Thanks Bob - that's exactly what I asked him the first time we talked; just 1920x1080, as I'll need it for the HD version in the future, and I guess DVDA can down-scale to 1049x576 for widescreen DVD. He had never dealt with it before, hence his questions about dpi.

I assume DVDA will scale to 16:9 SD for me, or do I need both size versions separately?

DVDA will scale just fine.

Bob.

Bob at al
Please help me with this as an emergency; my DVD dead-line is coming, and watching the DVD on an SD TV, I have an impression the picture is a little bit stretched horizontally when compared to my HD source, and to the same DVD iso image I played back from my PC.

Of course, all DVDA project settings are correct as far as I can tell, but perhaps I'm missing something? TIA,

Piotr

PS I have set my project properties to 720x576, 16:9 - however, there also is another option available: 704x576 - when is it used?

Megabit,

If you shot in HD the ratio shall be slightly different to to SD footage. To get the correct ratio you actually need to crop into the frame slightly in order to retain the correct ratio. If you shot in interlace, you will also probably need to convert to progressive.

To do this you need to:

1, Make sure your project has properties that match an HD mode. SD project settings are not suitable. Set your project to 'progressive'

2, Set full resolution rendering quality to 'best'

3, Set deinterlacing to 'blend fields'

4, Save your project settings under a new preset (for the purpose of this i shall call it 'Progressive HD')

5, Save your project (we shall refer to this Core.veg)

6, Close your project and open a new project with the 'Progressive HD' preset.

7, Nest 'Core.veg' into the new project by importing it as media and dragging it onto the time line.

8, Do a short test render with "stretch video to fill output frame size" switched off. You will see that the image is slightly letter boxed.

9, Use the 'track motion' tool to crop in to the image until you have removed all of the black bars in the test renders. As a guide, Z1 1440x1080i footage should be cropped to 1478 x 1108.5 to cover the bars.

10, Make sure you have "stretch video to fill output frame size" switched off when you do your final render.

If you have a surround audio track you will have to make sure you have rendered it separately in the Core.veg project and that they sync up, as Vegas does not support nesting Surround tracks at this point.

Thanks Robert - didn't realize all that!

To be more specific:

1. I'm shooting with the EX1, so my source video is full raster 1920x1080 and is already progressive (25p)

2. I simply rendered it out using "DVDA PAL widescreen video" template (it changed my progressive source to interlace, as DVDA doesn't allow progressive - apart from 24p, am I right?)

So, in this situation, so I still need too follow your procedure (too little time left)? And, what is the 704x576 resulotion in DVDA for?

DVD-Architect does support progressive mpegs, but this does not solve you immediate problems.

Here is a slightly condensed workflow

1, Make sure your project has properties that match the 1920x1080 HD mode. SD project settings are not suitable. Set your project to 'progressive'

2, Save your project settings under a new preset (for the purpose of this i shall call it 'Progressive HD')

3, Save your project (we shall refer to this Core.veg)

4, Close your project and open a new project with the 'Progressive HD' preset.

5, Nest 'Core.veg' into the new project by importing it as media and dragging it onto the time line.

6, Use the 'track motion' tool to crop in to the image until you have removed all of the black bars in the test renders. I am guessing that 1971 x 1108.5 should be correct, but I may be wrong

7, Make sure you have "stretch video to fill output frame size" switched off when you do your final render.

If you have not used the 'track motion' tool on any part of your project you might get away with applying the crop to every video track in order to save a little rendering time.

Robert,

When I insert a progresive mpeg into DVDA, it always want to re-compress. Also, in the project settings, the "Progressive" option is grayed out for any format other than 24p.

So how do I use my progressive mpges in DVDA?

I just use the standard 'DVD PAL Widescreen DVD Architect' preset and switch it from interlace to progressive.

1, I don't get why I should crop to a size LARGER than the original 1920x1080; I want to SQUEEZE the picture, as it looks a bit stretched horizontally in DVDA ouput.

2. Will anybody tell me why the 704x576 option is present in DVDA properties (apart from the 720x576)? I tried to ouput a DVD using this setting, and indeed it does squeeze the picture back to more correct proportions; but of course I'm loosing some resolution.

Is it possible that they put this 704x576 option to make for the HD/SD discrepancy in 16:9?

Sorry Robert; I know I sound like I don't quite believe the procedure you describe is necessary. I hope you don't feel offended.

The reasons I'm sceptical are twofold:

1. My deadline is tomorrow, and I won't re-render everything on time, using the cropping procedure

2. I just cannot believe that SCS would not consider all what is needed to produce correct aspect ratio 16:9 PAL video in DVDA, by just using the Vegas template "DVDA PAL widescreen video steam" as is, straight from a full HD (or any other, for that matter) project. But of course I might be mistaken - so far I only used DVDA for full HD BD's - this is my first DVD made from HD source, hence the confusion.

Please somebody confirm the tedious preparation procedure Robert has described is really necessary. TIA,

Piotr

704 width was based on early hardware MPEG limitations. I would ignore it.

