How to archive an SD DV project

cold ones wrote on 11/11/2014, 2:48 PM
I'm working with some older SD DV Vegas projects, and have a problem. Typically, I made a DV AVI master of the completed project, and it looked pretty good. Except when I looked closely at the font:


These are large characters, BTW, around 40pt.

The colors around the left edges of letters (most noticeably the rounded ones, like o & e) are jagged, with bits of the background color eating their way in. This has always been this way, but it's been bugging me as I try to update my archives.

Recently, I tried rendering these projects using the UT Video codec (that I learned about from helpful folks on this forum). UT corrected this font problem, but introduced another. My original projects are interlaced so it seems to make sense that my master should be interlaced, and I think I told UT to do just that. But try as I might, the video that I get via UT does not seem to be interlaced. MediaInfo doesn't say (as far as I can tell) whether the UT video is interlaced or not, but I know that deinterlacing the video upon playback doesn't change it.

Can UT produce interlaced video? If so, what settings work? Or any other suggestions for an SD archival format?

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 11/11/2014, 3:37 PM
First of all, the problem you're seeing on your fonts in DV footage is caused by the 4:1:1 color sampling of the DV codec, this has always been a limitation of the DV codec and there is no way around it. It is most noticeable on curves and diagonal lines when using highly contrasting solid colors.

Regarding the UT Video codec, as long as your project is set to interlaced, your source footage has been correctly identified by Vegas as interlaced, and you have set you Vegas render to interlaced, the resulting file will be interlaced. There has never been a parameter in the header of an AVI file to indicate whether a file is interlaced or the field order, so Mediainfo won't have a clue. There is also no parameter in the header of an AVI file to indicate aspect ratio (except in the case of DV encoded video.)
cold ones wrote on 11/11/2014, 4:00 PM
John, thanks for the good information.

I'd been viewing the UT footage in the VLC player, and it had lots of interlacing artifacts (as seen on a progressive monitor). I was surprised that deinterlacing the playback (which usually works) made absolutely no difference at all. I was just concerned that I was getting the interlacing goofed up somehow.

But when I brought the UT file into a Vegas timeline as you suggested, it responded properly to the YADIF filter. And Handbrake renders into mp4 look good, too.

That having been said, does the UT codec make sense for archiving (because it improves some of these picture problems) or should I stick with good ol' DV?
John_Cline wrote on 11/11/2014, 4:50 PM
Being lossless, UT codec videos will have a larger filesize than DV videos of the same length. As far as archival image quality, UT Video is as good as it gets. It makes no sense to convert already rendered DV projects to UT Video since the color sampling damage has already been done, however, for any projects that you haven't yet rendered to a final video, then rendering to UT Video is an excellent choice.

The other advantage to the UT Video codec is that Handbrake accepts the files directly. You can use the "Decomb" filter in Handbrake with the default setting to deinterlace your files, Decomb in Handbrake is the YADIF deinterlacer.
musicvid10 wrote on 11/11/2014, 7:59 PM
If your DV video, or at least some of it will smart render, your archive should be DV.
If I was doing it with UT (which is reliable but large), I would archive exactly the same as the source (SD Interlaced) rather than deinterlace at that stage.
ushere wrote on 11/11/2014, 9:14 PM
would archive as dv, that is, if the original is dv. in 5 years there might well be a lossless that's smaller file size ;-)
John_Cline wrote on 11/12/2014, 1:08 AM
"your archive should be DV"

But then the titles get burned in with the DV color sampling issue and any of the DV footage that doesn't smart-render will take a generation hit.