HDV or DV for SD DVD?
by jeffrey Gould
on
Mar 4, 2009 at 3:59:27 am
I'm shooting a nature video on my new Z5U that will eventually play on an SD DVD Player which will output to a 42 inch LCD Television at a parks visitor's center. Question is...do I shoot it in SD DVCAM or HDV mode? I know with that camera I can shoot both the same time with the CF recorder, but not sure I want to deal with that. is there any benefit to the image quality if I start out in HDV? The client was impressed with the thought of shooting this in "HD". Thanks for any input.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Mar 4, 2009 at 4:24:17 am
Shoot and edit in HDV. If the final product will be on a 42" HD monitor, edit in HD. Convince your client to display the master in HD on the monitor. There are some really cheap ways to feed the HD monitor. I've sold my clients on using a Western Digital MediaPlayer w/HDMI out. About $100! Plug in a USB flash drive with a H.264 or MWV HD file and it runs autolooping 24/7 in full HD with no moving parts. Looks awesome.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by jeffrey Gould on Mar 4, 2009 at 4:32:47 am
Ernie, thank you very much for your great/informative reply. I will look up the drive...price is very reasonable, but it will have to locked up with a cable running 20 feet to the TV. i'll present it to the client next week. when you say edit in HD, do you mean HDV project? I use CS3 with Matrox RTX2. Thank you again.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Mar 4, 2009 at 5:00:32 am
The WD Media Player isn't a drive, it's just a box that has no moving parts. It's just the electronics that you plug in your USB drive or Flashdrive file and it outputs it to HDMI or composite video. HDMI cables can easily run 50' with both A/V on one cable, so no problem storing the unit in a locked space, plus, it doesn't generate any heat. The unit is small enough you could also hide it behind the monitor in tight installations.
All you have to do is edit the program in any format you work in and then compress the final edit file to one of the formats the WD MediaPlayer plays. The file types are in the down-loadable manual. I had to do some testing to get the exact settings for audio & video that look and sound best. I tested quite a few codecs and H.264 seems to look the best to me. WMV9 HD is also not bad. Any of these will look superior to DVD playback in SD on a 42"! Plus, you don't have to deal with the DVD issues like heat, moving parts, dirt, skipping etc.
Good luck!
Ernie Santella
Santella Productions Inc.
www.santellaproductions.com
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by jeffrey Gould on Mar 4, 2009 at 5:40:30 am
I just went to the site and this is the perfect solution. I sent the link to the client and the fact that it supports subtitles makes it even better since the video has to be ADA approved. I have no clue how to generate the subtitles...but I'll research it. I've used Encore in the past to create the subtitles. I might even consider getting one of these for home use. Thank you again.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Mar 4, 2009 at 2:16:03 pm
There are threads here on the cow about sub-titles. There are some software programs available, but they are pretty expensive. It might be cheaper if you don't do it often to send it out of house for that.
Another thought is, if the video display will have the sub-titles on it full-time, just build a special version with lower-third graphics burned on-screen that look like sub-titles. But, if you want them to be line coded 'real' sub-titles, then you'll have to do the coded way. Do a search here on the cow, you'll find some threads about it.
Ernie Santella
Santella Productions Inc.
www.santellaproductions.com
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Mar 4, 2009 at 7:49:02 pm
Thank you again Ernie, I actually thought of just doing lower thirds and I'll just make one version with it on and one with it off. The park must always play with "captioning" on, but for individual use I'll turn off the lower third track. The client wrote back and approved the purchase of the WD unit. So glad you were on the Cow last night....
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Todd Terry on Mar 4, 2009 at 8:02:23 pm
I was glad to learn more about that device, too... thanks Ernie...
