HDV to a DVD help

seanfl wrote on 5/21/2005, 5:59 PM
I have a 10 minute project that was shot with an FX1. I've edited it in Vegas 6 and I'm ready to render. When I render a tiny sliver to check it, windows media plays the mpeg file and it doesn't look great. I'm not sure if it's just windows media choking on this high res file or if I've goofed in the render.

any suggestions on changing any settings in the render to look nice on a dvd? It was shot widescreen and I'd like to keep the 16:9 aspect. does pixel ratio have anything to do with it?

I render to mainconcept mpeg-2 and was selecting DVD NTSC then changing the aspect to 16:9 to match the source. bad move? While I try many different renders, maybe someone that knows more than I can help. thank you! Sean

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 5/21/2005, 6:01 PM
"It doesn't look great" doesn't offer much in the way of description of the problem.
First, are you letting WMP scale it? Or are you playing full screen?
Bitrate of the rendered segment? Render settings of segment?

How are you planning on delivering high rez on a DVD? As a data file in WMV format?
seanfl wrote on 5/21/2005, 6:08 PM
thanks for the quick reply.

I'm not trying to deliver HD content, only a nice looking DVD that will play on set top boxes. I've rendered plenty of 4:3 dv projects and put them onto dvd's and would like to have a project that looks nicer in 16:9.

[what does it look like]

I see quite a bit of mixed frames (I can only describe it as slicing?). I'm playing full screen (and hitting pause to check what it looks like). Lots of blockiness as well.

settings were "best" for video which appeared as variable bit rate: max 6,000,000, average 4,000,000 and minimum 192,000.

for some reason the main concept mpeg 2 is giving 1440 x 1082. sound right? the original from the camera is 1440 x 1080.

Sean
Spot|DSE wrote on 5/21/2005, 6:19 PM
1440 x 1080 is HD. Hence my confusion.
You can't deliver MPEG in 1440 x 1080 and play it on anything at this point in time.
It may well be that your Media Player can't decode it fast enough to play. And at 6Mbps, HD will look terrible, usually.
seanfl wrote on 5/21/2005, 6:20 PM
thank you Spot. It's getting better...

not sure how the 1440 x 1082 got it, now when I select dv video stream or dvd ntsc, then select widescreen, it seems to be 720 x 480 and looks nicer on the sliver I'm rendering out. Am I on the rigtht track to have a mpg 2 dvd that looks decent on a widescreen tv? I guess I'm confused if I should have something other than 720 x 480 for a widescreen project, or does the res stay the same and only the aspect is changing?

thank you
Sean
farss wrote on 5/21/2005, 8:38 PM
The res stays the same, only the pixel AR changes.
Should work fine, I've done one 16:9 PAL DVD and it looks GREAT.
Make certain you render at Best as you are rescaling, I'd be going for maybe a higher bitrate, 7.5, 6.0 2 pass.
I've only tried going from the m2t file and make certain your project is a HDV one else I suspect you'll miss out on the color space conversion.

Result should look very good, make certain the DVD player connects via component to the TV if you can, that makes a pretty big difference to the final gee whiz value!

Bob.