OK folks, I'm in a sort of limbo with delivering HD from a Mac at the moment so until something reliable comes along I'm converting my HDV to SD, then to SD DVDs and recently had to cover a major fire for a company of Loss Adjusters. There was a lot of structural elements involved, lots of steelwork, concrete, skylines, windows etc. Shot it all interlaced, imported it 'correctly' into FCP and exported it using compressor to SD , burned a DVD and was quite disappointed with the quality.
The export was at the deafult bitrate and I'm not blaming that for the results as i've done some really HQ SD DVDs using this process but they've always been shot progressive. This is the first actual job I've shot interlaced.
Upon scrutinizing the footage on the timeline on a HD monitor at 200% it is visibly interlace on every vertical, diagonal edge in the movie giving a fuzzy appearance.
I'd expect interlaced footage to appear interlaced on a computer but then it's supposed to display cleanly when presented from a TV, Right ??
Is the poor quality of the DVD down to me donconverting Interlaced footage from HDV to SD. Does 'progressive' HDV footage downconvert cleaner?
Peter
Re: HDV to SD by Danny Hays on Oct 8, 2008 at 11:26:14 pm
It should look normal on a CRT TV. Some people have claimed they get better results letting the camera down convert to SD rather than in the software. It's worth a shot. Hope this helps. Danny
Re: HDV to SD by peter Rooney on Oct 9, 2008 at 8:29:05 am
I'm just about to try that Danny. Last night i did a straight export from the timeline to HDV from compressor, did a HDV project in DVDSP (burned of course on SD DVD ) and played it. BIG difference, no interlacing, crisp, full of detail all those lovely tight focused shots sharp as a pin. The downconverted footage looks like I'd digitized VHS footage in comparison. I also have a lot of other projects shot in HDV ( progressive ) downconverted in compressor for SD DVD and they are exceptional quality.
beginning to smell a rat about downconverting interlaced footage.
Peter
Re: HDV to SD by Daniel Low on Oct 9, 2008 at 9:11:15 am
Did you apply deinterlacing using compressor's frame controls during the down converting process, or maybe not?
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Re: HDV to SD by peter Rooney on Oct 9, 2008 at 10:14:26 am
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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying 'thanks' is free!
Daniel that reads like an admonishment, are you having a go at me? Do I need to be reminded to say thank you, I don't think so.
Peter
Re: HDV to SD by Daniel Low on Oct 9, 2008 at 10:56:59 am
Actually Peter, it's my signature, you'll find it at the bottom of all my posts. The fact that it's under a line break should have made that pretty obvious.
Anyway, you don't mention deinterlacing anywhere in your posts so I simply suggested it but from your response it appears that you are clearly aware that you can't down-convert interlaced footage without deinterlacing it.
Or maybe not?
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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying 'thanks' is free!
Re: HDV to SD by peter rooney on Oct 9, 2008 at 11:44:02 am
Daniel, if that's your signature then it suggests you reserve the right to 'remind' everyone to say thank you, it seems a bit pompous to me.
If we can get past this and if you're still interested, I just did a downconvert out of My Sony HVR V1 and the result is crap, it looks like I just digitized some old VHS footage.
I even followed a recipe from the web for exporting the HDV timeline to Pro Ress 4:2:2 then exporting from this through Compressor to SD DVD and there is a miniscule improvement, not worth the blarney about the benefits of converting to pro Res.
So far the only decent product I've been able to get out of this interlaced footage is a HDV project burned on SD DVD using DVDSP and it is excellent, all my sharply focused shots, all the detail, depth of colour, levels etc, all there but flattened and slightly fuzzy when downconverted to SD DVD.
So unless I stumble on something else I'm shooting progressive in future.
Peter
Re: HDV to SD by Daniel Low on Oct 9, 2008 at 1:00:46 pm
It may be pompous and I was reluctant to add it, but I got totally fed up with spending my time giving advice to people (that in some cases saved their day/job/sanity) only to get no thanks or even a response, especially when in many cases they were simply too lazy to use the search facility here or indeed Google.
So until the rest of the world comes up to the English standards of politeness I was brought up to I will continue using it as my part of my signature.
You are the first person in who has ever taken offence to it. If you don't like it, don't click on my posts!
Anyhow, back to the task at hand:
You still have not mentioned anything relating to how you are deinterlacing your 1080i content.
You will find high quality deinterlacing controls in compressors 'Frame Controls'. I'm not sure if you are aware that there are also some high quality resizing controls to be found there as well, but I'll mention them anyway. You'll find that any of these high quality options will increase your transcoding time significantly.
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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying 'thanks' is free!
Re: HDV to SD by peter rooney on Oct 9, 2008 at 1:50:50 pm
Read those Daniel and thank you.
Not sure I want to go down that route, introducing another codec into the chain, before I fully understand why this is so poor. I was happy to try exporting it all as pro res 4:2:2 as there is no degredation to speak of from my HDV footage.