Dave T2

"I just use the standard 'DVD PAL Widescreen DVD Architect' preset and switch it from interlace to progressive"

This is obvious; also when already in DVDA, the Media Properties will correctl see such mpeg-2 as progressive. However, what is the point of this if the DVD output can only be interlaced, anyway (you cannot set DVDA Project settings to 25p, can you)?

Also, since some people still hook their DVD players with S-video (rather than HDDMI or Component), how would progressive be reaching the TV even if the disk was encoded progressive?

This is what I don't get - because, on the other hand - DVDA project settings DO offer 24p...

Some DVD players have progressive support. I have a Tangent player that has a VGA port for this purpose. Obviously if your system does not support progressive playback then you will not see progressive playback.

Also, you did not mention the source format of your project in your original post. If it was interlaced, it would be important to set the project to progressive as scaling interlaced to interlaced footage in different resolutions causes combing artifacts.

The reason that you increase the numbers to do the crop is because you are increasing the size of the track not the project. It is like looking through a window and making everything in the room bigger.

It may seem tedious and slow, but it is a lot quicker that waiting for people to confirm the solution.

Thanks Robert. I tried it "my way" (i.e. as intuition told me - DECREASED te horizontal size), and got something closer to the proper aspect ratio.

However, is there a way to precisely calculate this "window" size, or do I need to rely on trial&error?

I am going to get off here as I gave you two solutions and the exact numbers to do what you want to do. If you are decreasing something, I can only guess you are trying to use the 'event/pan' tool, which will not work.

To render to SD 16:9 for a DVD from HD is pretty simple

Set project to match footage.
Make certain you specify a de-interlace method in the project, I favour Blend unless there's a lot of motion and I've yet to have a DVD that had enough to make me switch to Interpolate.
Leave field order alone in project.

Now render to a Widescreen DVDA Template. Make certain the checkbox for Stretch video to fill frame, do not letterbox is ticked.

I'm assuming you shot interlaced with the EX1.
If you shot progressive (25p) things might get a bit more complicated as you may endup with too much resolution for SD 50i to cope and you'll get line twitter problems. Unlikely given your subject matter anyway.

I've just finished recently downconverting over 50 hours of footage, so simple I just used Peachrock's Multirenderer. Half of the output ended up in FCS and the client thinks it looks great.

Bob.

[edit} A couple of other points:

You must render at Best.
Check with the Waveform Monitor. You might find you're getting highlights outside legal. Add the Broadcast Colors FX to the video buss. Set to Conservative and adjust the Luma Max Smoothing to 100% will avoid the DVD players possibly hard clipping your highlights.
You may find if you've shot with Detail Off that the downconverted image looks a tad soft compared to SD from a DV camera. Add a little Unsharpen Mask, adjust that dreaded triangle so the sharpening is added AFTER the downconvert.

Bob,

I'm not having problems with too much resolution (yes, I'm downconverting from EX 1080/25 to interlaced widescreen, PAL DVD).

My problem is with something I didn't expect (this is really my first DVD made from HD source; so far I've only been burning BD's): the aspect ratio of the resultant DVD is wrong, when played on a SD TV (and only then - on a PC it's OK). The picture looks just a tiny bit horizontally stretched!

So are you saying it's enough to check this checkbox for filling the frame, rather than do the cropping thing Robert is advising? According to the Help info, this option s to avoid black bars at the sides; only I'm not getting bars - my picture is too wide....

If you've rendered to the PAL DVDA widescreen preset, you've done it right, Piotr - it sounds like the problem could be caused by settings either on the DVD player or the TV. There should be a black bar top and bottom - aspect ratio in the DVD player or TV should be set to "letterbox" to help achieve this.

There should be NO bars at all on a 16:9 TV.
If on the other hand it's a 4:3 TV and the DVD player is setup correctly then there will be black bars top and bottom.

I should mention that the aspect ratio for HD (16:9) and widescreen SD (16:9) is not EXACTLY the same by a few pixels. Anyone who can see the difference is doing very, very well is all I can say.
In square pixels HD is 1920x1080 (1.78:1) and SD is 1049x576 (1.82:1).
If you turn off the Stretch checkbox the aspect ratio will be rendered correctly with no crop and small black bars at the sides. I just let Vegas stretch the frame, that's preferable in my opinion to have bars or cropping. As I said I'll be damned if I can pick the tiny error in aspect ratio.

Bob.

Yes Bob, I was referring to the SD TV which Piotr mentioned.

Like you, I've delivered everything I've shot 1920 x 1080 on EX1 by rendering directly to 720x576 widescreen DVD and have never noticed any distortion.

Bob, my solution took into account the aspect ratio change, which is what the original poster was complaining about in the first place. As far as I am aware the only way to deal with this issue is the solution I provided. I think the difference is quite noticeable and I would advise on going for the crop rather than the stretch method.

Add the Broadcast Colors FX to the video buss. Set to Conservative...

Bob, you're in PAL area just like myself...In the Broadcast Colors FX, colud you elaborate on these two options:

- 7.5 IRE setup (I guess should be off for PAL)
- Studio RGB (I know - discussed many times, depends on many factors; but given my EX1 HQ sources and PAL DVD output...)

Piotr