Frame serving advice needed

amendegw wrote on 2/11/2012, 7:22 AM

Arthur, I think it's safe to say Nick Hope is our resident expert on this subject. I haven't seen him post in several days. He periodically loses internet connectivity with this forum. He may be in that disconnect state now.

In any case, here's a place to start: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=799390Interlaced HD to DVD AGAIN - some test renders[/link]

Feeling adventurous? Recently I've come up with, what I think is a pretty good way to convert HD to SD for DVD (entirely in Vegas). However, I've yet to have anyone confirm this workflow. Here it is:

1) New Vegas Project with 1920x1080 29.97 Progressive Project Properties. Edit: Rendering Quality=Best & Deinterlace=None.
2) Drop the 1080i AVCHD clips on the Vegas Timeline.
3) Apply the yohng yadif Deinterlace FX as a Media FX.
4) Render as the builtin MainConcept "DVD Architect 24p NTSC Widescreen video stream"
5) That's it!! Very simple. No Sharpen FX, no Reduce Interlace Flicker, no Gaussean Blur, no nuttin'

Of course, producing a 24p DVD has the potential to produce some stutters in motion, but my tests have shown beautiful image quality. I'll like to see someone confirm this.

...Jerry

Arthur.S wrote on 2/11/2012, 9:07 AM

Yeah, Nick always seems to have good input. Doing some sniffing around, I found this, which seems to be the simplest method: http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/

A question re your HD to SD method. I'm in PAL land, so I'm guessing 24p PAL is OK? As PAL is closer to 24p than NTSC, I'd think the stuttering should be much less. I'll give it a try though and report back. It'll be interesting to compare against the VMW5 render.

dxdy wrote on 2/11/2012, 9:12 AM

Wow!

I just did a quick test with a tour group walking through a dimly lit factory, and the result is very impressive.

If I may add some details of what I did to your process,

a. My project properties matched the footage properties. Deinterlace was set to Interpolate, but in the next step I eliminated Vegas' deinterlacer.
b. After dragging the (Panasonic ) AVCHD footage to the timeline, I changed the event's properties to progressive by changing field order to None(progressive scan)
c. In my render settings, I used single pass, VBR, Video quality 31, Max bps 9,500,000, Average 6,000,000, and Minimum 4,200,000.

Vegas 11 build 521.

I played it on both an ancient Phillips 27" tube TV and a Sony Bravia 32". It looks really nice, and practically no muss and no fuss.

I am off to a gig right now, tonight I hope to experiment with 2 pass rendering.

amendegw wrote on 2/11/2012, 9:37 AM

"A question re your HD to SD method. I'm in PAL land, so I'm guessing 24p PAL is OK?"Hmmm... I don't know. When I look at my rendering options in Vegas I see the following:

The NTSC 23.976 fps with 3-2 putldown works on every DVD player I've been able to test it on - here in NTSC land. I don't see any similar options for PAL. Also, after 15 minutes of Googling I could find any progressive options for PAL. Maybe someone that knows more about PAL standards can jump into this conversation. Or, try some test burns & see what works.

...Jerry

amendegw wrote on 2/11/2012, 9:42 AM

"If I may add some details of what I did to your process,Yes, Fred, exactly - The project should be progressive with Deinterlace = None. Once a 1080i clip is placed on the timeline with the yadif deinterlacer as a Media FX, Vegas treats it as progressive footage. The point is to make everything progressive and use the yadif deinterlacer rather than the Sony one. Sony Vegas seems to do a much better job of resizing progressive to progressive footage.

...Jerry

Arthur.S wrote on 2/11/2012, 9:53 AM

Ran a quick test. First problem is that there isn't a 24p template for PAL. Tried it anyway, and it's very slightly better than my above original efforts. BUT took over a minute to render an 8sec clip. (2 pass VBR) So then tried the normal PAL template, with field adjusted to none. Results were no better than original...which is a bit of a mystery. Why would cropping the frame size - as in the NTSC 24p template - even smaller than 520X720 improve things????

amendegw wrote on 2/11/2012, 10:41 AM

Arthur,

I apologize - I may have lead you down a blind path here. I spent about a hour now searching the web and I don't see an analogous process for PAL. I'd love to try some testing here, but I don't have a PAL DVD player to test with.

