I am happy to say that DVD Architect now writes properly flagged 30p SD DVDs. This may not mean much to many people but it should. A little background for those who don't know what this means and why it is important:
DVDA 3 and earlier would rerender 30p that was flagged as 30p to 30p that was flagged as 60i. They did this because many older DVD players would see the progressive flag and assume it was 24p and deinterlace it incorrectly. This of course looked terrible. This is also why episodic TV shows such as "Friends" are flagged as 60i even though they are 30p.
30p flagged as 60i is ok, but it doesn't properly take advantage of the uprezzing that is found on recent DVD players and HD TVs.
Anyway, the situation is better now. Many of these older DVD players are now in electronics heaven and properly flagged 30p mp2 files can be authored to 30p DVDs using DVDA 4 no problem.
This is important to me because to my eyes, a 30p SD render from 1080i HDV looks better than a 60i SD render from the same material. The jaggies are gone and everything looks a lot cleaner. As long as you avoid fast camera movements and quick zooms and pans, I really think the exra pixel resolution is worth the temporal resolution you loose. That and you can finally make use of all that uprezzing technology. For HD display, I still like the combination of high resolution and fluid temporal motion of 1080i, but for SD downrezzes, properly flagged 30p is a better compromise.
DVDA 3 and earlier would rerender 30p that was flagged as 30p to 30p that was flagged as 60i. They did this because many older DVD players would see the progressive flag and assume it was 24p and deinterlace it incorrectly. This of course looked terrible. This is also why episodic TV shows such as "Friends" are flagged as 60i even though they are 30p.
30p flagged as 60i is ok, but it doesn't properly take advantage of the uprezzing that is found on recent DVD players and HD TVs.
Anyway, the situation is better now. Many of these older DVD players are now in electronics heaven and properly flagged 30p mp2 files can be authored to 30p DVDs using DVDA 4 no problem.
This is important to me because to my eyes, a 30p SD render from 1080i HDV looks better than a 60i SD render from the same material. The jaggies are gone and everything looks a lot cleaner. As long as you avoid fast camera movements and quick zooms and pans, I really think the exra pixel resolution is worth the temporal resolution you loose. That and you can finally make use of all that uprezzing technology. For HD display, I still like the combination of high resolution and fluid temporal motion of 1080i, but for SD downrezzes, properly flagged 30p is a better compromise.