HD 1920x1080/60P (not 60i) to a SD DVD resolution?

KelvinWorks wrote on 8/19/2012, 11:23 AM
I’m sure this has been discussed before but it seems very difficult to find by doing searches and understanding if what I’m reading applies, so please excuse me if it has and please send me to the right place with clarifications and thank you in advance.

This is the first project that I have completed in HD it is a 70 minute film and I want to put it on both Blu-Ray and DVD. I’m using Vegas Pro 11. My primary source video is 1920x1080p60 (59.94) from a Panasonic TM900. The film also has clips from different cameras in 1280x720p30 and 848×480p30, plus many stills that use pan and scan and a few animated graphics at 1920x1080p24 from AE.

I have a few questions.

What are the best settings I should use for making the Blu-Ray?

I want it to be MEPG-2 1920x1080p24 and I plan on using DVDA 5.2. I have used the default render settings but I’m a bit confused on what the settings should be used when going from 60p/30p to 24p?

Should any of the settings be changed, for example the I-frames? Should my project properties be in 24p or a custom 60p? I’m thinking that it should be 24p because that is what I want for the final product. Should anything else be changed like the pixel format, de-interlace method (even though there isn’t any interlaced footage)? Disable resampling on the clips?

Now the next major problem is the DVD. I rendered the project using the MPG DVD Architect 24p NTSC widescreen and the results were, to say the least, awful! Unfortunately most of the people that want this film only have DVD players with HDTVs. Go figure? My old Panasonic GS250 footage on DVD looks better that what results I have now.

What do I need to do to take HD 1920x1080p60 to a DVD resolution and have it look decent?

I have read about putting it out to AVI to resize it, but what settings should I use? Then should I use a different program or can I use Vegas to resize it?

Sorry for all the questions but hopefully, there are some answers that apply to these conditions because my head is spinning from what I have been reading, different resolution or it is referring to 60i, etc.

Thanks again.
Kelvin

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 8/19/2012, 11:33 AM
[Edited for accuracy]

Another approach is to render as 60i, except I don't know how that will look with mixed 60p and 30p source. Experiment.

For my own material, the last thing I would do is render 24p. When I ask people why they want to throw away 20% of their frames (in your case 40%), they answer I most often hear is that they want a "film look." To that, I would say, "be careful what you wish for."
KelvinWorks wrote on 8/19/2012, 12:17 PM
I want to have a progressive video and unfortuanately BD specs only has 24p or 60i. I did not see a 30p BluRay option in DVDA. It only has 29.97 interlaced.
john_dennis wrote on 8/19/2012, 12:21 PM
Given your all progressive source, I would consider making a 1280x720-59.94p Blu-ray. Depending on the material, you may find you can live with the smaller pixel dimensions better than the lower frame rate of the only progressive Blu-ray template, 24p. You will probably get better results on the 30p source if you disable resample on the timeline for this media. In Vegas Pro, you will also have to build a custom 720-59.94p render template for the Sony AVC template. Don't worry, it's easy. Even I was able to do it. I've desribed how I do it in this post.

I'm going to go mow my grass and think about your DVD issue.
Andy_L wrote on 8/19/2012, 12:26 PM
I believe there is now a 1080-60P bluray spec, but probably only supported by the very newest players and/or TVs.

You should be able to render a 1080-30P bluray. I don't exactly remember the proceedure for creating one, but you can try some experimental (short) renders out of Vegas and then into DVDA to see how they work.

As I recall, DVDA wraps it correctly as a compliant 1080i disk, and your player should show it as 30p. Anyhow, test, test, test and see what looks/works the best for your needs.
Tim20 wrote on 8/19/2012, 1:00 PM
A few months ago I started working on my short film and I did dozens of test shots to see what was going to work out best. 24 fps was out from the get go, personally I think it is horrible looking. My final results were to be to DVD 720p or 1080i. From there I experimented with 30 and 60 fps in progressive and interlaced. The added nightmare became the fact that some went to after effects for fx and some didn't and I had to find a codec that played nice between the two.

So I am now at shooting 1080 60i. Wish I hadn't because Vegas chokes on it, but p and i clips intermixed have been behaving properly.

