Do you find using Pro Coder 3 a significant increase in quality of output as compared to the Mainconcept offered in Vegas?

Using VBR - Yes
At lower bitrates - Yes
Using CBR - sometimes

John

Hi John,

The DVD specification is a bit vague, to say the least. If you follow the original Specification strictly, progressive video is not supported at all.
I found the following link a while ago which gives some detail to how Progressive video is handled:
http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.4

Paul

.....If I want to make a DVD it must be interlaced because only 24p footage can be used to make a progressive scan dvd. Is that correct?

John, I don't believe thats true,
but did a little web surfing research to make sure and so much gobbily goo info overload out there I don't want to say I'm 100 %positive.

John,

I've never had a problem bringing 29.97p SD footage into DVDA or DVDSP. In fact, in DVDSP you can assemble progressive and interlaced footage together in the same track. FWIW, I work with 29.97p footage on a regular basis.

Also, with progressive footage you shouldn't have to choose a deinterlace pattern unless you are mixing in footage that is interlaced. Choose NONE for the sharpest results.

The HD DVD turned out fine. Haven't tried the SD DVD yet. There is motion blur with people and objects that were moving, but I guess that goes with the territory. The last HD DVD I made was from 1080/60i footage, this one from 30p. I see no advantage.

John

John, with 30p source material you should set the deinterlace method to "none". This is way more important than you would think because Vegas uses this tab to determine how resizes are done. If you select a deinterlace method (either blend fields or interpolate) what Vegas will do is separate the even and odd fields, resize the fields independently, then refold them into the new size. This doesn't look horrible with progressive footage, but you are losing resolution which is the main advantage of shooting progressive in the first place.

The general rule of thumb is as follows:

1/ Interlaced source material: check the "select deinterlace method" tab.
2/ Progressive source material: uncheck the "select deinterlace method" tab.
3/ Mixed progressive and interlaced source material: check the "select deinterlace method" tab.

What you should do is set your project properties to progressive and uncheck the "select deinterlace method" tab. For rendering, you'll notice that there isn't a 30p widescreen SD template. I just created my own by changing the framerate of the 24p template to 29.97. It really doesn't matter though if you use a 60i or 30p widescreen SD template. The image will look the same either way. In fact, shows like "Friends" which are shot on film at 30p are flagged as 60i SD DVD when they are released on DVD.

I also tend to add a surprisingly generous amount of sharpening when I downrez. I never sharpen any other time, but somehow sharpening during a downrez seems to really keep things clear. The way I fine tune the downrez sharpen amount is to set the project properties to 30p widescreen and the preview resolution to best full resolution. Then I add sharpening as a master video effect and tweak it until the preview image looks best. It really seems to help.

30p HD to 30p SD should look really good. If you have the "select deinterlace method" tab checked, you are losing half your source resolution. If you are resizing correctly and sharpening a little as you downrez, it should look scary close to HD by the time it is reuprezzed from your SD DVD to a typical HD TV.

John, with 30p source material you should set the deinterlace method to "none". This is way more important than you would think because Vegas uses this tab to determine how resizes are done. If you select a deinterlace method (either blend fields or interpolate) what Vegas will do is separate the even and odd fields, resize the fields independently, then refold them into the new size. This doesn't look horrible with progressive footage, but you are losing resolution which is the main advantage of shooting progressive in the first place.

Laurence,

Are you saying that the HD DVD I made lost resolution? I created an AVI signpost with the Debugmode frameserver with the project properties set to Field Order: None, Pixels: Square, Render Quality: Best, Deinterlace Quality: Blend Fields, Motion Blur: Gaussian.

This was frameserved to Procoder 3 to create a Non-Interlaced m2v file.

Are you saying that I should have set the Deinterlace Method to NONE or I lost half the resolution for the Progressive Scan HD DVD I created?

I haven't tried the SD DVD yet and I plan to try your settings. Sounds good and thanks, but if you have a moment can you clarify my question regarding the HD DVD I made?

Thanks again Laurence,

John

You probably didn't lose any resolution going to HD DVD since you weren't resizing in order to go to that format. The important thing is to make sure the "select deinterlace method" tab is never checked when you are resizing progressive footage (as in the case where you are going to SD DVD). I always make sure this tab is set correctly as it affects any resizes that happen within the project. For example, if you are working with a 30p HD project and you zoom in a little to frame better or get rid of a boom mic, if the "select deinterlace method" tab is checked, Vegas will split the zoomed scene into even and odd fields before resizing that scene and you will lose resolution in that particular scene. I have no idea why Vegas bases it's resize method on this particular tab setting, but I know from multiple tests that I have done personally that this is indeed the case.

Thanks for helping me with that Laurence. And thanks for doing the experimentation for all of us. We really appreciate it.

