SD at 1080

Widetrack wrote on 4/26/2010, 3:30 PM

I still produce stuff shot on DV, and using older 4:3 tape/film footage. Since I render in widescreen, I change the aspect ratios of my clips to fir the output ratio--16:9.

To be able to see previews as close as possible to the final product, I got a new Asus VH236H 23" monitor that has a 1920 x 1080 resolution, and got very good reviews on CNET and other sites, especially for its black levels.

When I set project Properties to any 1080 setting (none of which are SD), naturally the image looks terrible--quite blurry and grainy. When properties are set to plain old NTSC Widescreen, I get a reasonably good-looking image, but it's only about 10" wide.

If I set the preview window to "Scale Video to fit preview window," of course the image fills the window, but again looks like doo-doo.

Does this mean that my final output will look crappy also when played on a 1920 x 1080 TV?

Is there any way I can preview that will look like it will on a home 1080 TV?

Thanks for any help

Comments

ushere wrote on 4/26/2010, 4:31 PM

not sure i understand correctly, but if you're looking to have sd look good at 1080, you're in for a long haul....

sd is sd, hd is hd.

you want to produce for 1080, you need to start shooting in 1080....

musicvid10 wrote on 4/26/2010, 5:13 PM

Setting your project properties to 1080 will give you an "approximation" of what your SD video would look like at HD resolution.

1080 HD contains 6 times as much detail per frame as SD. There is no way to recover any of that lost information.

Jay Gladwell wrote on 4/26/2010, 5:14 PM

Yes, it will look VERY crappy.

Andy_L wrote on 4/26/2010, 5:50 PM

If you are changing aspect by cropping, SD will look horrible at 1080 because you're throwing away so much vertical resolution. Normally, SD should look fine on a HD set if it is upscaled by a good dvd player.

Try leaving the aspect ratio alone and let the tv/dvd player expand the picture to fit.

It may be scandalous to suggest this, but a good SD picture upscaled by a good dvd player can look mighty close to an actual hd signal.

musicvid10 wrote on 4/26/2010, 7:48 PM

It may be scandalous to suggest this, but a good SD picture upscaled by a good dvd player can look mighty close to an actual hd signal.

Andy, it's not scandalous to suggest, but you are comparing apples to oranges. I'm sure you are talking about cinema, not DV video. I dare say no one here has access to the kind of equipment and encoders necessary to make a 1/3Mp image look great on a 2Mp screen.

Yeah, put a $30,000 piece of glass on a $12,000 body with $100,000 worth of lighting, and add a $3,000 MPEG-2 encoder, and you would be hard pressed to make SD DVD upsampled to 1080 look bad. But from a handheld consumer 4:2:0 DV camera, family picnic lighting, and a kmart mpeg encoder? Try that on your upsampling player.

But the reality for prosumers and budget professionals is to not get into the silk purse business, but to buy into a sensibly priced HD system, as the OP should do.

As a wise person said very recently, "sd is sd, hd is hd."

Dreamline wrote on 4/26/2010, 10:12 PM

Yeah, SD DVD do look great on great 1080p sets. True that!

It makes the earlier adopters of HD feel better when they state otherwise.

craftech wrote on 4/27/2010, 5:21 AM

Is there any way I can preview that will look like it will on a home 1080 TV?

Yes,

Render a loop of say 5 minutes, burn it on a DVD-RW, and try it out on a 1080 TV.

John

SWS wrote on 4/27/2010, 6:12 AM

Here's a quick wide screen project I did that had SD footage and low-res stills. Using New Blue's Picture in Picture filter was able to give it a little bit of a look for widescreen. Ignore the black bars at the bottom and top that was my screw-up.
mp

Andy_L wrote on 4/27/2010, 9:54 AM

Yeah -- I stand corrected. Obviously you need a good SD source if you want it to upsample well.

Widetrack wrote on 4/27/2010, 11:22 PM

Wow. Thanks for all the info.

SWS,

You deserve kudos for helping with a true mission of mercy. Seeing what the Haitians are going through makes our troubles here look very small. These people are in my prayers, even if their plight is no longer in the news.

In the technical realm, What settings in Properties and render did you use to make that piece? My current project will use a good deal of stills and older footage shot on goodness-knows-what, edited to Beta and dubbed to DVCam.

Is there a way to put all those different formats in one program and make them look good?

Sounds like I should show all the whole frames of the 4:3 material and let there be bars on the sides, rather than cropping to get widescreen.

Thanks again to everyone for responding.

Serena wrote on 4/27/2010, 11:49 PM

SD shouldn't look bad on an HD display. There is still a lot of SD broadcast and of course we're seeing that on 1080 displays; of course I'm talking from PAL-land, with rather better SD. Sure the difference is obvious, but not crappy. On the other hand I have edited SD material shot by other people which looked pretty bad by my usual standards, but it was just SD and OK in the end.

SWS wrote on 4/28/2010, 8:30 AM

Thanks for the kind words...Widetrack...