Hmm did I just say anthing? lol Yeah like was said test and test and test.
KelvinWorks wrote on 8/19/2012, 2:50 PM
Thanks for the suggestions and gives me some ideas to think about for doing the BD differently.

I just watched a good portion of my Blu-Ray version and for the most part the 24fps looks fine to me. It does have a soft feel to it but is pleasant (soft more on the motion side then the resolution), probably because as pointed out only 40% of the frames are being used. There are only a couple of places that the motion is fast enough that I could see what looked like ghosts trailing but really had to look hard for it and perhaps going to 30fps using 50% of the frames would change that and sharpen the resolution some but then again maybe not. I really like the areas that I have slowed the video down on some clips for a nice artistic emphasis look and that would still be there in a 30p project, not so sure about 720p60.

I think that a 24p BD compliant format is the way that I should take the BD but just wanted to understand if I should have my settings different than the defaults.

Would having the project being a 30p help the DVD output? The DVD is very blurry… lots of jagged lines etc.
musicvid10 wrote on 8/19/2012, 4:49 PM
Right you are. 30p per se is not an option
If you go with the 60i, it shouldn't look interlaced.
A 720p 60 is another way to go, as john dennis suggested.
pilsburypie wrote on 8/19/2012, 5:05 PM
I was in your position and found a way of making my SD DVD footage to look better. I record 1080 50p on a Panasonic SD900. When converting that to SD you have 2 choices. Either go interlaced or if you want to go progressive, you must under sample the frame rate by 0.5 otherwise Vegas mixes 2 frames together making it look blurry instead of discarding every other frame. This in your case will give 30p. You can then select a suitable Mpg2 SD template to render to

wwjd wrote on 8/20/2012, 2:24 PM
those reviewing 24, 30, and 60 on your TVs are you taking in to account any "MOTION PROCESSING" your TV does to make things look "nicer" or "Smoother"? Could affect your decision on which rate to use.
KelvinWorks wrote on 8/20/2012, 8:27 PM
I’m still really struggling with how to get my project to a DVD resolution and have it visually comparable to my previous SD projects.

Pilsburypie, I’m not sure I understand the 0.5 under sample, the only place that I know how to set under sampling is on each clip. I have tried various settings on a clip and rendered that clip, but didn’t see much to think that it was the answer to the problem, so I’m not sure I know exactly what the setting that you used, and in PAL land vs. NTSC land it makes it a little harder to translate what you were saying to do because there are 24p and 29i options. In my actual project there are over a thousand files and the MTS clips would easily be over 800 or even more considering a file can be used for multiple clips, so if I need to change each clip I think I would end up pulling what hair I have left out. Is there a way to do multiple clips settings for under sampling at once without copying and pasting clip attributes to each clip, and however would mess up color corrections, video fx, etc.?

I still would like to know if there are any other approaches and the specifics on how to take 1920x1080p60 clips to SD resolution and if possible have it look similar to footage that had been shot using SD equipment? What was the process? Ideally it would be project wide in process vs. individual clips.

Thanks for the responses and I understand that there are possibly better frame rates other than 24p for a BD, but let’s just say that for instance a project is going to use the source files listed above and they are going to be authored into a 24p BD project. Would there be any settings different from the defaults for rendering to MEPG-2 in Vegas Pro that should be considered in a technical approach other than frame rates to optimize the results?
musicvid10 wrote on 8/20/2012, 9:37 PM
"Pilsburypie, I’m not sure I understand the 0.5 under sample,"
I am too, and using undersampling in Vegas on video source still falls into the realm of urban myth, afaik.
Using "disable resample" makes a bit more sense to me.

"I still would like to know if there are any other approaches and the specifics on how to take 1920x1080p60 clips to SD resolution"
Yes, there are. Unfortunately, all of the considerations (that I will not list here) do present some challenges. I can only refer you to previous threads on this subject: But Nick Hope's research is miles ahead of the rest of us.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=761694
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=753683
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=758052
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=738430

One thing that I and others have observed independently, is that there is some inherent degradation from AVCHD to MPEG-2 that is exclusive of downsizing as well as other expected HD->SD transcoding issues. It "might" be assumed that these are related to codec implementations alone, and a handful of us are still working on it.

Best of luck.
farss wrote on 8/20/2012, 11:30 PM
"Using "disable resample" makes a bit more sense to me."

