Shimmering after render to DVD

[Tim Akin]

I have really been struggling with this one. I have searched for answers all over the place.

I'm getting some shimmering on church pews and brick only after rendering to SD DVD from 1080p footage.

I shoot in 1080p60. After all edits are done, I render the project to a 1080p avi file. Bring that into VirtualDub and use the resize filter to 720x405 avi. Bring that back into Vegas 11 720p project and render too 720p mpeg for DVDA.

VirtualDub has helped a bunch with the shimmering and flickering I was getting but I'm still getting some.

The only way I've been able to completely get ride of the shimmering, is on the final render to mpeg, change the frame rate to 23.976. This gets ride of all shimmering. Just wondering if I'm sacrificing resolution though. Can't tell a huge difference when viewed on 60" TV but can't really compare side by side so it's hard to tell.

Anyone else having this problem and is there a workable solution?

[Les Wilson]

It sounds like aliasing on straight lines (pews and bricks). This is common when down-rezzing from HD to DVD. Some people shoot 720p when going to DVD. If you find a workflow that works, stick to it.

[Tim Akin]

Yeah, after all my research I found that seems to be preferred. Only one of my three cams will do 720p. :(

[Jose Estrada]

"I shoot in 1080p60. After all edits are done, I render the project to a 1080p avi file. Bring that into VirtualDub and use the resize filter to 720x405 avi. Bring that back into Vegas 11 720p project and render too 720p mpeg for DVDA."
Tim, why all those steps to do a DVD?
Seems to me, that you are re-sizing too many times.
Why not just render to one of the DVD templates in DVD Arch?
If you feed anything to DVD Arch. than mpg2 @ 720x480
it will re-compress it.
What I do is the following: Edit in Vegas Pro 11-12
and before render I apply a sharpen filter set to 0.001
to the video track.
And always get nice results.
Hope this helps you.

[Tim Akin]

Actually, I'm only resizing once. I use VirtualDub to resize the 1080 to 720x480 instead of letting Vegas do it. VirtualDub has helped a bunch with the shimmering or aliasing but still getting some.

[Jose Estrada]

Tim,sorry I misunderstood your explanation.
what version of Vegas Pro, you are running? 11 or 12?.
Try to do a test with the sharpen filter applied and see what happens.

[Tim Akin]

Man Jose, this stuff is so confusing. All I've been doing the past two days is trying to figure out the best way to go from 1920x1080p to 720x480 with the least amount of resolution loss and the least amount aliasing.

My conclusion, without spending hundreds, what I'm doing, to my eyes seems to give the best results.

Here's what I have found if anyone is interested.

From a Vegas11 1920x1080p 59.970 project when completed with all editing

Render using Lagarith Codec RGB with all setting same as project properties to avi file

Bring that avi file into VirtualDub and use the resize filter set to 720x405 Lanczos3 filter mode

Bring the 720 file back into Vegas with project settings to match the 720x405 video and render to mpeg
using the DVD Widescreen template changing field order to none and bumping up the 2 pass VBR

Bring that into DVDR to author to DVD

I've tried Disabling resample on the clips and on the 720 avi video....not good. Using the 24p template on the final render takes care of any aliasing but shows a little loss in resolution and doesn't seem as smooth as 29.970, which is to be expected I guess.

After spending hours trying to figure out HCencoder, I never could get it to convert the 59.970 frame rate. I read somewhere during my research that VirtualDub shouldn't be used for frame rate conversion. So that would just add another step to the process to change it before bringing into HC.

So until someone comes up with a step by step guide for dummies, I'll just keep doing it the way I have been. I haven't had any complaints......just trying to please my old self!!

[Juris Lielpeteris]

Tim, actualy you twice resize vertical size - 1080p to 405p and 405p to 480i or 480p.
And you don't use correct color space transformation from 709 to 601 what causes some color shift in DVD.

[Tim Akin]

Ok Juris, thank you. I'll look into that. I did try YUY12 on output to avi but something in the process didn't like it, don't remember what.

Also, VirtualDub does not want to re-size to 720x480 just 405, got to work on that two.

Found this somewhat older tutorial: Bellune Digital Video Services - Tutorials - hd2sd - High Quality Scaling From HD to SD

I'm gonna try and figure it out sometime in the near future.

Been gettin some pm help too, thanks for that!

[Bob Hart]

Tim.

I am making a wild guess here prompted by your references to shooting on "1080 60P" and only one of your cams shooting "720P". If I am wrong here please ignore my following comments.

Perhaps tell us what your cameras that shoot 1080 60P are. If they are Sony Z1/FX1 or other Sony models of around that time, they only shoot interlaced (1080 60i) not 1080 60P. Please also tell us what your 720P camera is. My guess is it may be of the JVC GY-HD*** camera family.

As an easy first step before you start answering questions about camera types etc., --- try to find a preference in Vegas which suggests "de-interlace". De-interlacing may likely remove the "shimmer" or "jitter" on hard horizontal edges but maybe not all of it. I don't know how you find that option in Vegas.

