Quality issues when played on HD/BR Player at DVinfo.net

Lukas Siewior · August 16th, 2009, 08:41 PM

I just delivered a finished DVD (SD quality) to my customers and they played it on their Sony HDTV through PS3 - and the image was horrible - major interlacing and very harsh edges and pixels. They flipped - and so did I. Turns out that PS3 does very poor job on upconverting images from regular DVD. We put the disc into "old-fashioned" DVD player and all went back to normal - like any other SD DVD played on HDTV - nice and soft.

Just a warning for everyone to make sure customer knows about limitations of their equipment and potential compatibility issues.

Walt Paluch · August 16th, 2009, 09:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lukas Siewior

I just delivered a finished DVD (SD quality) to my customers and they played it on their Sony HDTV through PS3 - and the image was horrible - major interlacing and very harsh edges and pixels. They flipped - and so did I. Turns out that PS3 does very poor job on upconverting images from regular DVD. We put the disc into "old-fashioned" DVD player and all went back to normal - like any other SD DVD played on HDTV - nice and soft.

Just a warning for everyone to make sure customer knows about limitations of their equipment and potential compatibility issues.

We had the same thing happen here is our fix:
Make movie with Apple Pro HQ codec and it goes away, (located in FINAL CUT PRO)
it is more steps but you can avoid some redos if you do it up front

Adam Gold · August 16th, 2009, 10:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lukas Siewior

Turns out that PS3 does very poor job on upconverting images from regular DVD.

Wow, that couldn't be more different than my experience. When I play DVDs that I've burned, in my PS3, they are virtually indistinguishable from HD. I can see the difference but my clients can't -- I have to freeze the frames and point stuff out before they see it. And the same is true for me with movies -- I have several on both BD and DVD and the DVDs are very, very close to BD quality. And this is on a pretty big screen.

Could it be your encoding settings or SW package?

Gabroo Singh · August 16th, 2009, 10:32 PM

A friend of mine that does videos also shared that the PS3 upconversion of DVD's produces stunning video quality.

Lukas Siewior · August 17th, 2009, 05:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam Gold

Wow, that couldn't be more different than my experience. When I play DVDs that I've burned, in my PS3, they are virtually indistinguishable from HD. I can see the difference but my clients can't -- I have to freeze the frames and point stuff out before they see it. And the same is true for me with movies -- I have several on both BD and DVD and the DVDs are very, very close to BD quality. And this is on a pretty big screen.

Could it be your encoding settings or SW package?

I think it's the encoding settings - I think "deinterlace" is off. I will play with it over the week to determine the reason. BTW: I'm stuck with Adobe CS3 :-( need to play lotto more often...

Adam Gold · August 17th, 2009, 10:53 AM

I'm using CS3 as well and also have no deinterlacing. I just "Export to Encore" straight from the Premiere timeline and tweak the default settings to maximize the quality and bitrate. No sweat and near-HD regular DVDs.

I've been told that the hardware deinterlacing (if it is indeed necessary) done by your HDTV is better than any software deinterlacing you could do, so you should never deinterlace when rendering your final project. That may or may not be true, but following this advice has worked for me.

But I'm also usually using Cineform's Prospect HD. If it's a complicated project I export first to CFHD with "recompress" UNchecked. I then import the final rendered file back into a new timeline and do the "Export to Encore" from the single avi file.

Works perfectly and the output is stunning. Although I have to say I sometimes do simple projects just using the Adobe presets, no Cineform, and the results are identical.

Dimitris Mantalias · August 18th, 2009, 12:40 AM

Sometimes it's not only the upscale quality of the player but also the abilities of HDTV to handle the upscale (but definitely not in your case, since you tried in normal DVD and everything was OK). For example, PS3 connected on a 12th generation Plasma tv (far better than LCD/TFT) delivers stunning quality with deinterlaced footage (HD looks absolutely mind-blowing). Deinterlacing may be the problem sometimes, especially with the average quality LCD but it is still a problem that many TVs don't support progressive scan, so giving interlaced footage isn't the best of solutions, at least for me. The best way of deinterlacing is Magic Bullet Frames, especially the Plus version for After Effects, which although slow as a turtle, gives the best quality a software can give, almost equal to shooting native progressive.

