I have an EX1 and a VX2000. Despite endless attempts with the help of lots of people I gave up using the EX1 for shooting stage productions. The results of the SD DVDs just don't look that good (when viewed on a CRT television). Since I mostly shoot stage productions destined for SD DVD I don't use the expensive EX1 very much.

There are lots of people here who argue otherwise and will suggest yet again that I must be dong something wrong.

Those people will probably be more helpful to you, but a side by side comparison of the footage of the same production shot with both cameras with the end product being an SD DVD yield better results with the VX2000 every time (with little or no work in post) and have thus led me to use the EX1 for HD end products and the VX2000 for SD end products. And no customers seem to mind that it is 4:3 either.

While many people have LCD or Plasma televisions these days, the results of HD footage converted to SD DVDs using every suggestion that has been given too me using the EX1 produce marked color fringing around dancers and actors from the stage lighting that aren't apparent on LCD and Plasma televisions or web video yet are completely unacceptable when viewed on CRT televisions.

So my recommendations is to shoot SD for SD DVDs and HD for HD end products (HD DVD or Blu-Ray DVD or HD for the web).

John

Thank you musicvid. I thought I had uploaded some jpg's at one time. Guess not.

Here is the sample file.

http://www.mediafire.com/?onqqmjh2afm

You can hotlink jpegs, but not movies (except Youtube). See the sticky at the top.

Motion artifacting is typical of single pass vbr and low minimum bitrate. Try the suggestions above and you should see an improvement.

I put this on my HD monitor (23") and confess I couldn't see much in the way of motion artifacts either, even in the transition.

Perhaps the OP is seeing remnants from the big screen's decombing filter. Either way, the above rendering advice stands.

"Add Sharpen FX value 0"

Probably not a good move. Adding sharpening prior to downconversion will increase artifacts on edges. 8Mbps average is to all intents the same as 8mbps CBR, probably better but I'd be a tad worried about the Max value spinning out some players. Certainly not the cause of the problem being complained about here though.

The important things is to avoid too much detail in the HD before downsconversion and then add Detail AFTER downconversion IF neeed.

Bob.

Hi,

You should not be sorry to ask how to get professional looking results from a software calling itself Pro!

Adding the Sony sharpen FX using value 0 (zero) comes from some recommendations (in this forum) about how to compensate for the quality loss (!) converting from HD (AVCDH) to SD. The output looks rather soft, compared to DVD material rendered out from SD material, without this "fix".

There have been numerous (too many?) discussions and questions about the final quality of the rendered DVD (when using HD material as the source). No definite asnwers are given. Just some work-arounds. It seems that either the dowscaling process or the mainconcept mpg2 encoder is not up to par. I have never got satisfactory results going from AVCDH to DVD in Vegas. Adding the sharpen Fx with the settingn 0 (!) gives the video a small "punch", but will cause clearly trouble in the mpeg2 encoding process with some high contrast edges. It's a loose-loose situation.

In my frustration I just went so far as to test if the grass is greener on the other side of the "valley". Downloaded yesterday theGreen Valley EDIUS 5 NLE program, just to test their AVCDH to Mpeg2 (DVD) downscaling and encoding. I have not tested it yet since that software is very different what comes to the UI. Will have some time the upcoming week to learn it and render out some material and compare to Vegas... I will post my findings here.

I love Vegas Pro and would like to use it for all my video editing and rendering. However, in my opinion, some of its functions do not live up to the "pro" label. And some things are really screwed up in 9.0c - still awaitingfor the 9.0d to get them fixed.

I miss the version 6.0, that was the frist one where I started with Vegas. It just was rock steady and stable as hell, worked as a charm. It NEVER crashed on me. Those days will probably never return...

Cheers,

Christian

"Adding the sharpen Fx with the settingn 0 (!) gives the video a small "punch", but will cause clearly trouble in the mpeg2 encoding process with some high contrast edges. It's a loose-loose situation."

