Progressive scan questions

BrianStanding wrote on 6/2/2003, 1:04 PM
I'm new to DVD authoring, and have a couple of basic questions regarding progressive scan DVDs.

1. If my original footage is DV-NTSC interlaced, will I see any advantage by creating a progressive scan DVD using the Vegas/DVDA standard presets? Will I get more of a "film look?" Or am I just introducing more opportunity for encoding error?

2. Is a progressive scan DVD compatible with non-progressive scan set-top DVD players? Any quality or playback issues if playing a PS DVD on a non-PS player?

Thanks in advance.

Comments

razorcut wrote on 6/3/2003, 10:48 AM
Good question... I'd like to hear the more technical side of this too, but I've done it several times and it makes for really nice DVDs which play just fine as the players do the frame conversion...

It does seem to make slightly smaller mpeg files for the video...
In practice, I see no interlace jaggedness issues or obnoxious artifacts in the final results...

so, this is the flow I use for everything to DVD... using the DVD Architect 24p template for the mpeg rendering...

DVD architect doesn't have a project property for 24p,though it doesn't reencode the video IF IT ISN'T ON A MENU... video, even 24p, seems to get re-encoded to 30i NTSC if it is in/on a menu --- so for menus, video should probably stay at 30i, even though I let it reencode for consistency in Vegas across all projects...
BrianStanding wrote on 6/3/2003, 4:35 PM
So.... the upshot is, if I want to use 24p, I can't include any menus?

Guess I'll stick with 30i NTSC, then.
SonyEPM wrote on 6/3/2003, 4:49 PM
DVD Architect cannot encode anything as 24p. DVDA 1.0b and later will accept compliant 24p MPEG files, and these will not be be re-encoded during the DVD prepare process (unless you specify otherwise).
razorcut wrote on 6/3/2003, 6:35 PM
actually it isn't so bad... yes you can include menus, just know that all menus (video) will get reencoded to NTSC standard/widescreen, per project settings (or PAL)... you can always leave the menu video as DV avi...

Personally, I wish DVD-A had the option to 'preserve menu video' (i.e. do not reencode)... (then it doesn't NEED to encode 24p, per SonicEPM's comments) but I think you could easily run into menu size issues if you didn't watch it... but I'd prefer to be able to check/prevent that myself as an option...

but, either way... it works just fine when you drop 24p video into a menu... DVD-A just reencodes it again for you...
BrianStanding wrote on 6/3/2003, 11:31 PM
SonicEPM,

Yes, I know DVDA cannot encode to 24p, but Vegas can. The "24p DVD-Architect compatible MPEG-2" preset in Vegas is the one I'm talking about. What exactly is this preset intended to do?

I'm still a bit confused. When you say DVD-A reencodes "menu video," do you mean that it reencodes the entire content of the DVD to 30i NTSC? Or is it just rencoding a portion of the DVD content? If the former, it strikes me as kind of fruitless to encode my 30i footage to 24p, only to have DVDA reencode it back to 30i. That kind of multiple encoding can't be good for the image quality.

Can DVDA make a 24p DVD with menus or not?
SonyEPM wrote on 6/4/2003, 9:19 AM
"Can DVDA make a 24p DVD with menus or not?"

The entire DVD will not be 24p not matter what you do. The menu pages (aka backgrounds with buttons) will be encoded at the DVDA project settings which as of this writing do not include a 24p option.

If you have encoded a MOVIE (aka the show, the program, the output of the Vegas timeline) using one of the "DVD Architect 24p ......" MPEG-2 render templates as found in Vegas 4.0b and later, the MOVIE will remain 24p, and will not be converted by DVDA to some other format unless you tell DVDA otherwise. The finished DVD will be a hybrid in this case, 24p movies + <project settings> menus.

"24p everything" is high on the list for the next version.
BrianStanding wrote on 6/4/2003, 10:04 AM
OK... I think I understand. Thanks for the explanation.