In Premiere, right-clicking on the clip after it has been placed on the timeline prompts a dropdown list.

One of the menu choices offered is "field options". Vegas may be set up similarly. If it is, select "de-interlace" for all clips.

If this works for you, then to preserve that bit of extra quality you might examine the Lanczos3 filter option to see if that has a de-interlace function. It might be worth converting the capture files from all cameras to de-interlaced before final edit in Vegas.

Others here may prompt you in this better than I can and in fewer more sensible words too.

There is another issue with interlaced footage and exporting to DVD for display on interlaced television screens, - "field order". You may find reference to "upper" and "lower". It may be best to export as progressive if your DVD players and displays can cope with it.

My guess is that some of your end-users may have older DVD players and displays. If some recepients of your DVDs cannot replay progressive DVDs, then you will need to enquire as to which "field order" is correct for your country's broadcast standards.

The incorrect field order for exports can cause an ugly image that is very jaggy on motion. Vertical edges look like a munted comb.

I suspect that by using the 24P preset, the software has been forced into de-interlacing the troublesome clips as you have observed an improvement.

De-interlacing however reduces the apparent sharpness of 1080 interlaced footage. That observation I think you also made. In effect, de-interlacing strips every second line. It gives something back by taking some sampling from the stripped lines where it can where there is not much movement within the image.

Editing software has moved on a lot since the Sony Z1/FX1 and the JVC GY-HD*** camera families with their separate HDV1 and HDV2 schemes. At the time however, the only practical way of editing mixed HDV source footage was to convert camera capture files to a common codec. Consumer-level computers then lacked the horsepower to edit from multiple codecs.

For ease of editing and conserving the performance of my editing computer, I still prefer to convert my vision to a common type and edit in that.

Pretty much the only game in town was Cineform CFHD in its guises of AspectHD and ProspectHD, which functioned as plug-ins for the popular editing softwares of the time. So far as I recall ( maybe wrongly ) Cineform licenced the Lanczos application for converting interlaced footage ( i ) to progressive ( P ). It was I believe at the time as good as it got.

Nowadays, most editing software and computers can cope with multiple sources in a single project and export them in whatever form you want - mostly.

I hope this is helpful and does not send you into a dead-end. Heed the comments of others who may be prompted by my wordstuff above.

[Tim Akin]

Bob, the two cameras that shoot 60p are Canon XA-20 and Panasonic AC90. The GH2 is the 720p cam. I'm trying to stay progressive all the way through to DVD.

The shimmering is not that bad really. On a 12 minute highlight video I only saw two scenes that bothered me.

Thanks for jumping in....all help is very much appreciated!!

[Danny Fye]

I shoot 60p.

I set the clip properties to Disable resample and Undersample rate to 0.500 to get 29.970 fps progressive and the project properties also to 29.970 fps for NTSC instead of 59.940 double NTSC. Deinterlaced method is set for none. I set the sharpen filter for light with the broadcast filter set to lenient to make sure the video is 16 to 235.

I render using the Sony mp4 at 5,000,000 bps instead of using an intermediate and HandBrake for online videos. And just Main Concept with settings of progressive for DVD's.

I spent many hours messing with the VirtualDub method and was never really happy with the results. The results were good but not real good probably because I was working with the type of progressive videos I have.

I did get great results using the VirtualDub method with interlaced videos.

The big problem resizing in Vegas seems to be a lot more with interlaced videos than progressive videos.

One other BIG problem I had with the VirtualDub method is the excessive amount of time it takes to do it all!!! Hurry up and wait and wait and wait! It gets so old and unproductive!

I have found that resizing in Vegas using progressive along with my above settings gives me great results!

Why use a method that takes seemingly forever instead?

Note: I am not using my NLE computer so out of memory I typed the above. Ummm memory??? LOL!

I hope this helps.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Handbrake!

It uses the best in class Lanczos rescale method.
It uses the best in class Yadif deinterlace method.
It encodes to the best in class x264 codec.
It has a reasonable GUI, a reasonable worflow, some job management, and was recently upgraded to include the common h.264 standards of Profile & Level.
It's free!

Nothing against Virtualdub, AVISynth, & etc., but Handbrake is very, very good at h.264 encoding.

[Leslie Wand]

+1 handbrake

[Danny Fye]

I do not think Handbrake will be of any help for rendering to DVD.

Originally Posted by Seth Bloombaum

Handbrake!

It uses the best in class Lanczos rescale method.
It uses the best in class Yadif deinterlace method.
It encodes to the best in class x264 codec.
It has a reasonable GUI, a reasonable worflow, some job management, and was recently upgraded to include the common h.264 standards of Profile & Level.
It's free!

Nothing against Virtualdub, AVISynth, & etc., but Handbrake is very, very good at h.264 encoding.