Jeffrey, I think the lower thirds idea will work well for your application. We've done that several times before. Ours usually wound up as DVD projects, and we would simply produce a captioned and an uncaptioned version. Viewers could select captions "ON" or "OFF" on the menu, and it was authored to play the appropriate track. Seemed much easier than "real" encoded captioning. Plus the end result looked better, and we could more carefully place where the captions appeared, as sometimes a lower-third was not the best position choice.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Mar 4, 2009 at 8:08:33 pm
Hi Todd, glad this device was interesting for you as well and a possible solution some day. The last video I did for this park, I used subtitles in Encore and you could use the remote to turn on and off...but I think using the method that Ernie outlined with the Western Digital device, you would just use your time line, not an authoring program. You are correct, sometimes the placement doesn't work due to text in the video, etc...
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Mar 4, 2009 at 8:28:44 pm
Glad I could help. They should charge more for that unit. I got it at Best Buy for $99. WD shows it working with an external hard-drive (they want to sell them) but it works perfectly with a decent USB Thumb 'Flash' drive. Just check the speed of the Flash drive. Some are faster than others. This one is great if you need one. OCZ Rally 2.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Mar 4, 2009 at 11:18:09 pm
I just do a ton of corporate work for clients who want to display their videos at trade-shows, corporate office lobbys, kisoks, etc. Plus, it makes you look damn cool when you do a presentation for a client with a tiny little black box that displays HD on their conference room monitors!
Ernie Santella
Santella Productions Inc.
www.santellaproductions.com
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Mar 9, 2009 at 3:12:53 am
I tried a bunch of different codecs and WMV9 didn't look quite as good when compared to H.264. That was the best with the least compression artifacts. WM9 still looked pretty good and would be fine for 99% of uses.
Just export out of FCP as Export with QT Conversion. Set compression to 'Best'. Then, Encoding to 'Multi-pass'. Under 'Size', manually set it to your sequence frame size, 1280x720 etc.
The sound settings are important, if the 'Format' is not set to 'ACC', the WD box won't play it. (That took a bit of testing to get it right) I set it to ACC, 48K, Render quality to 'Best' and bring up the Target Bit rate to '192'.
You can also use Apple Compressor or even an after-market compression program. I had great results with Telestream 'Episode' too.
My best suggestion is to export a short segment first for testing, instead of trying the full program. It's pretty fast to export/compress a 10 sec clip and load it into the WD Player.
Ernie Santella
Santella Productions Inc.
www.santellaproductions.com
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Tom Pauncz on Mar 9, 2009 at 12:03:56 pm
Thanks Ernie,
I am in the Windows world, so to get to H.264 is not quite as quick, but point taken. I also found that the audio setting, exporting to WMV is tricky to get right.
I'll give H.264 a shot today and see how that looks.
So far, I'm impressed with the box. The auto conversion to SD from an HD WMV file is impressive.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jun 5, 2009 at 6:36:16 pm
Hi Ernie, Now that my nature project is under way, I revisited this post/forum. Do yo recall what video bit rate you used for H.264? I'm using Adobe Media Encoder or Sorenson and you have to specify. I used 8,000-10,000 for You Tube files as YT re-encodes anyway. Thanks, Jeff
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jun 5, 2009 at 7:40:41 pm
I put it in my wishlist on Amazon so I wouldn't forget, it will be that or the Passport Drive from WD...which is probably overkill. I'll need two versions of a 10 minute video on the drive. Thanks again
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Jun 5, 2009 at 7:45:19 pm
I got the 16GB flash. That will hold 2 10 min videos.
Did I mention. I gave one to an ad agency I do a lot of work for. They keep it in the conference room hooked up to the big screen. I can either drop by with my Flash drive to show an edit in HD or post the file on my server and they can download to their USB drive and view it in HD. Very cool!
Best $100. I ever spent. They were totally blown away!
Ernie Santella
Santella Productions Inc.
www.santellaproductions.com
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jun 5, 2009 at 8:02:06 pm
That is very cool...and updates would be easy for me as well. Do you playback in 24P or 30I? I'm shooting this with Sony Z5U in 60I, do I export in I or P?