Regards,

John

I just noticed that my post was redundant with the earlier one by Corug7:

Also, with progressive footage you shouldn't have to choose a deinterlace pattern unless you are mixing in footage that is interlaced. Choose NONE for the sharpest results.

Also, I know you know this but for anyone else following along, whenever you are changing the size of your video, make sure you select the "best" rendering setting as that uses a superior algorithm for resizing.

Let us know how your SD downrez turns out. I would be really interested to know if you found sharpening during downrez to be of any value. To me it looks way better, but I haven't seen much in the way of other people doing it. I believe I started doing it when I read a tip by Spot a while back when he was talking about applying a little sharpening to downrezzes for Youtube uploads. I started doing adding it to SD DVD downrezzes as well. I'd love to know what you think of this if you try it.

The sharpening on final output really made a difference Laurence. I used Unsharp Mask and chose Medium sharpening. Seems like just the right amount.

I used the Main Concept Mpeg-2, DVD Architect 24p NTSC Widescreen Video Stream template and changed the Frame Rate to 29.97 and the DC Coefficient to 10-bit (as I always do) using a CBR of 8000.

I used a DVDA 720x480-60I 16:9 (NTSC) single movie project.

While not as good as the HD DVD, it looked a lot better than most SD DVDs. I played it from a Toshiba A1 to Panasonic 720p plasma tv.

Line twitter was pronounced however, but I suppose that goes with the territory. Certainly didn't take away from the overall quality which as I said was high.

Thanks again,

John

EDIT: I played it on a standard DVD player to a CRT television and it looked horrible. Pronounced aliasing and line twitter. I think Bob (Farss) had indicated that he was shooting 720p with his EX1 to avoid this. I think I will try some other method for the SD DVD. The problem may be Vegas itself. Either way, getting good SD DVD from the EX1 that plays on everything has been much harder than what I was able to do with my VX2000. I know some claim otherwise, but between here and the DV Info forum it is clear that EX1 to universal quality SD DVD is a major problem for a lot of videographers.

Summary: The SD DVD Looks really good uprezzed to a Plasma. Looks really bad played straight to a CRT TV.

I believe your problems on the CRT playback have to do with the way a 4:3 CRT plays back 16:9 video. That is that it throws away every third line and deinterlaces what is left. Since most widescreen video is 24p, DVD players are optimized for this frame rate but not for 30p. I'll bet you anything that your DVD player is doing some sort of "blend fields" deinterlace even though the image is progressive and doesn't need it. With your CRT setup, every third line is being thrown away, and that output is going through a blend fields deinterlace. That would explain the twitter you are seeing.

Try this: render out a letterboxed version with the black bars at the top and bottom of a 4:3 frame and I'll bet it looks great. That or chop the sides and do a 4:3 render. Shows like "Friends" are 30p and look great (video quality wise at least), but they are 4:3. Yeah I know that it is kind of a pain to have to have different versions for different TVs.

To me this is one of the biggest arguments for shooting 24p. A 24p HD project downrezzed to 24p SD and put on a regular DVD plays back well on all setups.

I'll bet you anything that your DVD player is doing some sort of "blend fields" deinterlace even though the image is progressive and doesn't need it. With your CRT setup, every third line is being thrown away, and that output is going through a blend fields deinterlace. That would explain the twitter you are seeing.
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Isn't that why some here recommend choosing a project property deinterlace method of anything except NONE. This seems to be a big controversy on the forum. It also may be a reason to shoot interlaced as well. For distribution I can't have two versions of an SD DVD, so if I shot progressive (which is recommended by most) how are people solving this problem? Lots of people use CRT televisions.

I will try that suggestion you made. Thanks again Laurence.


John

Further follow-up.

Tried the HD DVD from a Toshiba XA1 to a Sony 36" CRT and even with the HD DVD the aliasing and twitter was pronounced. This was not the case when I did the same thing after shooting a 1080/60i project that was similar. Shooting progressive may be good for HD displays, but it doesn't seem to produce good results with CRTs either in HD or SD. At least not with Vegas and my EX1.

Any other suggestions as to what to try with this footage to get it to look good on a CRT in either HD or SD.


Also, not sure how you meant to add letterboxing to the project. Never done it. Render out a 4:3 project changing render settings? Changing Project properties?

Thanks,

John

Just curious as to whether the 36" CRT HD TV was a 4:3 one and if it was, if the HD DVD player was set for a 16:9 HD image with squeeze from the TV or a 4:3 HD image. I have an early 4:3 Toshiba HD TV which has 4:3 and 16:9 squeeze HD options. When I had a Toshiba HD DVD player, I first set it up in the 4:3 HD mode which let me play back 16:9 HD DVD content in widescreen, but also let me play back 4:3 HD content that completely filled the screen. I soon gave up on this configuration however because in this mode it dropped lines and twittered like crazy.

