Comparison of NLE HD to SD downconversion quality

[David Moody]

I have been editing with the Cineform intermediate and then using Cineform to downconvert and deinterlace and the same time. The DVD's on an upconverting player (PS3), compare well with the 1080 version on Blu ray

[Ken Jarstad]

David, that is awsome! Can't afford Cineform though.

Brad, when you crop it's not clear in which application since you can crop in VirtualDubMod/_Mpeg2 or in avi2mpg2_vfw.

Also, avi2mpg2_vfw appears to be a DV codec, so it will likely always produce interlaced BFF video. The DVD I made was interlaced while the same clip from Nero Vision was progressive after selecting the option.

Brad, I too would like a clearer, step by step, if possible.

[Brad Kirby]

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

How happy are you with the temporal resolution of the resulting video on pans/tilts and rapid movement?
.

Like film at 24 fps you have to consider panning speed and rapid movement. At least your dealing with 30fps which gives you a little more headroom. My preference is slow zooms and only panning to keep the main subject in the center of the picture.

Motion of subjects renders very clearly which makes you never go back to interlaced once youv'e bitten the progressive bug.

All the normal Hollywood camera motion techniques will be to your benefit here with the benefite of 30 frames per second.

As I am a new member of this forum, could someone tell me where I could post some of the 480p footage.
I would like to have critical evaluation of the footage. I will try to post footage of my 3 year old in action. I will post as a 7 Mbps MPEG-2 at the same quality I put on the DVD. I have also encoded at 4.5 Mbps (2 hrs on a 4.7GB DVD) and footage still looks very high quality and sharp even with high motion.

If you are happy with the footage, I will put together a more detailed step by step procedure (using all freeware tools).

I will look for a place to post this footage and hopefully have it up within a week.

[Ervin Farkas]

Brad, if you can't find a host for your footage, I can upload it to my website, I have plenty of space and very little traffic, even if many people download it, it won't affect me. So if you would like that, burn it to a DVD and mail it to me - PM me for mailing address.

[Declan Harrington]

I'm having problems with my final DVD. It plays fine on one of my players but skips/jitters on 2 others. Plays fine on a mac & pc. Here's what I did

Exported Cineform AVI from PPCS3, resized in VirtualDub (method Lanczos3, Use Interlaced). Couldn't get TMPGEnc to open my new SD avi, so converted to MPEG using Cucusoft AVI to DVD converter, then burned to DVD using TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.0. Picture quality is great but alas not really watchable on 2 of my DVD players

Would this have anything to do with Interlacing?

[Andy Wilkinson]

OK, here are some quick comments.

What bit rate on the video are you using and have these DVD players been OK before? Some DVD players (especially older laptops etc.) stuggle a bit with anything over 6000 Mb/sec. (BTW, as an aside I know that some don't like the audio in PCM but need AC3.)

Also, was the field order accidentally switched between LFF and UFF anywhere in the project as this can cause horrible jumpy/jittery stepping in scenes with a lot of motion?

[Declan Harrington]

Thanks Andy for the quick response

I'm pretty sure the field order hasn't been changed in Premiere. The whole interlacing-deinterlacing thing is a bit confusing for me so I didn't knowingly do anything regarding that. Wasn't sure whether you needed to deinterlace for DVD or not? I tried first using TMPGEnc free version to encode to mpeg and used PAL field order settings from the drop down and this DVD had no picture at all. So I ended using Cucusoft which has minmal settings and ended up with my jittery DVD. Can you recommend any decent mpeg for DVD encoders and settings I could use?

[Aaron Nanto]

I want to put in my .2 cents here as this works perfectly for me in PP CS3.

Using Premiere Pro CS3, I'm seeing 99.5% perfect results in downsizing my 1080i HDV video (from the Sony FX1) to DVD NTSC resolution without any external apps or plugins. Just made a quick DVD test and looks perfect on both a regular SD TV and scaled up to 1080i on my PS3. Here are my steps.

1. Captured footage from Sony FX1 to PC using Premiere Pro CS3. Regular HDV 1080i 29.94fps project.

2. Left "field options" at default settings ("None")

3. Exported movie with following settings:
File Type: Microsoft DV AVI
Compressor: DV NTSC
Color Depth: Millions of Colors
Frame size: 720x480
Frame Rate: 29.97fps
Pixel Aspect Ratio: D1/DV NTSC (0.9)
Data Rate: Recompress is UNCHECKED
Fields: No fields (Progressive Scan) & Deinterlace Video Footage CHECKED

4. After export is done, the resulting AVI should look perfectly sharp when played back on your PC.

5. Import AVI into Encore, encode using "Progressive High quality 7MB VBR 2 Pass" and resulting DVD should look great on a SD TV and HDTV.

[Declan Harrington]

I had terrible trouble with encore CS3 as I had a mixture of progressive and interlaced HDV footage on my timeline. I resized a cineform AVI with PPCS3 CFHD output and the results in Encore produced jittery DVDs in places and not always on the interlaced footage - although a lot of that had lines across the screen. The problems showed up on an older TV more. I ended up rencoding with cineform HDLink to a .mov file and transcoding to mpeg with TMPGenc Xpress 4 and got an excellent DVD that looked great on an old TV, a 21" flat panel SD TV and a 42" HDTV.

[Andriy Pryymachenko]

Any suggestions on exporting 1080 60i footage to SD PAL?

[Brad Tyrrell]

Originally Posted by Andriy Pryymachenko

Any suggestions on exporting 1080 60i footage to SD PAL?

I'm very happy with my TMPGEnc. I haven't exported in PAL since I'm in NTSC land, but that's one of the output options.

I shoot, capture, and edit in HDV, frameserve from Premiere with Debugmode to TMPGenc, then output SD files for Encore. Very happy with the results. Didn't like what I got going directly from Premiere to Encore.

[Ervin Farkas]

Unfortunately, Brad, TMPG is very weak in transcoding NTSC to PAL - this is what Andriy is asking, I have tested it. The only software (aside from professional ones, that are not only slow, but terribly expensive too) that does a good job in my experience, is Procoder from Canopus.

[Andriy Pryymachenko]

Ok, I'll check the Procoder out and let you know )

[Brad Tyrrell]

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

Unfortunately, Brad, TMPG is very weak in transcoding NTSC to PAL - this is what Andriy is asking, I have tested it. The only software (aside from professional ones, that are not only slow, but terribly expensive too) that does a good job in my experience, is Procoder from Canopus.

Ah... good to know in case I ever have to supply something in PAL. Thanks Ervin.

[Daniel Rudd]

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

Unfortunately, Brad, TMPG is very weak in transcoding NTSC to PAL - this is what Andriy is asking, I have tested it. The only software (aside from professional ones, that are not only slow, but terribly expensive too) that does a good job in my experience, is Procoder from Canopus.

I don't own this software but I've heard good things about their "Film FX"
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