Which is why you should add the sharpening AFTER downscaling.
You also need to consider what you are downscaling. Progressive to progressive is the easiest. Progessive to interlaced can be quite a problem depending on the camera that shot the video. There's no one click magic solution to get the best possible results.

Bob.

Did you select a deinterlace method in the project properties? I suggest "interpolate."

Which is why you should add the sharpening AFTER downscaling.

How do you apply the sharpen filter after downscaling?

John Cline,
Why do you suggest interpolate when that throws away half the information?

I played the video on my TV, and didn't see the artifacts you mention, but there was something about the "quality" of the result that didn't quite look right.

So, I put the video through an AVISynth filter that separates each frame into separate fields, and then makes a half-resolution frame from each field. This gives me twice the "frames." This is a useful device to tell if field order has been swapped, and whether the material is really interlaced or is progressive. It also lets me easily see what sort of motion is happening between each field. With normal interlaced material, directly from the camera, there is uniform and consistent motion of everything from one field to the next. Thus, if a ball is thrown across the field of view, it progresses by the same amount from one field to the next, whether it is going horizontally or vertically. With progressive footage there is zero movement between each pair of fields that makes up the frame. With footage where the fields have been reversed, there is retrograde (backwards) movement between one field and the next within each frame, and then a major forward movement going to the first field of the next frame.

But, when software "mucks" around in the wrong way with interlaced material, and attempts to create new fields, but gets it wrong, you can end up with all manner of strange things happening. I have seen this often when frame speed conversion is involved, such as going from NTSC 29.97 to PAL 25 or vice versa.

I am seeing some of this strangeness on your clip.

On the initial wide shot, as the actors move their glasses, there is zero movement between each field within a frame. Thus, the video in this section is essentially progressive. In addition, the even frames have far less resolution than the odd frames. Here are four sequential fields from two successive frames:



I don't know how much you can tell from this small fragment from each frame, but the thing that is really obvious when viewing this one field at a time, greatly magnified, is that the buttons on the guy in the back row on the right almost completely disappear in the odd fields and then look fine in the even fields. [edit] I just posted this, and in my browser, you can definitely see that in the first (top) and third fields, the buttons look fuzzier, although when viewed in my editing software the difference is FAR more pronounced. [end edit]

Much more important -- and this is tough to convey in these stills -- is that there is absolutely zero lateral motion between fields as the girl in the purple on the left side moves her glass towards the edge of the frame.

Now, here's the odd thing. As soon as the fade starts from the wide shot to the closeup, I see two completely different things happening. As I watch the wide shot fade, there is continues to be no motion between fields in the video from the first camera, but as the closeup from the second camera comes into view, there is normal motion between fields. It is as if the first shot is progressive, but the second shot is interlaced.

So, if you go to the event properties for the wide shot (right click, select Properties), when you go to the media tab, what are the field order properties? Are they the same for the close-up shot? Did these come from the same camera?

I would certainly follow Bob's advice (farss) and do the sharpening AFTER the downscaling (I think you do that by toggling the little arrow on the track header in the fX dialog -- is that right Bob?). And, I would also take a look and see what deinterlace method you have set in the Project properties.

So, something interesting is definitely going on here, and your footage has been converted to progressive in one case, but not the other. You definitely do NOT want to convert the footage to progressive.

Perhaps others can shed some light on why the footage may look the way I describe.

I think the problem with the buttons is due to aliasing and that would be more likely if the footage was shot progressive. Very slight movement of the camera or the subject will cause the apparent resolution of fine detail to come and go. The line pair averaging used in interlaced reduces this.

Bob.

I was doing a whole bunch of research on this today. There is a long thread on the subject here.
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/what-happens-vegas/271329-maximizing-hd-sd-quality.html

what I got was that Virtualdub free or TMPGEnc $ does a better job of re-scaling and de-interlacing than the NLE's and Main Concepts is less than optimal at those jobs.
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/dvd-authoring/146750-hd-sd-dvd-interlace-questions.html is also helpful

Thanks all for taking the time to look at my clip. Johnmeyer, WOW !Thank you for spending all the time and providing the detailed summary on the clip!!

