Theater DVD

fixler wrote on 7/3/2005, 1:55 AM
I received approx 1.75hrs of video on MiniDV, shot in low light by an inexperienced videographer resulting in poorly balanced footage. It was requested that I add this to a disc (4.7GB), that already hold 15min of video resulting in a total of 2hrs worth of video on one single disc.

I colour corrected the footage using the 'Auto Levels' tool, resulting in a dramatic improvement in colouring. I then rendered to DVD Architect Video Stream using all default VBR settings. At this point there was a resonable amount of noise, but it wasn't to bad at all.

I then imported this into DVD Architect 3 and used the 'Fit to disc' tool to compress it further. DA3 re-rendered the file at a constant bit rate of 5.12MBPS.

When played on a standalone DVD player the resulting product was dreadfull! The noise was unbeareable...

What was my mistake? Can I do anything to retain quality?

Thankyou in advance. fixler.

Comments

PeterWright wrote on 7/3/2005, 2:02 AM
The fact that it was shot in low light is probably the worst feature - the noise that this introduces to dark areas is hard to lose.

But, I would put it into DVDA as a rendered avi, then there will only be one compression to MPEG2. Your present workflow means re-rendering MPEG2 to another MPEG2, and whilst this can work in ideal conditions, if there are low light artifacts, these will probably get worse this way.

There may be a few other things you can do to reduce noise, maybe a little gaussian blur or colur curves - maybe others can chip in here ....
rstein wrote on 7/3/2005, 2:04 AM
Hi fixler,

I think your mistake was rendering to DVDA within Vegas (creating an MPEG2 file for DVDA) and then using DVDA to re-render that MPEG2 file to yet another that was ultimately the one used on your DVD.

Never, ever, re-compress an already compressed MPEG2. I would have rendered the project to DV first, then let DVDA simply do the compressing from the clean DV .avi file. Alternatively, you could have used a tool to calculate the compression you needed to fit 2 hours to yield an MPEG2 file to around 4.3GB, and rendered using Vegas using 2-pass VBR with the average bit rate being the result of that bit rate calculation above.

Either of those would result in only one serious compression (the DV->MPEG2) and I'm sure your result would be much more satisfactory.

Cheers,
Bob.
fixler wrote on 7/3/2005, 2:07 AM
Thanks Peter.

I just compared the original AVI with the AVI I produced after repairing colour and it seems that while colours look far better the noise of dark areas is far worse?
farss wrote on 7/3/2005, 3:03 AM
Color correction means winding up gain and hence noise, been there, done that, with VHS that was worn out and shot in low light, holy moly, what a mess.
I'd strongly recommend you get a hold of Mike Crash's Dynamic Noise Reduction FX, it does a great job.
The problem with noise is the encoder has to encode it and it just cannot be done. What seems to happen is the noise becomes frozen and that makes it look much worse. Film grain can also be problematic.
I'd add this is another good reason to have a monitor with very good bandwidth, using the preview monitor or a cheap TV it can be hard to see the amount of noise.
Bob.
fixler wrote on 7/3/2005, 3:52 AM
I had that FX installed and just applied...What a difference! Thanks.

I'll render it VBR in Vegas at an average of 4,880,000-not two-pass, I don't have the time.

Thanks
farss wrote on 7/3/2005, 6:23 AM
If ya gotta lot a noise 2 pass mightn't help overly anyways.
One thing I've found to be very careful of with problematic or very high quality video and VBR, bump the minimum bitrate up. If nothing else huge spikes in the bitrate can spin some players right out.
Bob.
Spot|DSE wrote on 7/3/2005, 10:05 AM
Next time you do this, in addition to the steps outlined above, try the Black Restore filter. Less work for the encoder, and less black to deal with. Does a very fine job. Just use the Streaming preset.
fixler wrote on 7/3/2005, 7:34 PM
Just burnt the disc and the product looks great!!!

Thanks guys