What project settings to use for HDV?

Jessariah67 wrote on 5/21/2008, 6:26 AM
Hey all,

I did a search, but didn't find what I was looking for (just like Bono).

I've got 24f HDV footage from a Canon XH-A1. When it comes time to render, I'll be doing it to NTSC 24P Widescreen. The Vegas Help says to set project settings for what you will be rendering to, but I notice that there is a difference in quality (on the timeline) between the HDV 1080-24P setting and the NTSC DV 24P Widescreen. I know that the down-sampling is going to take away from the quality in the end, but does it make a difference what the actual project settings are before rendering? Also, I'm a complete HDV noob, so setting me straight on anything I'm wrong about will be welcomed.

Thanks.

KH

Comments

farss wrote on 5/21/2008, 6:36 AM
does it make a difference what the actual project settings are before rendering

With progressive footage no. As you're rescaling though you do need to render at Best. Downscaling will not take away from the quality either, technically in some respects it gets better. The resolution decreases obviously but you have no choice here if you're delivering SD.
If you encode from the HDV timeline directly to mpeg-2 for your DVD your quality will be very good due to how the color information is sampled.
Also note that unless you're previewing at Best then the quality you see in the preview window is not the same as what you'll get in your encoded video if your project is NTSC DV 24P Widescreen.

Final tip, try small pieces first before rendering the whole video. Nothing worse than waiting hours for an encode to find it's crud.

Bob.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 5/21/2008, 7:30 AM
One thing to be careful of is that HDV and DV Widescreen are not the same aspect! (i.e., 16:9 isn't always 16:9) HDV will have slight vertical black bars on either side when placed in a DV Widescreen project. The only way to get rid of these is to crop all of your HDV media on the timeline to match the DV Widescreen project aspect.

If you use an HDV project, you can render to DV Widescreen using the Stretch video to fill output frame size (do not letterbox) option and the bars (pillar boxing) will be removed but you can't use that trick in a DV Widescreen project. Having said that, you might not want to stretch but rather crop anyway depending on your preference.

My personal preference is to work in the resolution of the format I will be rendering to. This way what I see on the timeline is what I get in the render. No surprises. The only exception is if I am delivering DV Widescreen and I think I will need an HDV version in the future. Then I'll work in an HDV project and make sure I use the stretch video option when rendering.

~jr
Jessariah67 wrote on 5/21/2008, 8:31 AM
OK, so edit the .m2t files on a NTSC DV 24P WS timeline and render at best (and throw a match output ratio script on everything to get rid of the bars). Looking at the preview in "best," I see little difference between the HDV and DV settings (big diffference at "preview" level).

So, basically, you're cutting a DV project with "better" raw files.

I think part of the reason I've been wary about making this move is that it all seemed so complicated. I appreciate you guys helping me out.

KH
Laurence wrote on 5/21/2008, 9:33 AM
One thing to be careful of is that HDV and DV Widescreen are not the same aspect! (i.e., 16:9 isn't always 16:9) HDV will have slight vertical black bars on either side when placed in a DV Widescreen project. The only way to get rid of these is to crop all of your HDV media on the timeline to match the DV Widescreen project aspect.

There is another very simple solution and that is to render to a DVD complient 704x480 mpeg2 instead of the usual 720x480 dimensions. This gives you a DVD mpeg2 render at exactly the same aspect ratio as your HDV source material.
boggaf05 wrote on 5/22/2008, 6:43 PM
I usually shoot in 24P with my HDV camera and when I go to render it back to SD I leave it at 720x480 since the tube distortion in most TVs will take off the small black bars on each side leaving most of the picture on the screen, but the difference is very small since youre only talking a few pixels, but it has helped me squeeze a little extra bit onto the screen knowing that I have a little extra room.
CClub wrote on 5/24/2008, 10:28 AM
The only concern I'd have about changing the dimensions to 704 x 480 is if I'm going to be using DVDA, wouldn't it then have to re-render the mpg2 files rather than use the already prepared files? Once you change the normal DVDA ready template, I find it re-renders them.

I'm not at my Vegas desktop right now and I can't remember... I'm wondering if Excalibur or Ultimate Pro already has a script to match the DV widescreen project aspect if you're going to be rendering to DVD.