HDV 1080i60 to SD NTSC 16:9 DVD. Whats wrong here?

NickHope wrote on 6/18/2008, 6:54 PM
I'm shooting footage in 1080i60 HDV and editing in 8.0b in the native m2t.

I'm delivering as NTSC widescreen DVDs for an audience that is mostly USA but also from some PAL countries.

I'm frameserving to CCE Basic for the speed of it (projects have to be rendered and burnt overnight) and I'm not really happy with the result. I'm seeing interlacing artefacts on scenes with motion, but this has only been judged on a JVC multi-system TV from PAL land (I'm on a boat in Fiji). Diagonal lines have steps in them ("jaggies"?) and the overall look just doesn't seem right.

Here's my workflow:

Vegas Pro 8.0b project settings for framserving are as per "NTSC DV Widescreen" but Pixel Aspect Ratio is 1.1852 (instead of 1.2121) to avoid pillar boxing. Rendering quality is "Best" and Deinterlace method is "None".

Debugmode Frameserver is set to RGB24.

Cinemacraft Encoder Basic is set to NTSC 16:9 DVD interlaced with "Output top field first stream" cjhecked.

I think I have something wrong in the workflow with regards to interlacing. Would I be better deinterlacing encoding and keeping it progressive? Or perhaps deinterlacing the HDV to progressive and reinterlacing in CCE for SD? Or would I have to do the encoding within Vegas (Main Concept) to get the interlacing right? Or perhaps it's fine and I'm only seeing problems because the TV was bought in PAL-land?

Thanks for any help or suggestions!

Nick

Comments

farss wrote on 6/18/2008, 7:20 PM
I think you need to have a de-interlacing method specified in Vegas. Try Blend and see if that looks OK. It should improve your results.

Rather than jump through all the hoops just render a small section to NTSC 16:9 AVI and play that out. Find a part with moveing vertical lines.

You might find Interpolate works better depending on how much motion you have but your underwater footage probably doesn't have much fast motion.

Bob.
owlsroost wrote on 6/19/2008, 12:47 AM
You need to have 'Deinterlace method' set to something other than 'none' - it does still produce interlaced SD output from interlaced HD input.

I think if 'Deinterlace method' is 'none' it treats the source video as progressive and hence ignores the interlacing when down-scaling to SD, producing the artifacts you are seeing.

Tony
NickHope wrote on 6/19/2008, 5:07 AM
Thanks guys. Now you mention it I have read that many times in the forum, but I was somehow thinking that it only applied if the MPEG2 encoding was being done within Vegas. But I guess that setting is relevant at the resizing stage, which I am anyway doing in Vegas before frameserving.

Thanks again. I will try it.