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Jun 5, 2009 at 8:06:03 pm
I edit everything in 720p/60 (720x1280) at 59.94. But, my camera original is shot at various rates for the look, 24p, 30p and 60i depending on the project. I haven't tried to do any 24p timelines in FCP
Ernie Santella
Santella Productions Inc.
www.santellaproductions.com
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Oct 5, 2009 at 2:13:03 am
Ernie, are you around? I ran some tests on the WD unit and using a Passport drive at 10K and audio at 256 AAC or ACC, forgot what it's called. After a few seconds, the audio is lagging way behind and the video stutters. If I pause it and then start again, the audio is back in sync. Also the transitions have a lot of artifacting. This is at 1080I Upper Field. Any thoughts on how I could improve performance? I'm about to order a WD unit for a client....but not with these issues. Thanks for any direction.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Oct 5, 2009 at 2:23:57 am
Jeffrey,
I'm actually in Mexico on vacation. I've not had any stutter or sync issues. I just encode directly out of FCP at H264 at 720/486 SD with AAC audio or 720x1280 HD size. All I can suggest is try some different setting as tests until you find what works. I had to testing in the beginning to figure out that only AAC audio worked. Sorry, I can't help any more that that. Just try some different frame sizes/frame rates.
Ernie Santella
Santella Productions Inc.
www.santellaproductions.com
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Oct 5, 2009 at 3:47:30 am
Good for you being in Mexico. This is 1440x1080 HDV, which displays as 1920x1080 in Sorenson Squeeze. The videos plays fine and look sharp and crisp, except for occasional stuttering and during transitions, so I don't think it's a frame rate issue. Do you know the KBS that you encode with? So you have no compression artifacts during dissolves? do you export an intermediate file to bring into your encoding program or do you export directly from timeline? I'm on a PC. No rush, answer when you can or when you get back....I appreciate it.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jun 24, 2009 at 2:21:27 pm
Hi Ernie, sorry to bother you with this again...but I have a 16x9 SD project that is 22 minutes long and I convinced the client that the Western Digital unit is the way to go for trade shows and presentations. It will be displayed on flat panel tv's. Question is the settings; do I export at 720*486 (that's what Matrox works in) and what about fields? this was shot in 60I. Is there a kbps limit that the WD unit can play without stuttering? Thanks for any direction, once I get the unit in the office, I can experiment on my own.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Jun 24, 2009 at 2:37:36 pm
You can export as 720x486 at 60i. It works fine. I just did that for a client. Looked great on their big screen. The WD plays 60i fine.
Out of Final Cut, I just export as H.264 with 48k AAC audio. You don't get a data rate number, just a sliding scale from Low to Best. It shows up at atbout 5000Kb data rate. Plays perfectly with smooth motion and excellent image quality.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jun 24, 2009 at 2:40:46 pm
You're amazing Ernie...always right there when I have a question. Thank you, I relayed your info to the client. I'm hoping he buys it next week so that I can play it and also see how it plays the HDV footage. Thank you again.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Jun 24, 2009 at 2:45:29 pm
Thanks for the nice words!!
I just gave one to a client for their conference room (They love getting gifts) It makes showing my work for them so easy. And they were blown away at the quality and ease to show videos. Just plug iin the USB Drive and play it in SD or HD.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Michael Palmer on Jun 24, 2009 at 2:56:29 pm
"You don't get a data rate number, just a sliding scale from Low to Best."