The Haiti project was set as an NTSC DV Widescreen project. But I think you would be able to get fine results with an HDV or HD project setting as well. You're not really doing much, if any, of a "blow-up" to the SD footage just placing it in the 16x9 frame and massaging it's placement.
mp

Widetrack wrote on 4/29/2010, 2:32 PM

SWS:

Following your suggestion, I rendered a short project to DVD yesterday: once as MPEG2 in NTSC widescreen, and once as .m2t at 1080 x 1920 HD 60i.

I used different kinds of subject matter. and the footage all came to me on DVCAM, and were originally shot on who-knows-what.

The NTSC render looked fairly poor, but on the HD render, CGI stuff was significantly batter-looking. People's faces improved, but not as much. Now I'm wondering exactly why this happened, and if I should figure on doing this for a final DVD project.

I'm unclear why the .m2t worked at all, since I thought a DVD on a standard consumer DVD player couldn't handle HD per se . . .or is it just that DVD isn't big enough to hold an HD project of any length.

John_Cline wrote on 4/29/2010, 2:52 PM

Standard DVD players can't play HD. Period.

Widetrack wrote on 4/29/2010, 3:16 PM

John:

that's what I thought.

So what was it that I got when I rendered my non-HD footage in a project with Properties set to:

"HD 1080-60i (1920x1080, 29.970 fps)"?

It rendered out as a .m2t file.

Why did it look better than the same footage rendered as NTSC widescreen as MPEG2 (.mpg)?

musicvid10 wrote on 4/29/2010, 9:32 PM

Standard DVD players can't play HD. Period.]

The cheap Optiarc DVD on my cheap Sony VAIO notebook plays AVCHD on DVD discs (the so-called AVCHD-DVD format) using the resident WinDVD software player.

Figure that one out (surprised me too!).

Never say never.

John_Cline wrote on 4/29/2010, 9:51 PM

In this case, I can say never. I repeat: Standard DVD players can't play HD. PERIOD.

I am referring to stand-alone, set-top DVD players. The Optiarc drive in your VAIO notebook is just reading data off the disc and the notebook is taking care of playing the video using the WinDVD software. A regular DVD player simply can't do this.

By definition, a DVD video disc can ONLY be either NTSC 720x480 4:3 or widescreen or it can be PAL 720x576 4:3 or widescreen.

Widetrack: if you are making a standard DVD complete with menus using DVD Architect, then DVDA is converting your 1920x1080 .M2T file to 720x480 (with the widescreen bit set.) You are NOT writing a 1920x1080 file to the DVD, it must be converted at some point.

musicvid10 wrote on 4/29/2010, 9:58 PM

I am referring to stand-alone, set-top DVD players.

That wasn't stated.

Mine is a standard (did I mention cheap?) OEM DVD +/- RW, which never claimed, and was never expected to, support HD playback of any kind. And they are at least as common as set-top DVD players in this day.

As I stated, I was surprised too. No need to get defensive, John.

:?)

John_Cline wrote on 4/29/2010, 10:23 PM

I thought "standard DVD player" should have been enough. A DVD-ROM drive in a computer is not a "standard DVD player."

There is no reason to think that a DVD-ROM drive in a computer couldn't support HD playback. Technically, the DVD-ROM drive is just reading data off the disc, the computer and player software is doing the actual playback.

The point is that you can't write any kind of HD video data to a standard DVD video disc and play it in a regular, run-of-the-mill, stand-alone DVD player without converting it to SD video at some point in the workflow.

musicvid10 wrote on 4/29/2010, 10:43 PM

http://www.custcenter.com/cgi-bin/sonypictures.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=4334&p_created=1223407359&p_sid=pny-JG-j&p_lva=&p_li=&p_redirect=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9NCw0JnBfcHJvZHM9MCZwX2NhdHM9JnBfcHY9JnBfY3Y9JnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9YXZjaGQgZHZk

I burn AVCHD to DVD using DVD Architect with success, John.
Took me ten minutes to do this one (MediaInfo from the burned DVD).
The disc cost me fifty cents, but never mind.

General

John_Cline wrote on 4/29/2010, 11:30 PM

You're not paying attention. What part of "standard video DVD" and "standard DVD player" do you not get? Mediainfo reports the disc to be "BDAV" format with Blu-ray AVC video. That is NOT a standard video DVD in any way, shape or form.

You can write any kind of data you want to a DVD disc but consumer DVDs use either 4:3 or anamorphic 16:9 aspect ratio MPEG-2 video, stored at a resolution of 720/704×480 (NTSC) or 720/704×576 (PAL) at 29.97, 25, or 23.976 FPS. Audio is commonly stored using the Dolby Digital (AC-3) or Digital Theater System (DTS) formats, ranging from 16-bits/48 kHz to 24-bits/96 kHz format with monaural to 6.1-channel "Surround Sound" presentation, and/or MPEG-1 Layer 2 and/or LPCM Stereophonic.

On the other hand, YOU are burning an AVCHD-DVD which is NOT a standard video DVD and absolutely WILL NOT PLAY in a standard DVD player. It will ONLY play on a computer using the correct software player or a Blu-ray disc player.

Grazie wrote on 4/30/2010, 6:26 AM

I play my SD output on a DVD in a SONY upscaler DVD Player thru' to a SONY BRAVIA 40" via HDMI and it looks great!

Have you considered an upscaling DVD player?

Grazie