Indeed however that'll cause Vegas to drop frames and somehow I'm wondering how that is going to work out going from 60p to 24p.

Ideally one should use a tool that uses motion estimation to avoid both cadence and judder issues. Speedo from Genarts might be good here as it can be setup to emulate the correct shutter angle.

To untangle the whole nightmare the OP has on his hands I'd use such a tool and batch render ALL the assets to 24p HD. Then it's quite easy to swap the assets and have Vegas load them into a 24p variant of the final edit project. The retiming process is going to take a lot of CPU cycles but at least no human intervention required. Once there's a 24p version of the project that is acceptable then deal with the scaling and encoding issue to make the SD release.

Bob.
musicvid10 wrote on 8/20/2012, 11:36 PM
"For my own material, the last thing I would do is render 24p" (11 up).

wrt 30p and 60p mixed in a project legal for BD, I've downloaded a BD drive emulator for my PC notebook and am working on it. I'm old, what can I say?
pilsburypie wrote on 8/21/2012, 12:24 PM
I shall try and explain from my experience. I'm in the UK so use PAL. For NTSC just replace my 50/25 fps with 60/30.

I record 1080/50p. Most of the time I render as this and watch via my PS3. But I do burn DVDs for the family in SD. When I just rendered my 1080/50p footage as SD 25p the finished DVD looked blurred in movement. After some research and trial and error I selected each clip and under sampled by 0.5. (yes each clip! Couldn't select all clips together). This really did cure the motion blurring. I was told this was due to Vegas automatically merging 2 frames together as opposed to discarding every other one. The under sampling does do this however.

KelvinWorks wrote on 8/22/2012, 7:19 PM
Again thank you for your input, I’m still here and haven’t vanished as often happens with OP’s.

I’m still reading all of the threads that musicvid has pointed out and trying to digest the information. One thing that makes me wonder and I had read parts of those post before I decided to post my questions, was that the threads were about 60i not 60p, but I’ll hold off on my questions about that until I have finished with my reading assignments.

I have a question about Bob’s (frass) in having all 24p material changed in batch render. I see an advantage of all video being 24p and if using a third party software that changes rates and gives proper emulation 24p like film very well, would be even more desirable. Would "disable resample" and then converting the entire project to an AVI file at 24p and then resize be at all a comparable process? (All be it not possibly as good as the process suggested)

I wanted to ask the question in case it has already been tried but if not I will give some small test a go after I do some more reading.



musicvid10 wrote on 8/22/2012, 9:40 PM
My tests with 30p and 60p in the same project to DVD are delayed due to the start of the school year. I suspect there is a simple solution, perhaps one that has been already shared on this forum (Nick?). I will revisit them time permitting.

Once again, throwing away 15-30% of your frames to make it 24p and then applying some form of hard or soft telecine (fake frames!) to make compatible for hardware playback is completely misguided, imo.
farss wrote on 8/23/2012, 6:52 AM
"I record 1080/50p. Most of the time I render as this and watch via my PS3. But I do burn DVDs for the family in SD. When I just rendered my 1080/50p footage as SD 25p the finished DVD looked blurred in movement. After some research and trial and error I selected each clip and under sampled by 0.5. (yes each clip! Couldn't select all clips together). This really did cure the motion blurring. I was told this was due to Vegas automatically merging 2 frames together as opposed to discarding every other one. The under sampling does do this however."

Well, yes, you shoot 25p with a 180deg shutter and motion will look blurred, that's a vital part of shooting 24fps or 25fps. The complication today is most HDTVs use motion estimation to create a higher frame rate prior to display. Some convert 25p to 100Hz and I've seen some advertised that do 200Hz. When this happens if you have the correct amount of motion blur for 25p that the TV then turns into 200p, well I don't know for sure but something could end up looking wierd. So in that case less blur might actually be better.

Aside fhat though what Vegas is doing when it merges the two frame isn't exactly the same as shooting 25p. What you end up with is more akin to shooting 25p with a 270 deg shutter and that will look blurry. I can't describe why this happens very well without a diagram unfortunately.

