New life for SD with BluRay ?

Pachanga wrote on 1/25/2008, 2:55 PM
SD DV has to be compressed to MPEG-2 to be played on a DVD. The max rate on DVD is 9.8 Mbps, so no matter how good the MPEG-2 codec is, there is loss of quality. Even if you play that DVD in a BluRay player, the loss is already in the DVD via the MPEG-2 compression. So , here is one for the experts:

Can we get the full potential quality of a DV in SD by rendering and burning DV to a BluRay disk ? Doesn't BluRay have a rate greater than 9.8 Mbps ?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 1/25/2008, 3:00 PM
I doubt most BluRay players could play a DV file; they probably don't have the codecs for it. However, you could theoretically render MPEG2 at 25mbps on a BluRay disc.
Pachanga wrote on 1/25/2008, 3:12 PM
Theoretically then, it is possible to get the original SD DV footage playing at full quality. If one doesn't mind the cost of the media :-( this means going from compressions of 4:1 to nearly uncompressed on a disk. Not bad.
Chienworks wrote on 1/25/2008, 3:17 PM
Certainly not uncompressed. DV is compressed about 8:1 already. Uncompressed SD would be about 237mbps. You're not going to find many players or media that can handle that. Even hard drives will struggle a bit.

Also keep in mind that the compression and color sampling for DV and MPEG are different. Going from 25mbps DV -> 25mbps MPEG will involve recoding and recompressing so there will be some loss.
Pachanga wrote on 1/25/2008, 3:29 PM
Makes perfect sense. I guess that is why hi end NLE like Velocity HD require monstrous throughput.
I read last week about burning HDV to a regular DVD from Vegas, but I can not find that article back. Know anything about it? I have checked various forums and just can't find it back.
DJPadre wrote on 1/25/2008, 4:18 PM
"New life for SD with BluRay ?"

damnit the secrets out.....

to reiterate, you can easily create a variety of encodes using "HD" encoders with DV material... unscaled at DV resolutions for decent SD playback...

ive rendered dv25 out to AVCHD at 15mbps in SD res and it works a treat..
JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/25/2008, 4:27 PM
> I read last week about burning HDV to a regular DVD from Vegas, but I can not find that article back. Know anything about it? I have checked various forums and just can't find it back.

All you do is select Tools | Burn Disc | Blu-ray disc... and as long as your HDV media is less that 4.3GB it should fit nicely on a regular DVD and play in most Blu-ray players.

~jr
Pachanga wrote on 1/25/2008, 5:19 PM
I'll be trying double layer media. It may be good enough for a nice feature at 15 or even 25 Mbps.
Now, I have not been able to use "Tools/Burn Disck/Blu-ray" because Wave64 does not work and I do not have AC-3 Pro :-(. Are we being forced to dish-out the $200 for AC-3 Pro or can we use a 3rd-party AC3?
Chienworks wrote on 1/25/2008, 6:16 PM
Did you install DVD Architect? If so then you should have AC3 Studio and AC3 Pro both available from within Vegas.
Pachanga wrote on 1/25/2008, 6:24 PM
Thank you Chien. I now know I should have AC-3 Pro !
I actually have 2 DVDA 4.5 licenses because I bought one before Vegas and Vegas came bundled with another.
At "Tools/Burn Disc/Blu_ray" AC-3 Pro shows up in the drop down menu, but when I chose it, I get a window from sony offering only 2 choices: "close" or "Buy AC-3 Pro".
Pachanga wrote on 1/25/2008, 6:29 PM
Chien, this is what I got:
from "about Vegas"
AC3
ac3plug.dll version: 1.0.0.3246
ac3plug.dll path: C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 8.0\FileIO Plug-Ins\ac3plug\ac3plug.dll
Pachanga wrote on 1/25/2008, 7:52 PM
Chien,
EUREKA ! When you said I should have AC-3 Pro that got me looking in a different direction, and there it was. I had both installed, DVDA Studio and Pro. Vegas for some reason would only see Studio's AC-3. I uninstalled both and reinstalled only DVDA Pro and problem solved. I now can burn blu-ray with AC-3 Pro.
Darned it, 3 days wasted, but I am very happy it works now and I do not have to pay another $200 for an upgrade.
Thanks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
craftech wrote on 1/25/2008, 8:01 PM
If you take 4:3 SD footage it has to be scaled to render in an HD format.

After that happens it won't look any better even at the higher data rate.
At least I haven't been able to get it to look any better. Certainly not as good looking as the original DV tape, not even close.

John
Pachanga wrote on 1/25/2008, 8:25 PM
John, because I am looking for the best possible video quality, I do not "stretch" the picture to fill the entire field of 1920x1080, so I get a 4:3 with back borders on each side. But, I get a darned good picture. Just tried it.
Got to thank DJPadre, JohnnyRoy and Chien.
I just hope Blu-ray doesn't go the way of Beta, because I am now fully invested in it.
craftech wrote on 1/25/2008, 8:33 PM
Oh, I thought you wanted to fill the screen with the conversion. Now I understand.

John
craftech wrote on 1/26/2008, 5:42 AM
Pachanga,

Suggestion:

Why don't you post your workflow for the others on the forum?

John
Pachanga wrote on 1/26/2008, 6:37 AM
craftech, First of all know that I am an just an video amateur and Vegas Newbie.
My problem was that I had tons of mini-DV tapes in SD which were getting old and were a pain to watch. No matter what I did with DVD there was enough quality lost to bother me, SO now:

- I capture the SD mini-DV with Firewire.
- Edit in Vegas
- From within Vegas use "Tools / Burn Disc / Blu-ray"
- I use 1920x1080 60i (25 Mbps), with AC-3 Pro
- DO NOT select the STRETCH IMAGE button. Keep the 4:3 shape of the SD original DV.
- Burn using a regular DVD or DVD DL disk.

I display this on a 46" 1080p TV with a Blu-ray settop player and I get an image very close to playing the original mini-DV directly from the camera. You do get black colums to each side of the image, but the image is worth it to me. To some people, the difference is not worth the hassle.

I you use these settings you should be able to fit:
DVD = 25 min
DVD DL = 45 min
BD = 2 hr 15 min

Mike Jones and Mike K on the DMN Forum have been very helpful to me with great advice.
Chienworks wrote on 1/26/2008, 6:42 AM
I don't see the black bars as an issue. If you were to feed the original SD material to the HD TV and had it set up properly you'd get the black bars there too. The rants of some folks who hate this aspect aside, it is not an error or a mistake to be avoided. It's just the simple physics of the situation.