sd dvd from ex1 : horrible

[Adam Forgione]

ive done all the methods, im done. if anyone is very happy with their results can you post an mpeg that i can import into dvdsp and burn so i can see what your seeing. im dying to see good ex1 sd downconvert

[Adam Forgione]

im starting to think the sd conversion problem is related to he cinealta technology. i dont think people using other hd cams are having the same problem.

[Laurence Kingston]

One thing you need to remember is that the regular HDV resolution of 1440 is twice that of SD's 720. Thus a simple divide by two or drop every second pixel resize works beautifully when downrezzing to SD. With 1920, you have to do a more complex scaling algorythm which may be beyond what your NLE can do. If you are doing a project that is going to be mainly distributed in SD, you might want to try the 1440 x 1080 mode instead for a smoother simpler downrez.

[Steven Thomas]

???

So, let me get this straight, if you have a high quality HD image it's more apt to create poor SD-DVDs?

Hollywood certainly is not shooting movies in SD.

[Adam Forgione]

Originally Posted by Laurence Kingston

One thing you need to remember is that the regular HDV resolution of 1440 is twice that of SD's 720. Thus a simple divide by two or drop every second pixel resize works beautifully when downrezzing to SD. With 1920, you have to do a more complex scaling algorythm which may be beyond what your NLE can do. If you are doing a project that is going to be mainly distributed in SD, you might want to try the 1440 x 1080 mode instead for a smoother simpler downrez.

thats the format im using, actually i tested it with every format the ex1 can shoot, they are all bad

[Adam Forgione]

Originally Posted by Steven Thomas

???

So, let me get this straight, if you have a high quality HD image it's more apt to create poor SD-DVDs?

Hollywood certainly is not shooting movies in SD.

im all ears? bottom line every sd dvd test from the ex1 ive done has landed in the trash and i would never show client the dvd. im dying for someone to show me a way, a "real" way. ive heard over and over for years that hd downconverts look better than original sd, then i hear other say the opposite. dont know what to believe, all that i know is my ex1 downconverted via fcp or compressor or the cam itself is horrible.

[Tyler Franco]

I think the down-convert out of the cam looks great. My current workflow is edit and then convert final sequence to HDV and run that back to cam. Then down-convert and dub via the component connection from the cam.

[Adam Forgione]

if anyone out there feels strongly about how good their ex1 clips downconverted to sd looks, i beg you to post a small m2v file so i can throw in dvdsp and burn a dvd to see it. thats the only thing i can think of, some say its horrible, some say it beautiful, im ready to jump out a window

preferably 60i id love to see interlaced footage
thank you in advance

[Simon Denny]

Although i use the Sony Z1 i have the same problem as you.
If you find the answer let me know?

Simon

[Bob Grant]

I've had no problems getting great SD DVDs from any of the HDV cameras or my EX1. I do use Vegas. Just edit the footage and render to mpeg-2, need to watch a few project settings to avoid gruesome dog teeth sized interlace artifacts and may need to wrangle resolution to avoid line twitter but these I learned how to wrangle years ago working with HiRes stills
Perhaps if you guys could explicitly state what's wrong with your results some of us from the dark side could give you some tips. This should not be hard, some of the convoluted workflows I've read people going through to get this simple job done stagger me.

[Simon Denny]

I know this is an EX1 topic but you might be able to help Bob.
Recording HD, downconvert via camera to Vegas. Footage has lost sharpness, it all looks low res cheap and nasty. From what i'm reading in the Ex1 fourm it seems the same with the Z1 camera.

I have gone the other way, capture HD to Vegas render out to mpeg-2 using 2 pass render, the rendered footage is low res.
Next step is to record SD in camera and see what happens.

Any info on your work flow i would like to hear?

Simon

[Bob Grant]

Hi Simon.
you're right, this issue is nothing specific to the EX1. It wouldn't matter if the footage was from a F900, A1 or HV20, downconverting HD to SD is the core issue. Some cameras deliver higher resolution, especially in progressive and that can mean problems only surface with those cameras.

In Vegas I just open a 50i SD 16:9 project. You MUST specify a de-interlace method in the project. Take you pick, I use Blend Fields however if you have a lot of fast motion then Interpolate may work better.

I then edit as normal and render at Best to mpeg-2 Widescreen and author in DVDA 4.5. I render audio separately. Choose audio as ac3 or PCM as you see fit and bitrates etc for mpeg-2 just as I would for a SD project. This process delivers all of the chroma samples available to the MC encoder, something you miss using in-camera downconversion. This isn't such a big deal as PAL's 4:2:0 DV sampling is very close to mpeg-2's 4:2:0. It is a big deal if you're working in NTSC.

Now comes the tricky bit although with the Z1 you probably will not have an issue. You may get too much resolution in your SD! No 50i SD camera will deliver 576 lines of res, by design. In fact 576p is considered HD by our broadcasting standards. Too much vertical res and you get line twitter and possibly aliasing. So you may need to reduce vertical res using the Median or Gaussian Blur FX. Apply only in the vertical direction and just enough, .001 to .003 should do it. Now you final SD may also benefit from a little edge enhancement. Yeah I know it sounds daft to reduce resolution and then try to make it look sharper. Welcome to the mysteries of interlaced video.

Just where in the chain you add the edge enhancement is very important, it needs to be done after downconversion, not before or the aliasing / twitter problem will rear its head. See my post here:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost....8&postcount=51
about how to control where in the chain Vegas's FX work. Monitoring on a CRT while you work is always helpful too. Oftenly HDV seems to need a little tweaking with CC to get the best out of it.

[Phil Bloom]

I have shot loads of EX1 stuff that has been downconverted to DV for tx and after that has been burned onto DVD and it looks great.

[Keith Malone]

Adam,

Have you tried what it suggested here:
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=116485

[Adam Forgione]

Originally Posted by Bob Grant

I've had no problems getting great SD DVDs from any of the HDV cameras or my EX1. I do use Vegas. Just edit the footage and render to mpeg-2, need to watch a few project settings to avoid gruesome dog teeth sized interlace artifacts and may need to wrangle resolution to avoid line twitter but these I learned how to wrangle years ago working with HiRes stills
Perhaps if you guys could explicitly state what's wrong with your results some of us from the dark side could give you some tips. This should not be hard, some of the convoluted workflows I've read people going through to get this simple job done stagger me.

ive tried them all in every format the ex1 shoots. can you post a 30sec m2v of 60i footage and i will burn a dvd and see what your seeing. this is the only way i can see what your seeing. thank you in advance if your willing to do this, it would be groundbreaking to me