DVFilm Maker and 16:9 footage?

[Sean McHenry]

I downloaded the demo of DVFilm Maker a few nights ago. I imported some footage in 16:9 from the PDX10 via Premiere Pro. I did some minor editing and exported a true 16:9, 1 minute piece. If I play the timeline out to the camera, it's still 16:9.

I process it with DVFilm Maker and bring it back into Premiere Pro. Now when I play the timeline, the footage is 4:3. Same thing in Windows Media Player or Quicktime 6.1.

I see settings in DVFilm Maker for letterboxing 4:3 footage and a "no letterboxing" setting, which is what I used.

What did I miss? I wrote the folks at DVFilm but have not yet had a reply. In fairness, it's 8:54am Wed and I just wrote them a few minutes ago so I am not expecting a response yet.

Anyone here been sucessful at processing 16:9 with DVFilm Maker and getting 16:9 output? I looked through the faq and it only mentions processing of 16:9 Anamorphic.

Sean McHenry

[Sean McHenry]

Below is the response to DVFilm on the issue of exporting 16x9 from DVFilm Maker. It does not say if this extra step will induce any artifacts. As it basically changes the aspect on the pixels themselves, I thik it will be OK. I will test this and respond to this thread any opinions on this process.

I don't know how it works with Avid Xpress Pro as of yet but it is on the list of things for me to try this weekend on the home PC.

I did select the "Widescreen" format for the project and would have assumed the correct output option would have followed naturally for 16:9 output. I have not tested this response but will do so today.

Sean

The response ------------------------

In Premiere right-click on the Maker footage in the timeline and select
Advanced Options->Pixel Aspect Ratio and NTSC Widescreen.

If you're encoding to DVD it's best to use an Mpeg encoder like TMPGEnc
that allows you to manually set the widescreen mode on source footage.

On Wed, 7 Apr 2004, Sean McHenry wrote:

> I am confused and have read nothing to help me on your site or the FAQ or even the help guides. In using the demo version to test the look, I have captured true 16:9 from my DSR-PDX10 into Premiere Pro (aka 7.0). I rendered and exported a simple sequence of 1 minute to a DV AVI file. The file was then imported into DVFilm Maker but I see no options for 16:9 in / out. I did try the "No Letterbox" option and rendered. I then tried to re-import that Avi into Premiere to play it out to tape. The new AVI file is showing up not as 16:9 but as 4:3 footage when brought back into Premiere.
>
> What is the correct procedure for bringing in and sending out 16:9 footage in DVFilm Maker? It must stay 16:9 throughout the process. I don't want to have to re-compress or otherwise process the footage in anything else if at all possible.
>
> As a side question, any hope of making this a plugin for both Avid Xpress Pro and Premiere? I use Premiere for multimedia work and Xpress Pro for the good stuff.
>

No, sorry.

Best Regards,
Marcus van Bavel
Owner/Chief Engineer
DVFilm Digital Transfers

[Boyd Ostroff]

DVFilm Maker works fine with 16:9 and there is no quality loss (although I haven't tried the new version - I am still running 1.06f). But there shouldn't be a problem. The only issue is that when it processes an anamorphic 16:9 file it does not flag its output file as 16:9. But this is really a trivial point (although a bit annoying). The output file is still anamorphic 16:9. I don't use Premiere, but in Final Cut Pro you would select the DVFilm Maker clip and set the "anamorphic 16:9" property. This will make it behave properly. I believe this is basically what Marcus is telling you to do in Premiere as well. Don't set letterboxing unless you want to letterbox a 4:3 version of your sequence.

[Sean McHenry]

As I understand it, there is a difference between anamorphic (a compressed image on 4:3 video) and true 16:9 footage which in a way is really 4:3 but with a different pixel aspect?

Wha tyou mentioned makes sense except the input to DVFilm is a real 16:9 file, not an anamorphic 4:3. You would think they would have a flag on that output.

I do like the look of the file output.

I saw the mention of anamorphic in the FAQ but figured it didn't apply here.

I am wondering now what the real pixel ratio is of true 16:9?

I will try the suggestion from the DVFilm folks in Premiere. That will probably do it.

Next time around, Avid Xpress Pro to see how it handles it.

Sean

[Boyd Ostroff]

<<<-- Originally posted by Sean McHenry : As I understand it, there is a difference between anamorphic (a compressed image on 4:3 video) and true 16:9 -->>>

This is incorrect, unless I'm not understanding you. All NTSC DV is 720x480. If it is shot as "true 16:9" on a camera like the PDX-10, it is compressed horizontally to fit the 4:3 frame. The same effect can be accomplished with a 4:3 native camcorder using an anamorphic lens. Anamorphic literally means "changed form".