...Jerry

Arthur.S wrote on 2/12/2012, 5:25 AM

No blind path Jerry, all advice is worth trying. ;-) I don't want to turn this thread into yet another HD to SD thread. I've read through the others previously and lots of it goes waaaaay over my head LOL. To underline; the TMPGEnc encoder is far superior to the Vegas one (For HD to SD at least). For less than $100 it's a no brainer for someone of my limited technical ability to use it instead of jumping through a LOT of hoops! :-) I'll be trying out frameserving fairly soon.

bsuratt wrote on 2/12/2012, 12:45 PM

@Arthur.S

Is the TMPGenc Mastering Works 5 encoder actually making the difference or is it their editing software? It would appear that the same (Original Encoder) is used at least for MPEG-2. This appears to be the same as in Authoring Works 4 by the specs. (There is a new H264 encoder in 5.) I was of the impression that resizing was actually done prior to encoding.

PeterDuke wrote on 2/12/2012, 6:08 PM

"Is the TMPGenc Mastering Works 5 encoder actually making the difference or is it their editing software?"

The steps involved in converting HD interlaced to SD interlaced are:

1. Deinterlace to double rate progressive (eg 50i to 50p)
2. Low pass filter (blur) to prevent aliasing after down res.
3. Down res the HD to SD.
4. Optionally sharpen,
5. Convert progressive to interlaced (eg 50p to 50i).
6. Encode to MPEG2

TMPEGEnc may be better in any or all of these steps, not just the encoding. The deinterlacing and changing resolution are probably the key ingredients.

NickHope wrote on 2/13/2012, 4:31 AM

Retiming (e.g. 30i to 24p) is an interesting alternative to achieving the filtering necessary to cool the artifacts you can get by just downscaling. If it works then why not.

Is it possible to do this out of Vegas 9e to VMW5?

I was always able to use Debugmode Frameserver to frameserve from Vegas to TMPGEnc Xpress and other TMPGEnc products. I would be very surprised if VMW5 doesn't accept it too.

I'm in PAL land, so I'm guessing 24p PAL is OK?

There is no such thing as "24p PAL". A 24p DVD should be OK in PAL land. The DVD will behave differently on modern progressive displays and older interlaced TVs, but it should play "OK" in either case.

Is the TMPGenc Mastering Works 5 encoder actually making the difference or is it their editing software?

In my experience, the TMPGEnc MPEG-2 encoder is one of the best MPEG-2 encoders and superior to the one in Vegas, but in this case I think it is the Vegas retiming that is achieving the improvement more than the encoder.

PeterDuke wrote on 2/13/2012, 5:40 AM

"Retiming (e.g. 30i to 24p) is an interesting alternative"

I would think that it is not so much the retiming as using progressive that is significant. There are about the same number of lines in an SD progressive frame (480) as an HD field (540). Since the number of lines is only slightly reduced, aliasing is not such an issue.

craftech wrote on 2/13/2012, 6:16 AM

Where are you putting the Yadif Deinterlacer in the FX chain and what else is in the chain?

It makes a difference.

John

amendegw wrote on 2/13/2012, 6:42 AM

"Where are you putting the Yadif Deinterlacer in the FX chain and what else is in the chain?The Yadif Deinterlacer should be applied as a Media FX. Normally (but not always), it will be the only Media FX applied i.e. only one FX in the chain. Then you can add other FXs at the track or event level.

...Jerry

Arthur.S wrote on 2/13/2012, 3:30 PM

To be honest guys, I don't know whether it's the TMPGNec encoder or the editor that's making the improvement - I just know that using VMW5 produces far superior results at the same bit rates.

I think it is the Vegas retiming that is achieving the improvement more than the encoder. Could you explain 'retiming' Nick? Not sure what you mean.

PeterDuke wrote on 2/13/2012, 5:51 PM

"The Yadif Deinterlacer should be applied as a Media FX."

If no media FX have been applied, can the deinterlacer be applied just as well as the first effect on the event FX chain?

I understand that effects are applied in the following order:
Media FX, Event FX, Track FX and Video Ouput FX. Is this correct?