My default export to SD through compressor is as follows
Name: MPEG-2 6.2Mbps 2-pass
Description: Fits up to 90 minutes of video with Dolby Digital audio at 192 Kbps or 60 minutes with AIFF audio on a DVD-5
File Extension: m2v
Estimated file size: 486.02 MB
Type: MPEG-2 video elementary stream
Usage:SD DVD
Video Encoder
Format: M2V
Width and Height: Automatic
Selected: 720 x 576
Pixel aspect ratio: PAL CCIR 601 (16:9)
Crop: None
Padding: None
Frame rate: (100% of source)
Selected: 25
Frame Controls On:
Retiming: (Fast) Nearest Frame
Resize Filter: Linear Filter
Deinterlace Filter: Fast (Line Averaging)
Adaptive Details: On
Antialias: 0
Detail Level: 0
Field Output: Same as Source
Start timecode from source
Aspect ratio: Automatic
Selected 16:9
Field dominance: Automatic:
Selected Top first
Average data rate: 6.2 (Mbps)
2 Pass VBR enabled
Maximum data rate: 7.7 (Mbps)
High quality
Best motion estimation
Closed GOP Size: 12, Structure: IBBP
DVD Studio Pro meta-data enabled
Frame controls on
resize filter, better ( linear filter )
output field same as source
De-interlace, fast line averaging
antialias zero
details zero
rate conversion (fast nearest frame)
No additional filters applied in 'Video" tab
My complaint isn't that it's interlaced or de-interlaced as interlacing is what it is and isn't a fault so I'm not confusing interlacing as a fault. It's the loss of quality everywhere else, poor detail, fuzzy look to it, loss of levels, depth of colour etc. Now my customer can't see what I'm seeing, but he would if I showed him my HDV DVD!
It is curious to me why the default is to de-interlace at all when the TV is expecting interlaced. The DVD looks poor on a crt TV and a computer monitor ( where the interlacing is obvious ) because it's poor not because it's interlaced.
Peter
Re: HDV to SD by Daniel Low on Oct 9, 2008 at 2:50:39 pm
You're settings look ok but I would change your frame control settings to:
Output Field - Progressive
Deinterlace - Better.
The reason you need to deinterlace is that you can't scale the fields down from 1080i to 576i, you have to go to a progressive frame before scaling. If you were to then take that newly scaled 576p file to the BBC and they broadcast it, it would become interlaced again!
TV's are not expecting interlaced, interlacing was introduced as a method of reducing the bandwidth required to deliver a signal over the airwaves and also as a way to help the very early CRTs display the picture. Sadly it's remained with us, despite all the advances in technology making the process redundant.
I have one of the last CRTs sold in the UK and it's very happy being fed a progressive signal, as is every Plasma and LCD TV which simply deinterlace the any incoming interlaced signals.
Interlacing these days is only of use in HiDef at frame rates of 50 or 60.
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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying 'thanks' is free!
Interlacing these days is only of use in HiDef at frame rates of 50 or 60.
This is not accurate, but that's another topic for another day.
Interlacing will be here for a long, long time.
The BBC broadcasts progressive-sent-as-interlaced every day. As do most broadcasters.
Sadly it's remained with us, despite all the advances in technology making the process redundant. I'd wager (unless you're really, really young) interlaced technology will continue to be a part of broadcast in your lifetime.
Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST
Certified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor
Re: HDV to SD by peter rooney on Oct 9, 2008 at 3:09:19 pm
AAARRRGGGGHH, and the upshot to all this worrying about my camera shooting 'progressive' or 'interlaced' is the 'Note' in the manual, as follows.
Prog. Scan
You can shoot progressive movies but ...............( Shot movies are converted to the 50i format and stored )
My head's well and truly fried now.
Am doing a series of Interlaced compressor exports just to see if Compressor will do any better with a few tweaks etc.
thanks all
Peter
PS. do you like my new signature?
Re: HDV to SD by Daniel Low on Oct 9, 2008 at 3:37:37 pm
This is not accurate, but that's another topic for another day.
I'd be very interested to hear your opinion on this.
Interlacing will be here for a long, long time.
I agree with you there.
The BBC broadcasts progressive-sent-as-interlaced every day
The BBC broadcast both interlaced and progressive material sent-as-interlaced. As do the others.
I'd wager (unless you're really, really young) interlaced technology will continue to be a part of broadcast in your lifetime.
Yes, indeed but not the 25/30i we have been referring to.
I'm not sure about 'over there', but over here the EBU (European Broadcast Union) having been pushing for a future of 720p50 with 1080i50 only where needed (live sports, news etc).
I hope the days of 25/30i are gone soon.
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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying 'thanks' is free!
Re: HDV to SD by Daniel Low on Oct 9, 2008 at 4:52:00 pm
Nice try, PsF is not what we're talking about here.
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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying 'thanks' is free!
