Project Setup & Rendering for DVD Playback

Royale wrote on 4/26/2005, 1:17 PM
This may be a little long and redundant but please bare with me. I've searched this topic and came up with over 1,400 hits so I figured this is the easiest way.

I set up a project on Vegas 5 as HD 720 - 30p(1280x720). Everything is great when I play it on my hdtv direclty from the computer via windows media. (rendered to wmv or avi). But if I try and render this as an mpeg or when I bring the wmv / avi into DVD Architect 2, the end result is horrendous. It's totally blacked out, the colours are brutal, it's all choppy...basic crap. If I try and render the project directly to mpeg 1 there is no video playing in windows media player and when it renders to mpeg-2, the file is mothered and it won't play at all.

Now, I have a rear projection LCD tv and I understand for some reason this makes poorer quality DVD's look even worse, I mean real crap. I've seen some dvd's that look too bad to watch on my tv that are much better on a regular CRT TV. Having said that, there are some issues.

My final question, would me setting up the project as HD have anything to do with this? When rendering to mpeg for dvd import what project setting should I be using and finally what is the quality or viewing difference between NTSC DV (720x480, 29.970fps) and NTSC Standard (720x480, 29.970fps)? Should I have progressive scan off and lower / upper field first for field order?

Basically, I'm asking what are the best settings to use both for the project setup and for the rendering setup for dvd playback.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!!

Comments

B_JM wrote on 4/26/2005, 2:13 PM
render interlaced 29.97 ntsc if source was interlaced ..

render progressive 23.976+pulldown if source was progressive or you want "the film look" (but if you have interlaced sources - you will have to de-interlace)

render audio as ac3


those are pretty much your choices , but how you get there are a 101 options ..

Royale wrote on 4/26/2005, 4:05 PM
Okay, it is a series of digital photos mixed with video. The video was taken on 2 cameras, one is the sony 3ccd and the other is a 2 year old model of digital video handi-cam.

So basically I'm saying I have no idea if it is interlaced or not.

Does the project settings effect the end result?

BTW, what is the film look and how would it differ?
Royale wrote on 4/26/2005, 4:44 PM
One other quick thing, when I render as "best" the get an error and it stops rendering the video at certain sections. But when I use good, it's fine.

Does anybody know why and is there a major difference between the two?
B_JM wrote on 4/26/2005, 7:53 PM
your first issue -

a short answer would be to upgrade to vegas 6 (as it handles this type of interpolation much better) and throw everything on the time line , edit , and render it out as progressive 23.976 adding pulldown at the best quality settings and with optimized mpeg settings ..

a longer answer would be to take all your separate elements and convert them all seperatly to a final single common res. and frame rate - in fact edit each element seperatly optimized for its type and use vegas as final composition tool to join all these elements together.. i.e. compositing .. this involves a lot knowledge how to handle these elements and how to use supersampling, resizing and interpolation applications, some of which outside vegas..


your second issue -- what error do you get ? or does it just slow way down ?
Royale wrote on 4/27/2005, 5:59 AM
Okay, that helps. Just out of curiosity why 24 and not 30fps?

When I select best, it stops rendering saying it encountered a problem. But when I keep the dropdown on good, it's fine.

And I'd love to updgrade to 6 but $.
B_JM wrote on 4/27/2005, 6:26 AM
dvd players can not output 30fps progressive (well they could, but they don't) , they also dont really output a progressive 24 either , even when they say "progressive model (or whatever)" .

but rendering at 24 progressive may prevent the flicker that is so common watching stills rendered at 29.97 interlaced on both progressive and interlaced monitors (not always)

you CAN make a 30 (29.97) fps progressive dvd, in fact some animation content dvd's are done this way. But done in normal encoding, you would have each frame repeating as a field and it would also flicker .. they are outputted always as interlaced ..

if it stops on BEST and not on GOOD , i have no real idea .. BEST uses a different resizing filter and some other things - so is more complex calculations .. maybe your system has flaky memory -- maybe i dont know to answer to that one ...

Royale wrote on 4/29/2005, 6:17 AM
Sounds good. What I've done is render it mpeg-2 with the NTSC 720x480 DVD Architect video stream template. It seems to have worked well. (it probably is using the 24fps) Although, I am now accustomed to watching high quality wmv's on my tv via DVI output so watching a dvd just doesn't look great but I'm sure this is just the way it is.

I wonder how hollywood makes their's look so good. I'm sure they use different software but I've seen stills in the extra menu of dvd's and they look a helluva a lot better than ones I have.

Thanks for you input.