When you edit the video you set a wider pixel aspect ratio to regain the proper proportion on your computer display. A widescreen TV will stretch the video back to the correct proportions, but if viewed on a standard 4:3 screen everything will look too tall and skinny. If you want to display 16:9 video on a computer screen that has square pixels then you would need to resize it to ~854x480. Some of the lower cost plasma screens have these pixel dimensions and are called "Enhanced Definition" (ED) screens.

[Sean McHenry]

So now I am disapointed. I thought the purpose of all those extra pixes translated directly to the resolution in the output. That is 1 pixel to 1 pixel. I guess DV as a format would force that limitation and I should have thought about that.

This explains why the resultant DV AVI files show as 720x480 when looking at their specs. So really then, there is no Widescreen DV format really, only a pixel aspect ratio change of 720x480. So in the end, 16:9 DV footage as displayed had less pixels per square inch than comparable 4:3 on the same screen. Interesting, and sad.

I thought there was a resolution boost with wide screen?

Sean

[Boyd Ostroff]

Well don't feel too sad! Consider that most TV's can't resolve the full 720 horizontal pixels, so stretching them across a wider area is actually putting them to more productive use. If you wanted to display a 4:3 image on a square pixel device like a computer monitor you would need to squash it to 640x480, versus 854x480 for 16:9. So with 16:9 at least you don't have to discard any pixels.

Also, the PDX-10 has a real edge for shooting 16:9 because it uses all 480 VERTICAL lines. Most prosumer cameras just crop the 4:3 frame to about 720x360, then stretch it back anamorphically.

But it's true that you can't help from bumping up against some of DV's limitations. Let's see how Sony's new HDV camcorder pans out. It will have 16:9 native high definition CCD's and also (evidently) can be switched to SD mode which would really be the best of both worlds!

[Ignacio Rodriguez]

> So in the end, 16:9 DV footage as displayed had less pixels
> per square inch than comparable 4:3 on the same screen.
> Interesting, and sad.

Not an a 16:9 screen. In the case of a 16:9 display 4:3 video has less resolution and you get black bars on the left and right edges (known sometimes as 'pilarboxing')

> Let's see how Sony's new HDV camcorder pans out.
> It will have 16:9 native high definition CCD's and also
> (evidently) can be switched to SD mode which would
> really be the best of both worlds!

What would be really cool: to output HDV downconverted to DV in real time, so you can 'offline' or make an SD version using a current NLE and rerender the project in HD using the original tapes when your NLE supports it and your client is willing to pay for it. That will really be the best of both worlds. Rumor has it that the Sony HDV will have this capability. I think with the JVC HD10 you have to shoot in the lower resolution if you want DV output.

[Sean McHenry]

Ignacio, not total pixels in the image, pixels per inch on the screen. You are stretching the pixels horizontally so you would have in essence, fatter pixels in a 16:9 image than in a 4:3 image. If you would measure 1" across the screen in 4:3 you might get an arbitrary 100 pixels - depends on the size of the set you are viewing the image on...bigger screen, bigger pixels. On the 16:9 screen, since the pixels are fatter, there would be less of them horizontally in the same 1" width.

Boyd, that right? The aspect ratio of the individual pixels is fatter in 16:9 than 4:3 but the total pixel count is the same, 720x480 (=345,600 pixels in the whole image), no matter what the aspect ratio as that is the DV standard.

I am wondering what is the reason for going beyond 720x480 pixels at all in capturing the images in the first place. Since the DV standard will only allow that 720x480 to be recorded, why go to a million pixels if we are just throwing them away when they go out to tape? It just flags whether they are in essence, skinny or fat pixels.

I have a feeling I'm not looking at all this the right way. If the above is true, almost all cameras with decent glass at a native 720x480 pixel image would all look the same.

And while I'm at it, if you displayed DV on a big theatrical screen at 720 across by 480 vertical pixels, you should be albe to count every pixel on the screen from the back row.

I must be missing something and I think it's in the translation from pixel count to interlaced scan lines.

Sean

[Sean McHenry]

By the way, Avid Xpress Pro seems to be handling the DVFilm footage correctly in the timeline. That is, spit out some 16:9 edited footage to a quicktime file. Drop it into DVFilm Maker. Bring the new deinterlaced clip from DVFilm Maker back into the Avid Xpress Pro timeline. It will play out to the camera in the correct aspect ratio.

Premiere Pro is not doing this for some reason. Same procedure except, making a DV type AVI file in Premiere. Bring the new DVFilm Maker clip back into Premiere Pro and it plays out to the camera as 4:3 anamorphic footage. That is, horizontally compressed full frame 4:3.

I'm not 100% sold on DVFilm as the waterfall footage I shot the other day gets a bit too stuttered in a seemingly random pattern but the tree branches blowing slowly across the frame looked good.

Might be nice if they did some magic to the gama while doing the deinterlacing so you could get an all-in-one film look effect. Their deinterlace process is some of the best I have seen.

