I'll be giving this a go soon. Offering a seemingly lower compression threshold bodes well for those clients who want SD, but would also prefer a higher bitrate for said SD

I guess what I have been trying to find for quite some time is a way to get SD 4:3 footage on a disc that is close in quality to the avi footage. Even at a CBR of 8,000,000 it is night and day between the Mpeg 2 and the .avi.

Is there no way to deliver this at near .avi quality to date?

John

I've found that when working with SD resolutions using the MP4 container produces better results. My format is NTSC but I can use 720x576 framesize at 29.97 without issue, this does appear to produce a nice picture.
My success with SD & avc/h264 is similar to Laurences.
But to distribute as a file to persons using windows/mac/linux the MP4 format seems to play on their machines. Can depend on your source footage.
The most compatible I've used so far is the MP4 container (no fielding), progressive/frame-based.
So how you de-interlace the video (if using interlaced source) is your choice.
The "Interpolate" within Vegas does a good enough job for my needs.
BTW- Many software players will not playback interlaced avc/h264 yet, simply use progressive/frame-based.

I do have avchd disks with 720x480 or 720x576 videos converted from dv to avc/h264 encoded at 8MBS max, average about 4MBS. Some run at 8MBS average. They are mixed with other 1440x1080 avc's on the same disk (separate files), can't really say they are better then mpeg2@8MBS, hard to tell, playing the h264 back though requires alot more cpu power, so the mpeg2 is much easier to playback.

Do you think it's possible that most SD video doesn't have enough high quality for the avc/h264 codec to really perform what is was coded for? Either that or I'm just getting to use to seeing a descent high def picture compared to SD.

Do you think it's possible that most SD video doesn't have enough high quality for the avc/h264 codec to really perform what is was coded for? Either that or I'm just getting to use to seeing a descent high def picture compared to SD.
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That is part of what this post is asking. I can really see these differences using my digital projector. It must have to do with the scaling as well as the compression. If I send footage from my camera to the projector directly from the mini DV tape it looks amazing. If I send it after capture from my computer to the projector it looks equally amazing. Render it to any format that can fit on a disc and it looks lousy "by comparison" especially enlarged.

John

One thing that I have found improves the look of an SD DVD is a little deshaking of the HD source material. I started deshaking in order to correct, well, shaky footage, but find that the final SD DVD mpeg2 encoding has a lot more redundant information after the image has been stabilized a bit, and the compression looks better too as a result.

Shallow depth of field is another thing that seems to help the mpeg2 compression work a little less hard.

Going directly from HD to SD mpeg2 without a DV codec stage in between also helps.

Another thing, with either a Blu-ray player or one of the now ultra-cheap HD DVD players, you really can go right up to the maximum allowable bitrate of an SD DVD if you are sure of using your own player rather than just any DVD player that an end viewer might have. These players are designed for 25mbps plus and have no problem whatsoever with a full 9mbps. Between that and the uprezzing, you can make an SD DVD you are going to play with your own player look pretty darned good.

ahh.. ok now i get you.. are u guys refering to scaled SD up to HD for AVCHD, OR SD sourced to SD resolution in AVCHD codec for AVCHD (SD) deliivery?

I would asume that the SD footage encoded to AVC would look singificalty better than scaled sd footage..

and if anything, scaled foorage woudl really be questionable Considering 720x576p up to 1280x720p isnt all that much of a hit..
it IS a hit in sharpenss, but not significant enough to have someone slap u in the face because of it..
THose with 720p panels really wouldnt notice the difference, those with 1080p panels would though..

Damn tis time liek these i didnt have so much crap to get through, jsut so i could spend a day at least expermenting with it.. lol