The BD should be fine, there is no scaling involved but I can imagine that DVDs don't look too good. I would try and shoot in progressive, the AG-AC130 does allow for 720 60p shooting. Anything with motion will look better in 60p and it scales better for DVD too. I would also put 720 60p on the BD, I personally hate interlaced stuff and hope that we eventually get at least 1080 60p for BD.

Does DVDA recompress the files or are the fully compliant?

I shoot mostly figure skating and record exclusively in 1080 60p with a Sony HXR-NX5R. Considering that this is all done at night under rather poor lighting, I am pleased with the

result.

Thanks OldSmoke-

Your video looks fantastic!

Our internet renderings look pretty good.
It's when they make it to disc that things fall apart.

I am going to videotape using the PH 720 60P setting tonight.
Do you use Vegas to Edit? Would you mind telling me the project settings
and rendering template that you use?

DVDA does not re compress BD discs. But I have a feeling that DVDA may be
letting me down. The rendered MP2 or AVC file from Vegas looks good; it just does
not come out of DVDA that way.

Do you use a different authoring software?

Thanks so much.

Thank you, JN

DVD contains 86% less data than 1080i.

Thanks OldSmoke-

Your video looks fantastic!

Thank You!

Our internet renderings look pretty good.
It's when they make it to disc that things fall apart.

I am going to videotape using the PH 720 60P setting tonight.
Do you use Vegas to Edit? Would you mind telling me the project settings
and rendering template that you use?

If you record in 720 60p, use the HD720 60p project template

for rendering the DVD video stream is use this modified template

and for BD I use MPEG2

DVDA does not re compress BD discs. But I have a feeling that DVDA may be
letting me down. The rendered MP2 or AVC file from Vegas looks good; it just does
not come out of DVDA that way.

I use DVDA6 and Sony Vegas Pro 13 for all my work. I also always apply a bit of noise reduction, I use NeatVideo for that. I do that before I render the final file for BD and DVD. For audio I render using AC3 Pro which can be used for both, DVD and BD.

How are you viewing your DVD or BD? With a player connected to a TV?

Do you use a different authoring software?

Thanks so much.

The internet versions for the clients to download are usually a bit better than the sample I posted. I keep those at 1080 60p converted to MP4 with the Vegas2Handbrake method; this and the AC3 Pro encoder is what keeps me on SVP13.

And yes, DVD looks bad if your TV is equal or bigger then 40". I have a 55" FullHD TV with a BD player connected via HDMI and you have to sit a good 15feet away, anything closer and a DVD will not look good or even acceptable. But, like your clients, many still ask for it. Over the past 3 years I see a trend towards BD but also downloads. Downloads make it a lot easier, no menu structure to develop.

Thank you, again, OldSmoke-

Yes. I connect a flat screen to a Sony BR player via HDMI.
I'm glad that I got someone to agree that DVDS look bad unless watched
at quite a distance. I just wanted to be sure that it was not us.

It's funny, but my Vegas Pro 13 did not come pre-loaded with the MP2 Blu-ray
template that you have for 1280x720 60P, but it looks easy enough to change
an existing one.

I have also read that disabling resampling is a good idea. Do you agree?

I am looking forward to trying this all out tonight. I am videotaping hundreds of
children singing in the bleachers at a HS gymnasium. Not good conditions. But,
I should be able to see if the BR quality is improved.

I really appreciate the time that you have taken to respond.

Thanks again.

I have also read that disabling resampling is a good idea. Do you agree?

It depends but for most situations yes, disabling it is a good idea.

You could also try and use a section of 1080 60i footage, put it in a 59.94p project, set deinterlace method to "interpolate" and leave resampling ON for all video events. Vegas does a pretty good job converting 1080 60i to 1080 60p. From there you might get better results for 720 60p BD and 480i DVD.

my Vegas Pro 13 did not come pre-loaded with the MP2 Blu-ray
template that you have for 1280x720 60P

I used a default MPEG2 BD template and changed it for my needs.

You could also try and use a section of 1080 60i footage, put it in a 59.94p project, set deinterlace method to "interpolate" and leave resampling ON for all video events. Vegas does a pretty good job converting 1080 60i to 1080 60p. From there you might get better results for 720 60p BD and 480i DVD.

I'm a little unclear. Are you saying that one possible workflow is to shoot in 1080i, then follow the quoted advice, and then render to the 720 60P mp2 template fpr Blu-ray?

For the best quality, render out a 1080i video using a high quality intermediate format (might have to do a little homework on which formats DVDA will accept) and let DVDA do the downscaling and compression. It's slow, but it tends to work better than Vegas, especially the older versions. I noticed a lot of pixelation when I first went HD and would let Vegas do the SD downconversions... a grid effect over the entire image, more noticeable sometimes than others. DVDA downconverts were much better. AVISynth does even better, then you can encode straight to mpeg 2 from there.

Also. another advantage of letting DVDA do the work... you can use higher bitrates. In Vegas, if I touch a single setting on the DVDA templates, DVDA will force me to re-ecnode the video. If you use DVDA, you can set your bitrate in the software and make sure it is using 100% of available disc space with a one click process.

