Video Jagged with new Sony LCD TV

vincej wrote on 10/29/2007, 5:04 PM
On the weekend I went crazy and bought a 52 inch Sony LCD

we all know Blu-ray looks great,

However, one of my tests was to look at an off the shelf *standard def* Hollywood movie – it was great: smooth, no pixilation or grain, very good

Then I choose to view one of my home brew DVD’s on the system. The colour rendition was GREAT but there was considerable distortion / pixilation around moving objects i.e. people’s heads etc.



The salesman suggested that:

1) standard def Hollywood movies give you as much as 700 lines of resolution where as an amateur standard def camera may only give as little as 250. In fact my Panasonic GS500 gives 540 according to on line reviews.

2) My home brew film might have been rendered and burned with interlacing on. That I should try rerendering with progressive scan.

Indeed I have checked my project properties have the AVI was rendered with lower field first and “deinterlace meathod” set to “blend fields”. Also on DVDA I have under the “prepare” button my “recompress settings” have my “progressive” set to “Auto” which implies deinterlaced “on” if the source is deinterlaced.


Bottom Line Questions:

1) How do I get my film to look as good as *standard def* a Hollywood film on my new fancy HD TV ??

2) If de-interlacing is the problem - there are so many places at various stages to turn things off ie field order, de-interlace method, rendering template, and of course DVDA has it's own recompression settings.

Do I turn off interlace everywhere / somewhere ?

How do I get a the best standard def picture on this 1080p HD TV ?

thanks Vincej

Comments

Eugenia wrote on 10/29/2007, 5:18 PM
First of all, make sure you have a progressive DVD player. Not all DVD players can play 480p instead of 480i. You might have to go to your DVD's settings and try things out too. My DVD player for example has a setting to jump from 480i rendering to 480p.

If you did everything the normal way, e.g. edit on Vegas using the stanard templates and then exporting to DVDA using its standard templates and then burning from there, everything should be automatic, in which case I would blame the DVD player.
vincej wrote on 10/29/2007, 7:16 PM
Ok - Blame the DVD player .. but I don't understand how the same DVD player can reporiduce a Hollywood flick just great but my DVD looks rough.

I woudl expect that a standard def Hollywood flick is created with deinterlace "on" Yet my film looks bad with Deinterlace on.

What gives ?

Eugenia wrote on 10/29/2007, 7:24 PM
Use interpolation as the de-interlacing algorithm, de-interlace on every step that you are given that option, and retry burning a DVD that way and tell us the result.
Chienworks wrote on 10/29/2007, 7:26 PM
A big part of the difference is that Hollywood uses vastly better (and vastly more expensive) MPEG encoding. They also start with crystal clear film images instead of noisy consumer video. The encoding is often done frame by frame to optimize the process for the current image. There's no way you'll ever match that at home. Use the highest bitrate you can, staying under 9800 combined for audio and video, of course. make sure the quality slider is set for the maximum value of 31.
vincej wrote on 10/29/2007, 7:33 PM
"staying under 9800 combined for audio and video"

Ok -- but I had always lived with the idea the the max foir DVD was 8000 - how can this now work .. or does it just work on a fancy HDTV ?


"make sure the quality slider is set for the maximum value of 31"

Ok - I'm reasonably familiar with VMS Plat and DVDA but I can't remember where that it - please tell me where is this slider ?

"Use Interpolation" - OK so progressive is out the window and the rep was wrong ?

cheers Vincej
Eugenia wrote on 10/29/2007, 7:42 PM
>OK so progressive is out the window and the rep was wrong ?

You misunderstood. You select both progressive scan for field order and interpolation for the de-interlacing method on the Vegas side. Then, you must use similar stuff on DVDA, if DVDA gives you that option.

My husband who is an engineer read your post and he suggested that it's possibly the software to blame, not including the right "bit" of information on how to reconstruct the frames and so the DVD player freaks out. He suggested you turn on/off progressive scan on your DVD player and see how that plays (if there's any difference), and also try it with VLC on the computer and see if you get jaggies or not.
Eugenia wrote on 10/29/2007, 7:48 PM
On the DVDA side change "Reduce interlace filcker" to ON on the General tab, and aftter you start preparing a DVD, on the "optimize" button set on the "Video" tab the Progressive to "yes".
vincej wrote on 10/29/2007, 8:50 PM
Many thanks for the great advice -

"also try it with VLC on the computer and see if you get jaggies or not"

I feel like a newbie - what is VLC ?

Chienworks wrote on 10/29/2007, 9:20 PM
http://www.videolan.org/ <-- VideoLan VLC player.
vincej wrote on 10/29/2007, 9:21 PM
Ok perhaps I have found this quality slider which Chienworks is refering to - inside "advanced render" under the "Video format" drop down - but it only works with certain codecs. Am I supposed to be touching this ?? If so how with what codec ??

Many thanks Vincej
Chienworks wrote on 10/30/2007, 4:09 AM
If you're rendering for DVD then the only video codec you'll be using is MPEG2.