Ever made a DVD using a widescreen DV file made from 1080p30?

[David W Williamson]

Garrett, the only missing link for me in your workflow is the Cineform intermediate codec. I don't think I can afford it, unless they have a fully functioning trial (:

[Garrett Low]

HI David,

Cineform does have a fully functioning trial version (15 days), just enough time to compete one project. Go to their website and download it. It's worth giving it a try. I swear by them now. And they have great customer service.

Also, I don't I'd be willing to run some of your footage through my normal process. I may not be able get to it right away but I would be interested to see if I'm getting the same results as you.

If you've got an ftp set up let me know the link and I'll download the file and play with it.

Garrett

[Michael Wisniewski]

[EDITED FOR CLARITY]

David,

I think I get it now. The shots are too wide and include too much "other stuff" that's not important to her customers. I believe your client is telling you in lay terms - that she was expecting full body and medium shots of the dancers so that the parents of the event could clearly see their daughters and loved ones. (see the next post for examples from your video) The customers of the event are probably typical parents who are only interested in seeing their little darlings up close, shining in the lime light. Anything outside of that and they're not interested. I know if my daughter was in this event, that's what I would be expecting. Thankfully you used HD so you could try cropping the video, but you've lost a lot of that resolution because the dancers are so far back in the frame.

Next time a better setup might be two cameras:
Camera 1 - static / set to a shot of center stage, the bottom of the frame on the stage, the top of the frame 2-4 feet about the dancers heads
Camera 2. hand operated / for getting medium & close up shots, plus any dancers outside of the other camera's view

Of course that complicates the whole process, but I think you'll be giving your customers something they will value more.

[Michael Wisniewski]

From the video you shot, here's screen captures of what I think she's looking & not looking for.

[Garrett Low]

Hey David,

One of the beauties of shooting HD for SD DVD, you don't loose very much when you post edit zoom and pan. I can almost corp down to 720x480 without any noticeable loss. It will take some extra time during your editing but it may be worth it to show your client that you understand her concerns and have a way to address them. She'll probably appreciate the extra effort and you'll be set for the next show they do.

Garrett

[David W Williamson]

Michael, I agree that it would be great to have the shots that close all the time, but this is a single camera gig, and in order for all the parents to be happy about buying a video of their kid's dance, they have to be in there, which means zooming to fit the group in the frame. It was actually the client's idea; I did her video last year using a single DSR400, and she was very happy, and I didn't get any negative comments from the parents. I agree that a second camera would be nice, but any time I'm close on the second camera, someone's kid is left out. That is the reason that she prefers one camera; no kid left behind :)

In the end, I'm as close as I can be at all times (given safe area, of course). This is the first time I've had to make this conversion, as well as it being the first time she's had a widescreen DVD of her concert made.

Garrett, I really like the idea of cropping and zooming, but that will still leave me with wide shots (which I had to get based on the description I gave above). I guess in those situations I'm stuck with full frame down-size.

Here is a link to 30 seconds of footage: http://davidwilliamson.net/video/Mai...te_1080p30.zip
I rendered it out of Vegas using the Main Concept Bluray 1080 profile. I just changed the field order to none to keep it progressive. I would love to see anyone's re-size and mpeg2 results on this, including your process. I'm on a PC with Vegas 8, Encore, and Cinema Craft at my disposal, just so you know. If you don't have a place online to host your .m2v file, you can upload it to: ftp://ftp.davidwilliamson.net. User: dwguest, pass: hdvideo. My sample footage can also be downloaded there as well.

You guys have been great during this thread, thank you!

[David W Williamson]

Ok, here are two of my results, one with CCE and one with Hcenc:
http://davidwilliamson.net/video/cce.zip
http://davidwilliamson.net/video/hcenc.zip

For both of these, here's my workflow:

1. frame serve out of Vegas 8 (project settings at 1920x1080 29.97 progressive) with DebugMode frameserver to...
2. VirtualDub where I applied the 'resize' filter, choose the 'Lancsoz3' filter mode, frame size of 720X405, do not letterbox or crop selected, then frame served that to...
3. hcenc / CCE

If anyone wants more details on the steps & settings, I'll be happy to supply screenshots and be specific. This method is adapted from reading this post: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=116587

I'm anxious to see what anyone else comes up with. The hcenc looks the best as far as facial detail, but the backgrounds are a bit blocky. CCE does a better job with the overall frame. I'm going to do some more experiements, of course, until I find the best possible combo. The uncompressed resize to SD looks amazing, if only I could use that... :)

[David W Williamson]

Here is another attempt, seems like the best one so far:
http://davidwilliamson.net/video/Mai...compressed.zip

For this one, I frameserved to VirtualDub to resize as before, and used Vdub to save an uncompressed avi (775 MB for 30 seconds!). I brought the uncompressed avi back into Vegas and rendered as MainConcept NTSC widescreen. The above link is to the result.

Seems like I ought to be able to get better results than I'm getting on the mpeg2 step; the resized uncompressed avi looks spectacular, but the resulting mpeg2 compression isn't so hot. The sharpness and general quality suffers alot. I think, however, that I can officially say that I'm past any resizing issues. The frameserve to Vdub for resizing method produces a pristine & gorgeous 720 x 405 picture. I've just got to get some decent mpeg2 compression.

Maybe it's my settings in the compressor? There are so many to configure, especially in CCE/Hcenc. Another thought that comes to mind is the data rate. Right now, it can be whatever since I'm only compressing 30 seconds. But, once I'm trying to squeeze a two hour show on to a single layer disc, I may have to give up some of that data. If I'm only getting mediocre results now with 30 seconds, I'm not looking forward to two + hours.

[David W Williamson]

Hugh, I'm interested in your AVC comment. So you're saying that i render to AVC, then drop those into DVDA? Won't DVDA recompress it to mpeg2 in the end anyway?

On another note, just so ya'lls can see, here is a frame grabs from the uncompressed resize.