynth on the frameserved file if you are comfortable using that program.

About the re-interlacing, not entirely necessary since the mpeg encoder will encode it as 60i.

Microsoft AVI doesn't seem to be a good intermediate export format. I'm still researching the best method for CS4 and will post my findings when I have them.

[Markus Klatt]

Thank you so much, Jon. So, the resulting DVD-mpeg2-stream is of course always interlaced, I understand.

Somehow you are right with the UFF at HD, but when I choose that when exporting in HuffYuv, the resulting video is simply black. I don't know what exactly is happening there, but ok...
But if I choose UFF in TMPGEnc (even when exported as LFF from PP) then I have almost no flickerung and jagged lines anymore in the resulting DVD-stream. Something is wrong there in my thoughts and tries, but it works.
Next step is to see if deinterlacing and resizing in VDub makes it even better. I'll try.

At the moment I have no choice not to export as Microsoft AVI container with HuffYuv-codec, because somehow I have to get the edited video out of PP CS4. I would be very happy if you find any other solution - I'll wait.

And, some OT: I LOVE your animated Blu-ray menu and your tutorials in your blog site! This is awesome. When I could somehow edit it to my "fireworks" needs I would be even willing to buy an upgrade for my AE 6.5 std to AE CS4 - just for that. Simply great design.

[John Gerard]

Hi all,

Rereading this note I think I figured out my problem. I think. My problem is as follows if this is a problem it depends how you look at it. I tried Debug Mode Framesever in Premiere Pro CS3 with the options described below. I did every step described up to and including step #4. I then imported the saved AVI file into Encore as a timeline and wrote an ISO file then a sample DVD to see how it looks on my Standard TV. I found out that the converted output from 1440x1080 16:9 to 720x480 turned out to be or close to 4:3 in size. It appears with out further analysis to contain all the information and did not crop anything. At least it look great to me. So if anyone wants to convert 16:9 to 4:3 try the steps below leaving out step #5. All other information I have read on converting 16:9 to 4:3 looked really complicated. :-)

Am I correct in assuming that by performing step #5 this is where the aspect ratio gets turned back into 16:9 content? Or is there another way to keep the 16x9 ratio format when resizing to 720x480?

Thanks,

John Gerard

Originally Posted by Jon Geddes

My Workflow has excellent results:

1) Export your HD project out of Premiere using Debugmode Frameserver

2) Open the frameserved file in Virtual Dub, and apply these filters in this order:

- Deinterlace using blend fields method
- Resize to absolute: 720x480, Aspect Ratio Disabled, using Lanczos3 method
- Sharpen by 10

3) Save this file out of Virtual Dub as AVI.

4) Turn off Frameserver

5) Open new avi in ProCoder or TMPGEnc and encode to mpeg2, widescreen aspect ratio, using VBR 2 Pass, minimum bitrate: 1.5 mbps, target bitrate: (depends on how much footage you have, set to 7 if you have less than 90 minutes for a single layer disc), max bitrate: 8 mbps

6) Import m2v/ac3 into authoring app of your choice.

The above method yields extremely good quality results, far superior to anything adobe products or final cut studio is capable of producing... and virtual dub is free! You will be impressed. The most important part is what virtual dub does in the resizing process. If your source footage is progressive from premiere, you will want to leave out the deinterlace step. Make sure you export in the full HD resolution out of premiere, keeping it the same size as the source footage, and make sure you don't have Recompress checked.