NickHope wrote on 2/13/2012, 11:53 PM

Could you explain 'retiming' Nick? Not sure what you mean.
Sorry Arthur, "retiming" was the wrong term to use as that implies slowing down or speeding up the footage. My brain was in slomo yesterday. What I was referring to was amendegw's technique of resampling/converting 1080-60i to 480-24p. Might be a simple way to get a good result, although I haven't tested it myself.

Anyway I would stick with frameserving to VMW5 rather than use the Vegas encoder.

Can you confirm that you are starting with interlaced (1080-60i) footage?

Arthur.S wrote on 2/14/2012, 11:06 AM

interlaced 50i Nick.

Arthur.S wrote on 2/15/2012, 11:22 AM

I also noticed something interesting when rendering with VMW5. On installation, it optimises for GPU/CPU render. On rendering it shows what percentage of which it's using for best speed. On my quad it's using 100% CPU, so it seems that nice expensive graphics card I bought for V11 was a bit of a waste of money! (Although previewing was a lot nicer).

Arthur.S wrote on 2/15/2012, 11:47 AM

OK, so trying Debug frameserver for first time. Installed fine, and shows in the render options (9e). I choose it, click save. I'm presented with an option box with RGB24, RGB32, Yuv. I leave it set to RGB24, and click save. It goes into rendering mode..but. A 1min clip is showing as 3hrs and climbing to render. What am I doing wrong here? How do I get the option to render to VMW5? Info I dug up on Google is very patchy. :-(

NickHope wrote on 2/15/2012, 11:56 AM

What you have done so far is correct. Ignore the "Approximate Time Left" value in Vegas. It's irrelevant here.

Now all you need to do is open your "dummy" or "signpost" .avi file in VMW5 as if it was a normal uncompressed .avi file and the frameserver will deliver it as required. I nearly always call my dummy file fs.avi, usually in My Documents.

Arthur.S wrote on 2/15/2012, 1:03 PM

Thanks Nick - I get it now. Tried a straight HDV clip, and then rendered same in Vegas. The Debug/VMW5 version looks washed out in comparison. Also noticed that this time, CPU was at roughly 49% and GPU 51%. Wonder why VMW5 would use a different balance for HDV???

diverG wrote on 2/15/2012, 1:35 PM

@Nick
Just updated TVMW5 to v1.1.1.52. Seems I cannot open/run .avs files.
Essentially frameserving fom VP10 is no longer possible.
Scripts OK and still usable in VDub. ie syntax OK.

Am in contact with TMPEG and trying to get an earlier version. Version before 1 detailed above is OK.

Geoff

NickHope wrote on 2/15/2012, 11:15 PM

@diverG - That totally sucks if they've removed .avs support. But, to avoid confusion, frameserving to TMPGEnc is still possible directly. It just means we can't process through AviSynth on the way.

@Arthur - Your levels range is getting mapped from 0-255 to 16-235 when VMW5 converts your frameserved RGB to MPEG-2. The same thing happens in the older TMPGEnc Xpress 4. I don't see an easy way to retain the full range like I have in Cinemcraft Encoder Basic (which is no longer sold). Here are some things which don't help:

- Frameserving in YUY2.
- Adding a Studio-RGB-to-Computer-RGB fx to increase contrast in Vegas before frameserving.
- Converting colorspace in series in AviSynth, even if .avs input was still supported in VMW5.
- Rendering a lossless intermediate such as Lagarith instead of frameserving.

I was hoping the answer might be in the "Format > MPEG file output > Other > Colospace" setting in VMW5. I tried a few different settings in there but none retained the full range.

So I resorted to using the color correction filter in TMPGEnc Xpress. It's a bit of a fudge but setting luminance to 2 and contrast to 42 seems to do the job. Hopefully it works similarly in VMW5.

I haven't tested this exhaustively. To be sure, render a test chart or some color bars as HDV in Vegas, then put that on your timeline and render it to your DVD file via frameserver and VMW5, then put it back on your timeline under the HDV file and do an A/B comparison while monitoring the Vegas waveform and RGB parade. There'll be lots of noise from the compression but the main bands you see on the scopes should remain in the same positions.