Bob.
pilsburypie wrote on 8/23/2012, 3:11 PM
farss - I get what you are saying. With my old SD camera I always shot 25p. Reason was that many years ago I was convinced of the "film look" and then just stuck with it. (misguided or not!). So I have always been aware of how much blur was from this 25p look. Hence why when I now reord 50p and just tried to render as 25p I was shocked at the increased amount of blur. This was the reason to correct by undersampling, which gave may back the look I expected.
farss wrote on 8/23/2012, 3:31 PM
"This was the reason to correct by undersampling, which gave may back the look I expected."

That I think yields an effective shutter angle of 90 deg. There's no way using Vegas to get the correct outcome, either it's 90deg or 270deg. Which one would be the less of two evils would depend on the content.
The best solution would be a plugin that uses motion estimation. I hope Genarts can find the will to release Speedo for Vegas. Better yet that SCS licence the tech from Genarts. Vegas desperately needs a solid motion estimation plug along with a real de-interlacer. All the code for both is available as open source.

Bob.
KelvinWorks wrote on 8/25/2012, 3:07 PM
Concerning going from 60p to 24p from what I have read, is that it is not straight forward and not recommended because of the mixed and unpredictable/undesirable results. That being said however, I have what footage that I have, so this is what I’m thinking of doing and wanted to get your feedback. Set the time line as 60p, change the 30p files (not that many) to 60p, change my motion graphics to 60p and then render project out to an AVI file at 60p and then put into After Effects and use Andrew Kramer’s preset FPS Converter to change it all to 24p. I did this with a small original 60p MTS clip in AE (not an AVI file) and the results were clear with very smooth motion and no ghosting.

For rendering to an AVI file what video format would you recommend, i.e. Sony YUV vs. Lagarith Lossless for example? Settings?

With an AVI file at 24p from AE I then would put it back in the Vegas pro project and render out for a BD in DVDA and also try to do the down res for a DVD; any other thoughts or suggestions?

Should I think about going to a different file type than AVI to take to AE? AVC? MXF?

I looked at the Genarts speedo and tried it, but the free trial period is over and it put hundreds of watermarks all over the place when it was rendered that made it impossible to watch and to make any determination of what the results were like. Even if the results were good I did not see a way to buy just the speedo function. If I can use what I already have and save my money that that’s the way to go. Bob; thanks for the suggestion though.
John_Cline wrote on 8/25/2012, 6:42 PM
If what you're looking for is the temporal stutter of 24p, then going to 30p achieves almost the same effect without having to jump through hoops.

30p is not a standard Blu-ray frame rate, however, rendering 30p as 60i does not change the 30p cadence.
musicvid10 wrote on 8/25/2012, 9:17 PM
"however, rendering 30p as 60i does not change the 30p cadence. "

Brings me back to my original question. Putting 60p next to 30p on the timeline seems to cause some problems when the render is to be 60i. The 60p starts looking like it is interlaced. This is with resample "off."

Is the solution to render the 60p to 30p (again with resample off) and then render it all as 60i?

I admire the OP's imaginativeness, but I don't think all those steps are necessary.
KelvinWorks wrote on 8/25/2012, 9:17 PM
Well I did a test by using the same MTS file in Vegas to an AVI 1920x1080p60 then to AE to change the frame rate to 24p did not work out. Worked fine for the original MTS file but the AVI file from Vegas looked pretty bad after being changed to 24p. Not sure why, but I’m glad I only did an 8 second clip.

It is looking like this is just not going to happen and I will just have to accept what it is. It’s too bad to. Have great looking 60p footage and not being able to put it on a BD without it being mucked up a bit and nothing that I have tried looks any better and actually a bit worse than just letting Vegas do its own thing by rendering it to 24p and blending the fields.

24p cadence wasn’t so much the goal as was keeping it progressive without the occasional ghosts. 30p in the timeline then render to 60i I think still ends up as interlaced as far as I know and I just did not want interlaced, but I will give it a try.
musicvid10 wrote on 8/25/2012, 9:21 PM
"30p in the timeline then render to 60i I think still ends up as interlaced as far as I know and I just did not want interlaced, but I will give it a try."

No, it doesn't. This has been tested and established as of a couple of years ago (you are welcome to run your own tests, with resampling "off," of course). It plays as if it is 30p. It is your native 60p that raised my curiosity, and how to handle it along with the 30p is my only remaining question, afaik.