I'm sick of crappy DVD quality...

[Chris Harding]

Hi Guys

I tried the Lagarith codec at one time and found the the resulting AVI was massive!!! (Around 850mb from 24 secs of HD video) Also on the DuoCore machine the AVI behaved worse that the original AVCHD raw footage!!!
The Canopus HQ codec works very well and runs on my DuoCore without too much effort but I still seem to get better SD DVD's if I transcode the original to M2t at 50mps and then edit and make the DVD file directly from that!!

Chris

[Ken Diewert]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kellam

Dennis:

Are you 100% convinced it's worth the extra step?

The screen grabs I have seen so far almost all look better with the exception of a grid pattern showing only on one example. I was also wondering about essentially rendering twice. Im guessing you are rendering the resize in essentially lossless format to minimize artifacts.

Do you use much sharpening to get the detail back?

Did you check your final results both ways on a large size HDTV when you were experimenting?

Sorry for all the questions, Im just trying to convince myself the result is worth the effort. IMO my Vegas only NTSC DVD widescreen output is pretty good, but nowhere near HD or commercial DVD quality.

To Peter:
I TOTALLY hear you. Field processing is key. I have been learning and fighting with HD material/NLEs since 2003 when I got the first HDV camera out, the GR HD-1. Most things are far better, but the scaling issues still going on are crazy. It has come to a head again now in August 2009, but if you search you will find all the old threads and the virtual dub scaling solution discussed back in 2005. I mostly shoot progressive, and partially because of the way interlacing is handled, I don't think the scaler interpolation method is as critical in the downconvert, but does still matter. It seems it was more of an issue with my old 720P camera actually than my current 1080P camera, but I don't know why.

Jeff,

I spent the entire last weekend on this and am absolutely convinced it worth the extra step. I'm the one that started this thread, so bear in mind I was really not happy with the quality of SD-dvd from HD source. Now that I have spent so much time figuring it out, it is a pretty straightforward work around.

All we are doing in virtualdub (which I use) is resizing the video from HD (1440x1080, 1920x1080, etc.,) to the SD-(DVD) size of 720x480. The Lanczos resizer is used to do this. For whatever reason, the resizing tool is far better than any NLE standard resizer. In my case I render from Vegas as 1440x1080 Cineform .avi and open it in VirtualDub - Video-Filters-Add-Resize

Settings for Resize

New Size: - Check Absolute (pixels) (720x480) Though my setting is 720x405 (??? it works for me)

Aspect Ratio: - Disabled

Filter mode: Lanczos3

Interlaced: Unchecked (works for me)

Framing Options: Do not letterbox or crop

Codec-friendly sizing: Do not adjust

Note: once you figure out your settings, click 'Save as Default'

Select OK - close filters - go to Video-Compression-select Lagarith Lossless codec-OK

File-save as AVI

I export out of VirtualDub using the Lagarith codec, which is a high quality (lossless) codec. The resulting .avi file is still nearly as large as the input .avi file. The quality of the resulting .avi is nearly as good as the source.

From here you would bring it into your DVD authoring software for mpeg-2 encoding.

Some people use TMPGEnc as it is an Mpeg2 encoder - I had issues with it opening my cineform .avi files. So I import my 720x480 (in my case 720x405 - I don't know why but it works beautifully in the proper aspect ratio. I suspect it is the HDV PAR of 1.333 vs. HD square pixel), into DVDA and prepare my dvd project as normal.

The extra workflow in my case was not nearly as bad as I thought. once I tested and re-tested, and re-re-tested. I probably spent about 16 hours rendering and re-rendering last weekend. To me the results were absolutely worth the extra step in the workflow.

If you're as sick as I was about crappy HD->SD results, then you owe it to yourself and your clients to try to improve it.

[Nicholas de Kock]

Ken you should under no circumstance allow DVD Architect to re-compress your footage! DVDA does a horrible job at compression and your product will look very pixelated. I calculate the bitrate rate I'll need using a bitrate calculator and render my projects of from HD to SD with video quality set on "Best" in Vegas. Once rendered out I import into DVDA, if for some reason my bitrate calculations was incorrect (happens quite often) and my video won't fit on the DVD I do a new render through Vegas at lower bitrates. Looking back I can't believe I gave out videos after DVDA re-compressed it to fit on DVD! DVDA is your weakest link. You won't believe the quality you get from doing a proper render through Vegas, looks close to HD on my HDTV.

[Dennis Murphy]

Originally Posted by Nicholas de Kock

Ken you should under no circumstance allow DVD Architect to re-compress your footage! DVDA does a horrible job at compression and your product will look very pixelated.

I concur.
I take my resized Lagarith file from Virtual Dub and import it into a PAL widescreen project in Sony Vegas (I'm in PAL land).
Then I render out an .mpeg using the DVD Architect PAL widescreen setting. You get a whole bunch of extra options with variable bitrate etc for large projects that DVDA doesn't offer you.
It's a pity Vegas doesn't use the Lancoz3 algorithm for downsizing HD projects. In future, they need to incorporate something a lot better than what they have, since HD -> SD is such a common part of many people's workflow.

[Jim Snow]

Originally Posted by Dennis Murphy

It's a pity Vegas doesn't use the Lancoz3 algorithm for downsizing HD projects. In future, they need to incorporate something a lot better than what they have, since HD -> SD is such a common part of many people's workflow.

None of the NLE companies provide Lancoz-3 (or any good resizer) that I am aware of. Sony and Adobe collectively hold the majority market share of NLE's and they apparently can't be bothered.

Here's your chance NLE manufacturers; DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS. To ignore this considering the price you are charging for your products is ridiculous. HD to SD DVD workflow has got to be one of if not the most common use of an NLE. It's time you worry about the core functionality of your products and not just the screen glitz and bling. We don't want to see CS5 or Pro 10 until this has been taken care of.

This issue is significant enough to switch NLE's for. I currently use Vegas Pro 8. I like it overall and I wouldn't like to switch to another NLE primarily because of the learning curve. But this is important to me. I would seriously consider changing if another product solved this problem.