Sean

[Boyd Ostroff]

Sean, the real issue in capturing the best quality 16:9 is that you want to use all 480 of the vertical lines. If you have a 4:3 aspect ratio CCD that only offers 720x480 pixels then something's gotta give. In order to capture a 16:9 image in the correct proportion you are forced to discard about 60 lines from the top of the image and another 60 from the bottom, leaving you with a 720x360 image. In order to conform to the anamorphic widescreen spec, the camera then stretches this image vertically back to 720x480. But the vertical resolution has been diminished by 25% in this process. Cameras like the PDX-10 that have megapixel CCD's still crop something off the top and bottom of the image to get the correct 16:9 proportion, but there are still enough pixels left for the full 480 vertical lines.

Yes, you are losing something by capturing an 854x480 image, squeezing down to 720 x 480, and then stretching back to 854x480 on playback. But that's just the nature of the beast. The 16:9 footage from the PDX-10 looks quite nice on a native widescreen display in spite of all this.

I have done as you describe, and recently used 16:9 DV with a 10,000 lumen Barco DLP projector on a screen about 44' wide. Everyone was quite surprised at how good it looked. Actually you could not see any individual pixels, although depending on the subject matter, some of the images did have a soft look, like they were a bit out of focus. I think the image scaler in the projector does enough blending that you won't ever get a blocky pixellated look though. Anyway, do a little quick math: 44' wide screen x 12" = 528", so each pixel is 528/720 = .73". Or in other words, the pixels are about 3/4" wide. Of course it would be nice to have higher resolution, but that isn't too bad.

If I painted a backdrop with a 3/4" wide brush I think you would perceive that as quite detailed. All these things are relative of course so you pretty much have to use your judgement to decide what will be an acceptable resolution for your purposes. Next time, yeah, I'd rather use HD, but that gets more complicated, time consuming and expensive. During the coming years the new HDV gear will change the way we approach all these things.

[Sean McHenry]

Thanks Boyd. I have been to your web site numerous times since starting all this up and still find what you are doing to be really great.

The response this round clears up a few issues, except this last one. If I am shooting with all those pixels but only get to use 720x480 (or 854x480), what is happening to all those extra pixels? A follow up would then be, why bother shooting with all those pixels if we will never see them on tape?

3/4" for an image that size isn't so bad.

By the way, I have played with the XL1s, GL2, AG-DVX100, GY-HD10 and the GY-DV5000U and now own a PDX10. After all, we do sell those where I work. I just never fully understood the DV format as well as I do now I guess.

Point is, try the JVC if you like but by comparison and cost of the other cameras in the above list, it sucks. First, it's a single chip. Second, it is HD by format definition only. That is, the pixel count might be there but if you are expecting a better image than it's competitors, it ain't there. Third, you can't do anything with the footage except play it out to beta or other component devices or the JVC HD VHS deck. If you do play it to any other analog device, it isn't HD format any longer, it's beta or analog component.

The tapes will only play native in 2 decks in the whole world right now. You can almost go directly to DVD after editing with their supplied, limited functionality editing software. Don't forget the footage is MPEG-2 so you won't get frame accrate edit points.

Some folks are using this camera for weddings direct to DVD. I suppose you could just play out the DVD to analog tape for VHS copies but all in all, it's not a graceful solution.

Eventually the format will come of age but right now, this particular camera hasn't got anything that makes me want to sell it to anyone. Especially at it's price point.

Sean

[Ignacio Rodriguez]

> If I am shooting with all those pixels but only get to use
> 720x480 (or 854x480), what is happening to all those extra
> pixels? A follow up would then be, why bother shooting with
> all those pixels if we will never see them on tape?

There are benefits with downsampling: Noise generated in the CCD's discrete pixels is cancelled somewhat on averaging the data from adjacent pixels, so signal to noise ratio should theoretically improve, which is a good thing when there is low light. Also, aliasing (known as 'jaggies') is reduced to some extent, as the downsampling process makes for a very good low pass filter. For these reasons, the PDX10's image can be better than that of other, more expensive cameras like the PD170 even in 4:3 mode, assuming certain conditions are met in such a way as to not fall into the PDX10 caveats, this would be: vertical smearing from excessive contrast or poor sensitivity under low light conditions.

When the new Sony consumer HDV camcorder comes along, we will get similar benefits when using 'legacy' mode to write DV tapes, whether in 4:3 or in 16:9. Of course, assuming the rumored price point and thus the small CCD size, we will also probably experience similar shortcomings.

About your question regarding 16:9 going through AVI and QT, it is likely not a problem with Premiere itself but with the AVI file, which I think might not have the capability of handling non-square pixel aspect ratios, so the program which afterwards reads the video file doesn't automatically handle it as a 16:9 image with rectangular pixels.