Leave field order as upper?

if it's interlaced is is HDV? I render HDV to NTSC DVD Widescreen all the time and the only changes I've made to the mpeg-2 template is using CBR & upping the quality slider to the max (that might of been changed in newer versions, but I've been using my own template for so long that I forget).

Thanks guys.

THF - it's full HD that I shot interlaced knowing I would use it for the SD timeline.

It's been quite some time since I've had to do this and quite honestly I can't recall what I did in the past.

Ok.

I've found that unless I have to, I like to use progressive, even in my SD stuff. Unless it's for DVD 30i. The three HDTV's I've had support 480p, all my digital stuff supports progressive & if I'm making it w/o my HDV camera (IE 3D renders or my gopro) I use progressive.

There is nothing I would love to do more than to run as fast as possible from interlaced video and never look back. However, it is my understanding that when developing a wide release DVD, one must (very unfortunately) make the disc compatible with all players. As there are many standard DVD players still in use, I have no choice but to make the disc as compatible as possible - hence interlaced footage.

Steve

I make a lot of DVDs from HD but I shoot progressive, 59.94p. I know some will say that interlaced is better at low light but I haven't found real proof of it with the latest cameras. But, Vegas does a better job downscaling progressive footage then interlaced.

If you shoot progressive how hard is it to convert to 24p? That's a standard NTSC DVD format, isn't it?

THF

I haven't tried converting 60p to 24p. If I make a BD I either use 1080 60i or 720 60p.

Edit: I just tested it on this clip. Rendering to MPEG-2 1920x1080 23.976p looks alright. I left resample on and deinterlace was set to interpolate.

dont use Vegas for downscaling
frameserve to virtualdub, and use the built in lanczos3 resize filter.
you will get much better quality, trust me

True about lanczos3. But frame serving from Vegas introduced unnecessary stages of quantization before the RGB to Y'CbCr conversion. If you really want to optimize the quality of the output video, render to uncompressed YUV (in a 32-bit project of course) and then convert with ffmpeg or some other third-party software.

It's your option to keep interlaced video as interlaced even after scaling.

I don't believe the field order of DVD output matters. DVD should support any order. What matters is that the field order indicated in the MPEG-2 sequence matches the order of the video it's encoding. This should be true if you set the field order of your source video correctly. Step through the video frame-by-frame on a 60p timeline with de-interlacing enabled to verify correct field order interpretation of the input.

@relaxvideo

I have yet to see proof of such a claim, specifically when it comes to interlaced DVD as the final product. I am taking about real visual differences not "pixel" peeping.

The only time I had an issue with DVD interlacing is when I would mix upper & lower field footage on the same TL & render out to the same file. "How does that happen???" you ask. I'll tell you: NTSC Mini DV is lower field. Mpeg-2 captured via ATI AIW is upper field.

You can render your mpeg for DVD in in lower or upper & it will display correctly on the DVD player irregardless if the rendered file is upper or lower (both HDTV & old tube SD TV's). The only issue is when you mix them & render that mixed out.

I tested this quite extensively years ago when I had an ATI AIW & captured mini-DV too.