Re: HDV to SD by Daniel Low on Oct 9, 2008 at 9:53:45 pm
I think his post relating to PsF (Progressive Segmented Frame) was directed at me as it has no relevance to your issues whatsoever, rather it has a weak connection to the longevity of interlaced content, that we were arguing/discussing.
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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying 'thanks' is free!
Do you two want to quit acting like children now, or later?
So unless I stumble on something else I'm shooting progressive in future. Not a bad idea, *if* you know how to handle a camera shooting progressive. Fewer frames/fields per second means treating the camera differently.
You might try using other tools for this as well. IMO, Compressor does a horrible job, and there are many other tools out there that can manage this job much better.
FCS is a fantastic tool set, but there are lacking areas; good compression/deinterlacing/resampling in general is probably the most glaring area.
Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST
Certified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor
Re: HDV to SD by Todd Terry on Oct 9, 2008 at 1:04:39 pm
[peter rooney]"reserve the right to 'remind' everyone to say thank you, it seems a bit pompous to me."
Maybe... but sometimes people seem to need a little encouragment to be gracious.
Most of the posters on the COW are very courteous. But some, are not... and a few are just plain clods. Those of us who give of our time to the COW do so purely in order to help others... not for the thanks. However, getting the occassional thank you is a nice extra reward. But even moreso is hearing back from the original posters as to whether the advice solved the problem. That's the part that is really useful.
I think that's all that Daniel's sig is encouraging.
I can think of one particular and frequent poster here on the COW who pipes up every now and then asking for help with some problem or such. I would say that probably 4 times out of 5 I know what would solve his problem, usually easily. But you know what? After doing so many times, now I never respond to him anymore. Simply because although he usually gets several pieces of advice and suggestions... he never says a peep back to those who helped him. Not a "thank you," not a "Hey, that worked!," no "That doesn't work is there any other solution?" or even "Hmmm, no, that didn't fix it, but thanks for trying." So, I don't bother answering him.
As George Costanza once yelled, "We're living in a society, people!"
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
Re: HDV to SD by Ed Dooley on Oct 10, 2008 at 5:58:19 pm
Agreed. I've never thought it pompous, and I too have given lots of advice with no reply.
But then I'm also the guy that holds a door for someone, and if they don't thank me I say "You're welcome" anyway. I get some funny responses to that. :-)
Ed
[peter rooney]"reserve the right to 'remind' everyone to say thank you, it seems a bit pompous to me."
Maybe... but sometimes people seem to need a little encouragement to be gracious.
Most of the posters on the COW are very courteous. But some, are not... and a few are just plain clods. Those of us who give of our time to the COW do so purely in order to help others... not for the thanks. However, getting the occasional thank you is a nice extra reward. But even moreso is hearing back from the original posters as to whether the advice solved the problem. That's the part that is really useful.
I think that's all that Daniel's sig is encouraging.
I can think of one particular and frequent poster here on the COW who pipes up every now and then asking for help with some problem or such. I would say that probably 4 times out of 5 I know what would solve his problem, usually easily. But you know what? After doing so many times, now I never respond to him anymore. Simply because although he usually gets several pieces of advice and suggestions... he never says a peep back to those who helped him. Not a "thank you," not a "Hey, that worked!," no "That doesn't work is there any other solution?" or even "Hmmm, no, that didn't fix it, but thanks for trying." So, I don't bother answering him.
As George Costanza once yelled, "We're living in a society, people!"
Re: HDV to SD by Mike Cohen on Oct 27, 2008 at 5:50:34 pm
Interesting thread. Honestly I have rarely visited the HDV forum, but will make it a habit now.
I have just finished my first HDV project, although have not yet compared the two versions of the DVD:
1. HDV timeline in Premiere CS3 - 1080i60 from V1U. The footage looks great on my LCD computer monitor (no HD monitor yet). Some of the footage is SD from a DVCAM deck. I increased the SD footage to about 125%, centered over black. I exported from my CS3 HDV project directly to MPEG-2, then to Encore. The SD DVD looked good, although the SD footage could have looked better obviously.
2. Started SD 16:9 DV project, imported HDV project, conformed raw HDV footage clips to 16:9 DV PAR (possibly unnecessary step, since HDV is 16:9 (perhaps not given the 1440 HDV dimension..?)), and then went clip by clip on the timeline to make everything the right size. The SD DV clips are centered over black in the 16:9 screen, 100% size, much nicer. I have just exported this to SD MPEG-2 and burned a new SD DVD. Presumably the SD footage will look better, but how will the HDV footage look? I will post back with the results.
Re: HDV to SD by Daniel Low on Oct 27, 2008 at 5:43:40 pm
conformed raw HDV footage clips to 16:9 DV PAR (possibly unnecessary step, since HDV is 16:9 (perhaps not given the 1440 HDV dimension..?))
1440x1080 is non-square pixel 16:9.
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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying 'thanks' is free!