I ended up setting up the HD DVD player for 16:9 output with the TV set to squeeze mode. Unfortunately this meant that my fullscreen SD DVDs played in a little box with black bars around all four sides of the image, but it was better than the jiggly HD image.

Now I have a Philips Bluray player which only has the 16:9 output settings and the image comes into the TV over component cables that I understand are only going to give me SD resolution in the near future as Bluray discs are required to enact this "feature".

Just curious as to whether the 36" CRT HD TV was a 4:3 one and if it was, if the HD DVD player was set for a 16:9 HD image with squeeze from the TV or a 4:3 HD image.
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It is my son's setup. He has a standard 4:3 36 inch CRT Sony Bravia, not an HDTV. He has played an HD DVD of mine before and it looked fine, but I shot it using 60i. He called me and told me this one looks bad and the way he described it, it sounded like the results I saw playing the SD DVD version from a standard DVD player to my 27 inch Toshiba CRT TV that I have upstairs. Line twitter and aliasing even on the HD DVD version. His Toshiba XA1 is set up the same way as my Toshiba A1. The setup is widescreen mode, not 4:3. The aliasing has to be an interlacing problem of some sort I think. But I have to say both HD and SD versions look great on my plasma TV. Just not good for mass distribution.

John

That is just too weird. Is the mpeg encode flagged as 30p or 60i?

This is a pretty complex topic. From what I know.

1) in 1080p30 the EX will deliver around 1000 lines of vertical resolution. By default the EX will add quite a bit of Detail Enhancement. So what comes out of the camera can be very good looking HD. More than good enough for a cinema screen.

2) SD DVDs and CRT TVs do not support 25p or 30p. No matter what it will always have to end up as 50i or 60i.

3) Interlaced video has a limitation of the vertical resolution of around 70% of the actual resolution. This is handled in SD cameras through line pair averaging. You also need to be aware of the Nyquist limit and the potential for aliasing. This is handled in SD cameras through through Low Pass Filters behind the lens.

When downscaling HD to SD you need to consider 3).
If you add sharpening in the process you need to do it after downscaling otherwise you can induce even more problems. I recall at times doing what sounds counter-intuitive. Softening the HD source by adding a tiny amount of Gaussian Blur and then adding a tiny amount of sharpening after the downscaling.

I'm very loath to try to give any magic soup to deal with these problems though. I tend to just do whatever it takes and move on. That's very sloppy, I should keep notes, I should do more testing however whatever I did note down might be the fix for my problem and be bad advice for others with similar problems. I've seen a lot of this on the EX forum on DVInfo.

I'd suggest printing out a ANSI resolution chart, shooting that with the EX and then proceed to make a SD DVD from that. Try different camera settings, try different methods of downscaling. You can fit a fair number of tests onto one DVD. Watch it all on a CRT. Check for obvious nasties like aliasing and line twitter. Do this without deadlines.

Now back to my very simple problem with SD and Vegas, yish!

Bob.

That is just too weird. Is the mpeg encode flagged as 30p or 60i?
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It is flagged as interlaced - Upper Field First. But something got screwed along the way.

John

2) SD DVDs and CRT TVs do not support 25p or 30p. No matter what it will always have to end up as 50i or 60i.
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Thanks Bob,

What I am trying right now is frame rate doubling and interlacing for this problem.

I created a Lagarith intermediate uncompressed avi file with Vegas.

While After Effects 7 and later have a very nice frame rate doubler that uses a vector based pixel warping algorithm called Pixel Motion, I only have After Effects 5.0 so I used the frame rate doubler in Virtual Dub for starters to turn the 30p avi file into a 60p file.

Then I brought the resulting 60p file into AE 5.0 and converted the 60p avi file to 60i (Upper Field First).

Tomorrow I will start creating Mpeg 2 files from it and see what I get.

John

What is strange is that 30p is a relatively popular frame rate. Not only are many episodic TV shows like "Friends" shot and broadcast at 30p, but also most of the 1980s music videos were as well. 30p should look really good on all TVs including CRTs.

Check out this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate

What is strange is that 30p is a relatively popular frame rate. Not only are many episodic TV shows like "Friends" shot and broadcast at 30p, but also most of the 1980s music videos were as well. 30p should look really good on all TVs including CRTs.

Check out this link:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate
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Thanks for the link Laurence. The TV shows that are broadcast aren't Mpeg 2 files authored onto a DVD then played on a CRT set. While eventually they are put onto DVD, I am not sure how they are doing it. I thought a lot of it was done with hardware encoders rather than software encoders, but I could be wrong.

I also think that a lot of video editors on this and other forums aren't checking their SD DVDs on CRTs any more. That may be why several people say they don't have a problem. I don't see a problem either when I play it on my Plasma. Doesn't help with my customers that still own CRTs.

john

John