Ernie,
When exporting in Final Cut using Quicktime Conversion you can enter the data rate of your choice Options/Setting/Choose Data rate Restrict and enter what ever you like. I also lower the Key Frames down to every 12 frames or less. If this is running from a hard drive I would attempt to make the file as fat as possible for better image quality. I would also work in the largest resolution in post, and decompress HDV up to full raster 1920x1080 if you have the capabilities and create your h.264 with this resolution so the WD TV or the Monitor doesn't scale the video.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jul 3, 2009 at 3:39:35 pm
Sorry Ernie, one more... I'm exporting the SD 60I 16:9 I mentioned previously for the WD unit, do I keep interlacing on or deinterlace it in Premiere Pro? It will play on flat panel TV's. Thanks.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Jul 3, 2009 at 3:45:30 pm
Tough question to answer. It depends on how well it gets deinterlaced in Premire vs. how good the processor is in the big screen. Some displays have excellent processors and handle it great. Do you have any time to do a short test of both? Honestly, I don't go through the process of deinterlacing before export and it usually looks really good.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jul 3, 2009 at 3:53:09 pm
Thanks for the usual quick reply. The client has the monitors and not sure it will always be the same one, but one of them is brand new. I have a new Dell 24", I can test when the client brings the WD over next week. I thought that with the monitors being progressive, that you should export with no fields. Supposedly Premiere has a good Deinterlacer, better than most encoding programs. I'll export it as lower field and I can always use Sorensons Deinterlacer if I need to.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jul 3, 2009 at 8:41:22 pm
Ernie, Hate to be a pest...but I'm in Sorenson and trying to export the H.264 for the WD. This is an SD 16:9 at 720*486 , when I try to put the frame size in, it comes out 720*416 if I use "Maintain AR". Should I just force it to be 720*486? What about the audio kbs, is 192 or 256 OK? Strange there are no guidelines for this unit. I just ordered a unit to play with, so hopefully I can deal with my own issues/questions Thanks.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Jul 3, 2009 at 10:14:03 pm
No pest. If you timeline is 720x486 letterboxed, then force it to that. If your timeline was Anamorphic, then it would different. 256KB audio is fine and no problem to playback.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jul 3, 2009 at 11:13:43 pm
Thanks...and there lies the problem, it was shot 16:9, so it is anamorphic. If I keep it on keep aspect ratio, then its 720*416 and I'm afraid it won't fill up the screen. Thoughts?
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Jul 4, 2009 at 1:43:35 am
If it's anamorphic, you just set the display to stretch it out. It will look correct. Displays have setting for normal, strectch, zoom etc. Just change the setting.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jul 4, 2009 at 2:20:10 pm
if only it were that easy. In premiere I export 720*486 Widescreen, in Sorenson, I choose "Maintain AR" and when I input 720, I get 416 as the height. I did search 720*416 and found that a lot of people used that setting to get widescreen. I'll check Sorensons support page. I'll figure it out...was never good at math :-) Thank you Ernie and have a great weekend.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Jul 4, 2009 at 3:27:28 pm
Actually, Anamorphic squeezes horizontally, not vertically. So, the timeline aspect ratio should be 720x486 with the 16:9 video squeezed to 720. Thus, when it get un-squeezed by the monitor, it displays at 16:9.
The 720x416 is the size of a letterboxed 16:9 inside a 720x486 screen. That's not anamorphic.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jul 4, 2009 at 3:36:39 pm
Thanks...then the issue is Sorenson as my timline is exactly what you said 720*486 16:9. When I interpret the footage I choose 1:2. The problem is that there is no "widescreen" setting in Sorenson, like there is Premiere Pro. Maybe I'll post that question in the compression techniques forum. I just don't want to make the video smaller than it has to be and have it stretched with loss of quality.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jul 7, 2009 at 7:01:03 pm
Hi Ernie, I finally got the WD unit and the H.264 files do not fill the width, whereas the WMV files I made for the clients laptop do...all from the same source file. I know there is nothing you can do, it must be some setting in Sorenson and based on the posts, a lot of people are having similar issues. At 5,000 there are some artifacts/pixelation...should I increase it a 1000 and see if it changes anything? Thanks.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Jul 7, 2009 at 7:40:31 pm
Are you using the display to expand the image to fill? I'm not sure about Sorenson as I haven't used that for compression. It just sounds like you need to try some testing with KB rates and settings. You'll figure it out. You can always use WMV9 as that looked pretty good.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jul 7, 2009 at 7:42:38 pm
I can use fill...but being native 16:9, should I have too? The WMV file I have on passport drive is only 1000kbs, so it looked horrific. How high can WMV go for the WD? Thanks
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Jul 7, 2009 at 7:44:27 pm
Yes you have to expand it, because the file is 4:3 anamorphic. You have to expand the sides out to fill the 16:9. Then it comes into the correct aspect ratio. Doesn't it look squashed now when you display it?
