I would love to see such a comparison too; especially with footage that has lots of motion with people in stripy costumes.

I never thought that I have to prove my claims - but why not. I know that I might have caused some stir in this forum with this comment so it's understandable that you question me.

My material was copyrighted but if you like to send me a short clip with stripy costumes I'm willing to render it for you. Dropbox or similar... I'm in PAL-land so my tests are all HD 50i to SD 50i. Will do also NTSC if you prefer :)

Christian

PS: I did this same test about 3 years ago with an earlier trial version of Edius and was stunned already then. I never had enough reasons or money to to get it, since most of my work was SD2SD.

Here you go!

This a 30sec. clip of our annual Nutcracker on Ice in NTSC XDCAM 720p which should make for an easy conversion to NTSC DVD 16:9.

I downloaded Edius trail version and will give it a try too but I am unfamiliar and you might be able to get excellent results much faster. If Edius is really that much better and easier, I don't mind spending the money on it.

Of course you have to prove your claims. :)

But so do I, and so does everyone else. It is by posting the results that we all can determine what really works better. If you read any of those posts in that long thread I linked to above, you'll see that we were all posting the results of our efforts and then challenging and criticizing each other's results.

What you'll also find is that there often isn't an answer as to what is better or best. For instance, in some of those HD --> SD conversions, some of the attempts did a great job of reducing line twitter -- something that is a common problem during down-conversion -- but in doing that, they dulled some of the details.

Speaking for myself, I have often found myself completely enamored with some new technique that seems to create a better result, only to later discover that the technique causes other problems which offset the improvement.

So, yes, it really helps to show the results of your efforts. Most people don't view it as an affront, but are actually eager to show off what they have discovered.

OK, here's the short answer ;?)
Downscaling (bicubic) of progressive source by itself is not the biggest issue, unless you are seeing actual moire or increased banding.
Rescaling + Deinterlace in Vegas? -- Simply put, there are better solutions.

I find Vegas not bad at all. For interlaced footage, I set the project properties to progressive, double the frame rate and leave deinterlacing at interpolate. Once done, it produces very good results when downscaled to interlaced DVD format.

I just tried Edius 7.4 and it does make it simple to convert but for my taste, the result is a bit dull, too soft. It does have very little moiré which can be achieved by applying the unsharp mask in Vegas, the result will be the same as via Edius; dull and soft with little moiré.

one worry i might mention, is that downconverting need a proper REC.709 to REC.601 conversion.

vegas do this automatically. i made batchs to downconvert to avisynth and a colormatrix filter to convert is required to keep proper color.

a simple way to see is export a HD so SD in vegas. then convert in another program the same video, and compare in vegas to see if colors are the same.

No, that's really not necessary. The difference in the green primary is so miniscule that it's still ignored by major broadcasters and DSLR makers. It only becomes visible after multiple generations of "errors." Better left as-is than risk confusing the decoder, to my thinking.

Hi OldSmoke,

I assume you want the test rendered as SD NTSC 720 x 486 59.94i 16:9 ??

Is that correct? I have downloaded your clip and will start the conversion when I get your confirmation.

Here the conversion is from 720 59.94p to 486 59.94i, a conversion I never tried before in Edius but will certainly test this for you. It seems that a little NeatVideo would also clear up things in your clip... I don't have it yet for Edius but only for Vegas :(

Christian

EDIT: I did a conversion without waiting for your answer. My upload speed is only 1Mbyte/s so I will start it soon and inform you when ready. I put them on my dropbox. Do you want me to send the link to you privately or just attach it here?

Hi Christian.

I usually convert it to NTSC 704x480 16:9 59.94i DVD compliant. I disabled NeatVideo when I render out the XDCAM file because the trial version of Edius wouldn't have NeatVideo and I wanted to make sure that it is an apple to apple comparison. I did use NeatVideo at allow setting to produce the final DVD of that particular project.

You can post the result here, no issue. This I will allow me to post the result straight from Vegas (without NeatVideo) and we have a good comparison.

I find Vegas not bad at all. For interlaced footage, I set the project properties to progressive, double the frame rate and leave deinterlacing at interpolate. Once done, it produces very good results when downscaled to interlaced DVD format.

Old Smoke. Can you explain that method a little further? How did you test it and where did you come up with that?

Thanks,

John

Hi,

Would 720 x 486 16:9 59.94i in an *.avi container do (pixels are the same aspect ratio)?

Christian

...uploading as we "speak" :)

No it wouldn't. It s not a DVD compliant file. Edius does have a setting for MPEG-2 DVD compliant.

Ok, I will rerender these. Might be that you don't get the results pronto, need to hit the sack soon... I'll do my best...

Christian

Rendering complete. Dowloading 4 different versions @ 1Mbit/s...yawn...

No worries, its not urgent.

@John

There isn't much to further explain and you can test it easily yourself. Which part would need further explanation?

OK, if the HD material is Interlaced (UFF) which most are, why "Progressive"?

John

Oh that is simple. Vegas does a much better job resizing progressive rather then interlaced.

I thought Vegas automatically deinterlaces before resizing? I am using Vegas 8.

John

The problem is that Vegas doesn't do a good job with de-interlacing but does very well with converting interlaced to progressive at double the frame rate. Just give it a try and see if it works for you too, it certainly does for me.

I'll try that - thanks,

John

I can use Vegas for my church videos and get good results. Theater will mostly look good except for a wide view of the stage with all of the performers there or certain close-ups of bright scenes.

On those exceptions, they look absolutely terrible using Vegas.

I currently use the DebugMode FrameServer along with Virtual Dub to resize the video to 720x480 and then load that into Vegas and then render it out to DVDA widescreen. Rendering it out to widescreen adds the needed flag to make it show wide instead of 4x3.

The entire process makes my regular DVD's look much sharper and cleaner than what I can get from Vegas.

Sometime later on I will start another thread about my entire workflow.

Good with exceptions from Vegas, Great with my workflow.