Dumb question about Project Properties

riredale wrote on 10/10/2014, 5:24 PM

I shoot in HDV and create DVD products for sale. The DVDs usually involve quite a bit of editing, color correction, rolling credits, and such.

Should my Project Properties be DV (720x480) or HDV(1440x1080)? What is the practical effect of choosing one over the other? Speed of playback on timeline? Sharpness of credits and graphics? Will the final result look any different?

Sorry, this should be obvious to me after years of working with Vegas, but right now I'm in a Friday afternoon haze here in Oregon. Busy week.

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 10/10/2014, 5:41 PM

The top half of the project properties dialog only affects playback. The purpose of these settings is to let you see what the video will look like when it is rendered. As a result, you should normally set these settings to match the rendered output, in your case, the SD resolution of your DVD render.

However ...

As you point out, speed of playback on the timeline is affected by the project properties. It takes extra CPU cycles -- a LOT of CPU cycles -- to "conform" the video you see to the resolution of the output render, if that resolution is different from your source video. So, if playback performance is important, you should match the project properties to your source video, and accept that you might not get a perfect representation of what the final output will look like. The best example of this problem is that HDV widescreen aspect ratio is not quite the same as the DVD widescreen aspect ratio. Pretty close, but not the same.

The bottom half of the project properties dialog does affect the render, most notably the "Deinterlace method" setting. I'll bet there are several hundred posts in this forum over the years by people who wonder why the rendered video looks so bad, only to realize that they changed this deinterlace setting to "none," not realizing that it would change how the render works.

I sure wish Sony would create a different dialog for those things which affect the render, and have the project properties only contain those things which do not interact with the Render As dialog. At the very least, they should label the two sections of the Project Properties dialog.

videoITguy wrote on 10/10/2014, 5:44 PM

Workflow is really your question not just project properties as that is but one part of the larger picture. Been discussed ad nauseam in this forum and DVDAPro forum probably at the rate of one thread a month for all of 10 years.

My opinion alone is that if you shoot HDV or HD your best opportunities lie ahead with creating Blu-ray or possibly 4k discs next year. Creating DVD's out of these sources is just throwing away your product quality. Search the forums in-depth for DVD workflows.

john_dennis wrote on 10/10/2014, 6:13 PM

"[I]I'll bet there are several hundred posts in this forum over the years by people who wonder why the rendered video looks so bad, only to realize that they changed this deinterlace setting to "none," not realizing that it would change how the render works.[/I]"

I'm all for accepting personal responsibility, but some of those people probably didn't set the deinterlace method to "None". They just failed to change it from what was offered by SCS when they started a new HDV project. Here is a snapshot of the way it's presented in Vegas Pro 13.

http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40618156/2014-10-10%20Project%20Properties/New%20HDV%20Project%20Properties.jpg

OldSmoke wrote on 10/10/2014, 6:50 PM

Here is my personal experience while I was working with HDV 16:9 and produce DVDs 16:9:
I would leave the project settings as HDV while working on the timeline. However, for generated media, especially text of any kind, I would make sure that the resolution of the generated media matches DVD format. I found that this way scrolling text would look much smoother.
In the later days of recording HDV I switched to recording 1280x720 60p rather then the standards 1440x1080i format. The 60p format is much easer to convert to 60i for DVD, 30p for Internet and also 60p for BD. Also try and change the DVD format from 720x480 to 704x480.

Another way to resize HDV for DVD is using Handbrake but not many here in this forum agree with that step; I personally find the results even better.

rmack350 wrote on 10/10/2014, 6:59 PM

Normally I'd go along with John here but VideoIt is inadvertently making a good point, which is that if you're shooting in HDV 1440x1080 then you might want to have edited at that resolution before creating SD output, just to future-proof your projects.

I can also add another point. If you've shot 1440x1080 then you could get away with editing in a 1920x1080 project with square pixels. Not required but I don't think there's a performance hit and it helps to keep things straight if you're using stills. As long as the HDV clips are tagged with the right PAR then they're all having their PARs adjusted either way. Maybe I'm wrong about this but it's how I've set up my 720p projects using 960x720 media.

Rob

TheHappyFriar wrote on 10/10/2014, 10:27 PM

I've been doing HDV to DVD for years (6?). I set my project to HDV 60i (?) setting. I've never had an issue with how generated media looks or any complaints on it. I've never had interlace issues. All my 48 hour films (except 1) were HDV to DVD/QuicktimeSD/MiniDV. No issues when projected on the "big screen" (I'd say on the technical side, mine were superior to the FCP/Adobe produced ones).

I'm currently using Vegas 10.