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jul 7, 2009 at 8:16:13 pm
Yes, everything looked squished. I re-encoding another version, then I will try it out. This time I'm using 6000kbs and Sorenson codec instead of Main Concept. Thanks for all your time Ernie.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Jul 7, 2009 at 8:19:04 pm
Don't think expanding it out is wrong. That's what you do on any 16:9 TV with anamorphic DVD's. They all get expanded to look correct. Most of the time, the DVD player does it automatically.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jul 7, 2009 at 8:27:37 pm
Thanks...didn't realize it, I thought only if you had a 4:3 image and you wanted to fill up the screen. I do feel better....you should get a commission on the WD units. :-)
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jul 7, 2009 at 9:10:34 pm
interesting....this version is 16x9 without stretching the picture. I used Sorenson and they had different settings. I do see interlace lines though. when I exported out of ppro, I used No Fields...not "deinterlace". Was that wrong? Should I have chosen Lower Field since this is SD video?
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jul 7, 2009 at 11:24:05 pm
It looks the same, interlace lines on moving objects when I exported Lower Field out of PPRO...but the text looks much better. Any idea what's causing the interlace issue? Maybe deinterlacing is the way to?
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Jul 11, 2009 at 3:26:07 pm
Just wanted to post my results, since I took up half of the Cows bandwidth with the this thread. I encoded using Sorenson 5.2 using the Sorenson H264 Codec at 8000kbs, audio was 48K at 256. I used 2 pass VBR keyframes every 30 frames and I also deinterlaced, that is what the difference for me, without it I had combing. This is 16*9 SD footage. The video appeard in 16x90 format without having to stretch out the image using the monitors/tv settings. I found that the clients logo, all bright primary colors, looked awful at anything less than 8000kbs. I'm using a passport drive, perhaps the clients SanDisk drive won't be able to keep up. Hope this helps someone and none of it would be possible without Ernie.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Ernie Santella on Jul 11, 2009 at 5:18:13 pm
Glad I could help (I think?) It's a trial & error process to find what works perfectly with each encoder/system. Are you and your client happy with the results? That's what matters.
Ernie Santella
Santella Productions Inc.
www.santellaproductions.com
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Zach Love on Mar 30, 2009 at 4:53:02 pm
I will second the shoot HD & render down to SD. Everyone needs a good demo reel, everyone is going HD, thus anything you do know that is HD will look better tomorrow when everything has changed over to HD.
Wow, I hadn't heard about the WD TV. Looks like a great product and something I need to look into more. Up until now, I had been preaching about how the PS3 was a good HD playback device.
I guess the only downside to it vs. DVD is that you can't make any menus for the production you create.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Anthony Spencer on Sep 19, 2009 at 6:07:06 am
I have to say that this post has been one of the most valuable and useful post I have come across this year. I purchased the little WD magic box for myself to try it out. I edit in HDV and was trying to figure out a way to play HD on my tv without going blueray. Works perfectly.
For my clients, I build the price of the box into their quote. For example, I have a dermatology practice that I shot a bunch of video for. They have a flat screen tv in their waiting room. I basically created a 30 minute "tv channel" for them featuring interviews with their doctors, etc. They have the WD box in a completely different room. Now, when they want to add new videos I just render out a new version of the "tv channel" show and drop off the USB thumb drive and swap it out for the one that was currently in the WD box.
Re: HDV or DV for SD DVD? by Jeffrey Gould on Sep 21, 2009 at 3:28:47 am
Hi Anthony, thanks for posting...can you share your workflow and encode settings when you get a chance? I shot a video in Sony 60I and plan on using the WD box for the client to display. thanks.