To answer a few questions:

This clip used two cameras:

HDR FX7 for the Wide angle shots
HDR HC9 for the close-ups.

Both clips were captured (m2t) the same and synced in the time line. I applied Sharpen FX value 0 to only one of the clips (FX7 – Wide shots)

I checked the properties of both clips and the field order is the same – Upper Field First

The project should not be going to Progressive at all. It is Interlace to interlace.

The Project properties deinterlace method is set to interpolate


Before I left for work this morning, I started a new render with the following settings:

Changed sharpening to AFTER the downscaling. This was being done before downscaling. Interesting though, when I toggled the arrow on the track header to After, the Video Preview sharpen up slightly.

Changed to CBR using 8 Mbs

Konrad, Thanks for the links. I have seen the first one before. I need to re-read the second one a couple more times and see if I can apply that to Vegas.

I did extensive tests on this a few months ago, and posted the results, which include a workaround. Admittedly, the workaround is too much of a kludge for most people. Here it is:

AVCDH to Mpeg2 (DVD) - final output too soft

John,

You summarized it very well in the thread you mention above:

"So, as others have pointed out, the scaling in Vegas apparently is not being done as well as it could be. This seems to be the same thing that others have discovered and posted about at all sorts of other sites across the Internet. It definitely is something that the Vegas engineers should improve because it is clear that they are causing their customers to create less than optimal DVDs, and despite Blu-Ray, it is pretty clear that a lot of people are still creating DVDs, and are doing so from various types of HD sources.["

As a result, when I need to deliver in SD I shoot using my HDV cam directly in SD mode. Amazingly - the final result looks better! Shooting with my AVCDH cam I cannot do that in the cam itself. Have not had time to compare the Edius mpeg2 output with Vega's, but it certainly looks very good. Hopefully I have time to render the same test project in both and do a A real B test. BTW, does anyone know what mpeg2 encoder Edius uses?

Cheers,

Christian

EDIT: Your workaroung is very creative and works, but it is a little tedious. I'm still protesting - a "pro" labeled application should produce pristine results. As it is now, Vegas Pro ) does not live up to that assumption, at least when using AVCDH material as the source for a SD project...

This has nothing to do with Vegas being some sort of sub-standard NLE. SD camcorders apply sharpening and look artificially sharp. HD camcorders don't apply sharpening and will look soft by comparison when rescaled to SD resolutions.

Yeah, good that you pointed that out, a little known fact btw.

However, this does not explain why the HD material looks sharper than the SD material (on the timeline - and even previewed on external SD monitor). Atfer a render out to mpeg2, then its just the opposite, SD looks still OK, but material originated from HD is too soft... But we have gone throuh this a million times. Thank's anyhow for your expertice and good comments! Wonder if this will be fixed if SCS someday moves away from using VFW... ??

Christian

in some cases i've used my Sony A1U's down-convert feature and captured HDV footage as SD. that way, you're working an all-SD project, and i've matched cuts that way with standard vx2000-type with success. one looks as sharp as the other. not sure if this translates with full HD...

The biggest problem for me is the artifacts generated when downsizing motion footage (sports). It clearly has to do with resizing since one can use the (free) VirtualDub/Lanczos resizing tool and get substantially better results that most (any) NLE. It's a shame that the NLE Mfg don't see the necessity for a good resizer.

I think this issue drives us all nuts.

A side note worth discussing; my recent experiences with DVD players clearly showed a really big difference between the rendition and sharpness of the video between different DVD players. The cheapest players look awful and most likely have no upscaling. The best players make the video look a lot better. Of course most of my clients are bound to have the cheapest players money can buy, so this is no solution. I also saw that different players connected to the same HDTV had big differences in brightness and contrast.

I noticed this fairly recently when I was testing DVDs burned at 9 Mbps CBR to see if they were fully compatable. They were in all 4 players I tested.