Lukas Siewior · August 18th, 2009, 06:28 AM

Thx guys. I'll be playing with the export settings. Since it was only one incident like that then I think it must be related to customer's custom setup. Never had that issue with other HDTV setups.

Khoi Pham · August 22nd, 2009, 10:22 AM

PS3 has one of the best SD to HD upscale scheme available, be sure that they have the latest firmware, but I think it is more on your end, the way you downconvert to SD from HD, because they would have flipped way before you when they were watching DVD on it if PS3 didn't upscale it right, but why do you make them a DVD instead of a Blu-ray disc when they already have a PS3? I'm assuming you are already shooting HD, if not then you should. (-:

August 16th, 2009, 08:41 PM	#1
Lukas Siewior Major Player Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Lyndhurst, NJ, USA Posts: 408	Quality issues when played on HD/BR Player I just delivered a finished DVD (SD quality) to my customers and they played it on their Sony HDTV through PS3 - and the image was horrible - major interlacing and very harsh edges and pixels. They flipped - and so did I. Turns out that PS3 does very poor job on upconverting images from regular DVD. We put the disc into "old-fashioned" DVD player and all went back to normal - like any other SD DVD played on HDTV - nice and soft. Just a warning for everyone to make sure customer knows about limitations of their equipment and potential compatibility issues.

August 22nd, 2009, 10:22 AM	#9
Khoi Pham Major Player Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Dallas Posts: 747	PS3 has one of the best SD to HD upscale scheme available, be sure that they have the latest firmware, but I think it is more on your end, the way you downconvert to SD from HD, because they would have flipped way before you when they were watching DVD on it if PS3 didn't upscale it right, but why do you make them a DVD instead of a Blu-ray disc when they already have a PS3? I'm assuming you are already shooting HD, if not then you should. (-: __________________ Khoi Pham www.proeditproductions.com

August 16th, 2009, 10:32 PM	#4
Gabroo Singh Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Modesto, CA Posts: 26	A friend of mine that does videos also shared that the PS3 upconversion of DVD's produces stunning video quality.

August 17th, 2009, 10:53 AM	#6
Adam Gold Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Woodinville, WA USA Posts: 3,467	I'm using CS3 as well and also have no deinterlacing. I just "Export to Encore" straight from the Premiere timeline and tweak the default settings to maximize the quality and bitrate. No sweat and near-HD regular DVDs. I've been told that the hardware deinterlacing (if it is indeed necessary) done by your HDTV is better than any software deinterlacing you could do, so you should never deinterlace when rendering your final project. That may or may not be true, but following this advice has worked for me. But I'm also usually using Cineform's Prospect HD. If it's a complicated project I export first to CFHD with "recompress" UNchecked. I then import the final rendered file back into a new timeline and do the "Export to Encore" from the single avi file. Works perfectly and the output is stunning. Although I have to say I sometimes do simple projects just using the Adobe presets, no Cineform, and the results are identical.

August 18th, 2009, 12:40 AM	#7
Dimitris Mantalias Major Player Join Date: May 2009 Location: Arta, Greece Posts: 342	Sometimes it's not only the upscale quality of the player but also the abilities of HDTV to handle the upscale (but definitely not in your case, since you tried in normal DVD and everything was OK). For example, PS3 connected on a 12th generation Plasma tv (far better than LCD/TFT) delivers stunning quality with deinterlaced footage (HD looks absolutely mind-blowing). Deinterlacing may be the problem sometimes, especially with the average quality LCD but it is still a problem that many TVs don't support progressive scan, so giving interlaced footage isn't the best of solutions, at least for me. The best way of deinterlacing is Magic Bullet Frames, especially the Plus version for After Effects, which although slow as a turtle, gives the best quality a software can give, almost equal to shooting native progressive.

August 18th, 2009, 06:28 AM	#8
Lukas Siewior Major Player Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Lyndhurst, NJ, USA Posts: 408	Thx guys. I'll be playing with the export settings. Since it was only one incident like that then I think it must be related to customer's custom setup. Never had that issue with other HDTV setups.