Another advantage of letting DVDA do the encoding (for me, currently) is that since the new update, none of the templates except Sony AVC (if you want your video to be restricted to 16mbps, which sucks) will be accepted by DVDA without forcing a re-encode in Vegas Pro 15 Version 321. Even the Mainconcept CPU only templates forced me to re-encode.

Honestly, these two programs should NOT be separate. They should use the same encoders, you should not be able to set an illegal parameter that violates the spec when dialing in your encoding settings, but SHOULD be free to do everything within spec (rather than forcing a re-encode if you change bitrate to a legal number).

You could also try and use a section of 1080 60i footage, put it in a 59.94p project, set deinterlace method to "interpolate" and leave resampling ON for all video events. Vegas does a pretty good job converting 1080 60i to 1080 60p. From there you might get better results for 720 60p BD and 480i DVD.

I'm a little unclear. Are you saying that one possible workflow is to shoot in 1080i, then follow the quoted advice, and then render to the 720 60P mp2 template fpr Blu-ray?

Yes, that is correct. Use some of you existing projects or footage and render a loop region of a few minutes for testing. Are you in search of better DVD or BD quality?

For the best quality, render out a 1080i video using a high quality intermediate format (might have to do a little homework on which formats DVDA will accept) and let DVDA do the downscaling and compression. It's slow, but it tends to work better than Vegas, especially the older versions.

I have tried it all including a trip through HandBrake and in my opinion not worth the effort. DVDA encoding is painfully slow where else MPEG2 encoding in Vegas is plastering fast on my machine, 30min of 1080 60p takes only 10min to render for DVD. Especially when content is more important to the customer, pixel peeping makes no sense and does waist a lot of time in the process.

Are you in search of better DVD or BD quality?

I am in search of both. What I do still needs to go out on DVD and Blu-ray.
I expect better results on Blu-ray for sure. That way I can at least have one version to
be proud of. I would also do anything I could to improve DVD quality as well.

Are you in search of better DVD or BD quality?

 

I am in search of both. What I do still needs to go out on DVD and Blu-ray.
I expect better results on Blu-ray for sure. That way I can at least have one version to
be proud of. I would also do anything I could to improve DVD quality as well.

Nowadays my internet uploads are better than BD because I can upload 1080 60p or even 4K. If you don't have much motion, you might be better off making a 1080 24p disk provided you can record in that format, unfortunately DVDA cant handle 1080 60p.

DVD is what it is and I have given up to improve it to the Nth degree, the client just wont pay for the time I would have to spend on it and it will never look as good as BD on a big screen.

I agree about DVD.

I will let you know how your first option goes. Thanks again.

If quality matters more than time, as it sounds like it does, DVDA encoding is the best bet for you. If your camera doesn't output native 24p, such as HDV cameras, then leaving it 1080i is your best bet, let the TV do any deinterlacing. If you must deinterlace in vegas, use the GPU smart deinterlacing.

Only VP14 and 15 odder Smart Deinterlacing, VP or SVP13 don’t.

Letting DVDA do the rendering, for a second time, also means that you have to be very very certain that your video file is the final version or you start all over again.

So the lingering question remains -- why do commercial movies look so much better on DVD than our own efforts shot at the same resolution?

The answer seems to boil down to the quality of the glass and the encoder being used -- which taken together can cost more than that tricked out six-wheeler you've had your eye on.

So the lingering question remains -- why do commercial movies look so much better on DVD than our own efforts shot at the same resolution?

The answer seems to boil down to the quality of the glass and the encoder being used -- which taken together can cost more than that tricked out six-wheeler you've had your eye on.

I would agree with that. Maybe the encoder more so than the glass. Commercial DVDs/Movies are also mostly 24p which doesn't look too bad when done with the Vegas Tools.

Many commercial movies/videos use hardware encoders that offer the option to tweak specific scenes if the bitrate doesn't optimize the video. In my experience, hardware encoders are much better at handling resolution changes. Maybe it is because, like Musicvid said, they are expensive to make and buy. Our hardware encoder that we used where I worked sold for $30,000.

And a great piece of cinematic glass can be 2-3 times that amount.

In my experience, hardware encoders are much better at handling resolution changes

That can never be emphasized enough.

OldSmoke, I videotaped last night in 720 P and followed your templates.
The DVD I think turned out a little better, thanks. I had always used 720 x 480,
but used 704 x 480 as you suggested. Maybe that helped.

The Blu-ray may show a slight motion noise improvement. I think something is fundamentally
wrong with the way I do something in DVDA, maybe. Even the simple menu text I make
with DVDA is not pristine. Standing a few feet away I see jagged edges on the lettering.
I used white Ariel font on black, thinking it would be hard to mess that up. All graphics, even super-high
resolution graphics get mucked up on our Blu-rays slightly. Just for fun, I just now made a menu
with a very sharp photograph. Hi-res. Standing 8 feet away from 42" monitor I saw noise and some
diagonal lines in it.

If we can't get a hi-resolution crisp photo still to look good on a Blu-ray menu, something seems wrong.
I believe this wrongness is what causes the Blu-ray video to look bad as well. Honestly, it wasn't that much
better looking than the DVD.

We use DVDA 6 build 237. The footage is not re compressed. Is there some setting or something that I may be missing?

Thanks so much.