Best encoding for HD 1920x1080 slideshow

rossetyler wrote on 1/19/2008, 6:25 PM

I have a high resolution (> 1920x1080) digital still camera. I would like to take the JPEG images from this camera and present them, with a soundtrack, on my 1920x1080i HD TV through a Sony Playstation 3 (PS3). I do not have the capability of using a blu-ray DVD as I have no burner. I can, however, deliver the audio/video to the PS3 via conventional DVD or stream it via a (TwonkyVision?) media server.

So how can I make the best HD 1920x1080 slideshow in Vegas Pro 8.0b? Retaining the original image quality is the most important thing but I also want to consider size. It seems to me that a properly tuned video encoding of a sequence of still slides can be small if the video encoding supports something like:

1. A high quality encoding of the first frame of a slide from its still picture (an "I" frame?)
2. A "repeat this frame N times" capability for the duration of the slide.
3. Repeat

Other considerations are:

A. I would like to maintain compatibility with blu-ray devices so that I could eventually plunk this encoding on blu-ray media and expect it to play on blu-ray capable devices.

B. I would like this to be playable on the Playstation 3.

C. I would like to be able to stream this to the Playstation 3 from a media server (TwonkyVision?).

The encoding that Vegas uses to create blu-ray discs seems safe but the files seem rather large. Furthermore, I can't seem to replicate the same encoding using "File: Render As" and pulling the encoded file out of ISO images is a pain.

I would like to stick with a 1920x1080 encoding rather than an anamorphic 1440x1080 encoding. I see that Sony's AVC supports 1920x1080 but only as a Custom frame size (seems odd). But wouldn't the more aggressive MPEG-4 AVC encoding sacrifice image quality over MPEG-2? And what about my compatibility concerns.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Comments

DJPadre wrote on 1/19/2008, 6:37 PM

AVCHD stereo will give u what u want

4eyes wrote on 1/20/2008, 6:22 AM

As far as quality with a 1920x1080 project making only a slideshow I make my project settings to 1920x1080 Progressive (frame-based) at my standards frame rate.
Then render the same way to a 1920x1080 progressive video format that the PS3 will play.
Not the newer 1920x1080p (that may be using 59.94 FPS).
The standard 1920x1080 29.97 or 25 but use progressive (frame-based) for the fielding, you can make a custom template that's only progressive and save it.
That's for mpeg video, for avchd I guess you have to use fielded video, unless you make a MP4 avc/h264 video file which the PS3 will also play.
For file playback on the PS3 the MP4 container using avc/h264 actually has more customized features on fine tuning the video on the encoders side. You have to stay with AAC audio though.

rossetyler wrote on 1/20/2008, 1:46 PM

I don't think AVCHD is a choice for me because (as far as I can see in Vegas 8.0b) when using this encoding it implies an anamorphic (1440x1080) encoding. This means my 1920x1080 original gets squeezed down to 1440x1080 by the encoder and stretched back to 1920x1080 by the decoder. I do not want to do this.

The only choice that I see for using the Sony AVC codec is to use an mp4 (system) container with an AVC video encoding with a custom frame size of 1920x1080 and a pixel aspect ratio of 1.0000.

The only other choice I see is to use the Main Concept MPEG-2 codec with one of the blu-ray 1920x1080 templates. I can use an MPEG-2 TS container with an MPEG-2 video encoding. This seems close to what is done by Vegas when you tell it to burn a blu-ray disc - but not quite. (The file is smaller with the latter and the audio encoding is different).

The problem with the Sony AVC choice is that I am not given much chance to tune the encoding for my application (slideshow). The problem with the Main Concept choice is that I don't understand my tuning choices for my application. My guesses on how to improve things have not helped significantly. I have added markers at the beginning of slides hoping that the "Insert I-frames at Markers" choice would improve things, but it did not significantly.

I am concerned about the Sony AVC choice working with my media server (TwonkyVision) and that the more aggressive video encoding might sacrifice quality (priority 1).

Regarding frame rates and interlacing issues, I had not thought of this before. I had thought that since I am developing this for ultimate consumption by a 1920x1080-60i device that that would be the best way to go - there would be no telecine conversion concerns that I would have to worry about.

But, with 1920x1080-60i there are ~30 FPS that need to be encoded. Granted, most of them are the same as the previous but that brings me back to my "tuning" questions. With 1920x1080-24p there are only 24 FPS. This should make my encoding correspondingly smaller and there should be little telecine video effects as there is no motion anyway. A 1920x1080-1p encoding would probably work fine for me.

I don't see interlacing vs. progressive as an issue as there is no motion. Rather, I see that the frame rate may be significant.

Thoughts?

rossetyler wrote on 1/21/2008, 7:41 AM

I tried encoding my 1920x1080-60i project (29.970 FPS) at 1920x1080-24p (actually 23.976 FPS) to reduce the frame rate by 4/5. I expected a corresponding 4/5 reduction in file size but was very surprised to see no significant reduction.

How does this make sense?