HDV --> SD DVD Workflow (DebugMode FrameServer, AviSynth)

[Dan Isaacs]

While the old thread contains a wealth of great information, I've decided to break away from it. It's too old, too long, too confusing... In summary:

Many users are aware that Premiere/AME/Encore does a "less than stellar" job of converting 1080i HDV to interlaced SD DVD. I (and others) have tried every conceivable combination of options and found none that provided "professional quality" conversions. This is largely due to the way that Premiere handles scaling of interlaced material ... Example #1 ... Example #2 ... and Premiere's failure to convert from the HDV color matrix (Rec.709) to the SD specification (Rec.601).

In an effort to solve these problems, I developed a workflow (using several third-party freeware tools) that achieves results far superior to that of Premiere and/or Encore by themselves.

I have written a guide for this workflow, including step-by-step instructions and links to download all the required tools.

This page also contains a link to a more advanced option for doing these conversions (using mostly the same tools). Please do not attempt the advanced version unless you have already implemented my "basic" workflow!

The page and linked files will be updated frequently. It is a work in progress, but should already provide excellent quality. I look forward to comments and suggestions from this community (as always).

Enjoy! -- Dan

[Guest]

Hi Jeff, thanks so much for all your help.  I am pretty comfortable with Adobe Media Encoder and how to compress

the HD footage to just fit on a 4.7 DVD.  One more question for you.  The footage looks really good (again thanks) but... it looks pretty bad on the DVD with video and audio drop out.  I am using cheap dvds to test with, could it be them or maybe some setting I am unaware of?  I created a DVD Image and then burned a DVD.  I looked in your Encore book and didn't see anything on it.

[Jeff Bellune]

The footage looks really good (again thanks) but... it looks pretty bad on the DVD with video and audio drop out.  I am using cheap dvds to test with, could it be them

Absolutely, positively, ummm, possibly.

If you used ImgBurn, make sure to test with quality media (Taiyo Yuden, Verbatim) and limit the burn speed to 1/2 the rated speed of the burner or the media, whichever is lower.

-Jeff

[Guest]

I will burn one on a Taiyo Yuden.  I burn at 4x, is it better to burn the dvd than create the image file?

[Guest]

Jeff, when exporting 720p from Premiere CS5 you said I should set the fields to lower if going to Encore.  Can you explain this?  Why would I use upper in some circumstances and lower in others?

thanks again for all you help and wisdom 😄

[adoriantarla]

When I export with Premiere CS5 (when I do settings for export), the exported file is larger than it was estimated. I use that bitrate for an estimated file about 4gb, but exported file is almost 5gb. Maybe some bug or maybe this is because I use MRQ...

[Jeff Bellune]

I did watch that and I created presets and saved them.  So all I have to do is use these presets and go directly to Encore?

Yes.

there is not a function named "SetMTMode"

It seems like you didn't install MT?

-Jeff

[Guest]

I do have it, must have done the install incorrectly.  I will double check it.

thanks

[Guest]

Jeff for the 720 60p do I use your second step in the tutorial changing it to VBR 2 pass?

I got the ac3 fixed, just had to transcode it in Encore.  I panic'd too soon.

[Guest]

What is the book that explains HD?

[Guest]

Me again... my footage still doesn't look very good.  It looks over saturated, but the original footage is beautiful.  Also, I get about 1/4 of the way into it and loss the audio.  Any ideas?

[lin2m3]

Hello Jeff,

Last night I encountered some frustrations when I tried to author the files converted with your script into Encore. The problem is that the Encore is converting the avi file into vob just fine, but when it comes to play in power dvd or windows media player, the image becomes shadowed, (ex: when there are movements in front of the camera, they are somehow doubled, kind of ghosting, the image of the subject remain behind). The same sequence converted with Jeff script looks ok. Do you think the problem is that your script uses MPEG2Source and Jeff' s uses FFMpegSource command? They look the same but maybe they are different, I think. Also the MT works ok with your scrip, but doesn't work with Jeff's. Verry strange to me . If you have any idea please don't hesitate to reply.

[eddiem100]

Trying to access your workflow Dan but when clicking on your link I am coming up with server not found!

[Jeff Bellune]

The links have changed.  Read the notes for this tutorial (and watch if you want):

http://bellunevideo.com/tutdetail.php?tutid=12

-Jeff

[Guest]

hello dan, i cant go to the link you have on the forum for the step by step workflow. Can you send it to me? is it updated? Thanks

[Jeff Bellune]

Read post #384.

-Jeff

[Kuro_M]

May I ask a totally different question?! Hopefully it's not answered yet.

(I like and love this workflow and use it with Lagarith codec and/or Cineform Neoscene. Last one is not lossless, but for quick daylight shots its quite good with 1/5 of the size of the Lagarith avis.)

I normally downsize from 1920x1080/50i (Sony EX MPEG2 LongGOP in mp4) to 1280x720/25p (easy HD for PC playback or YouTube) and 720x576/50i (PAL for DVD). Both work awesome with hd2sd. But sometimes I would like to cut away parts of the left, of the right, of the top or of the bottom of the video. So, I would like to crop the "main" area of the HD video and after do the downscaling. This would be especially important for the PAL-DVD version, but if possible for the 1280-HD-version it would be fine too.

How would you do that, please? Of course I can place the video in Premiere Pro, so that I have it somehow centered when exporting to the 1920x1080/50i intermediate file. But what is the correct way to crop it then in the avisynth script before pushing it to hd2sd?

Thanks a lot in advance for any hint!

[Dan Isaacs]

Hi Kuro --

You can try placing a Crop() command between the "source" and "hdsd" lines, like such:

AviSource("MyFile.avi")

Crop(10,10,-10,-10)

hd2sd()

The Crop() command syntax is Crop(left, top, right, bottom) – note that right and bottom should be either 0 (no cropping) or negative numbers.

This should work well assuming that your source is square pixels (such as with 1920x1080 or 1280x720).

[Kuro_M]

Thank you Dan! I just had some few tests with this and it seems to be a working way. I will report when I am finished with the project which needs cropping. Thanks a lot, as always.

But,

I just have some comments on the MT-workflow. I do not know, if Jeff made it already to Win7. In his tutorial he said "you are on your own with that"

So, after some trys I did not get MT do work properly.

Facts:

• Win7 64bit
• Virtual Dub 1.9.10 32bit
• MT 0.7 with AviSnyth 2.5.7
• copied avisynth.dll (which ist 2.5.7) to SysWOW64 folder
• copied MT.dll to AviSynth plugins folder
• start a "hd2sd.avs" file with SetMTMode(2,0).
• I still use Lagarith, not MPEG2 as input video

Open hd2sd.avs works for first frame - scrubbing to any other frame lets VDub crash, always. I did not make it to make this workflow work.

"OK", I said, I prefer 64bit and most actual versions anyway. So I searched and found a version of AviSynth 64bit 2.5.8 with MT compiled inside at doom9.

Great, this works with Virtual Dub 1.9.10 and has MT inside - BUT there is no function SetMTMode() left. It seems to be removed from that MT version, the method s simply not known and calling it gives an arror. The method MT() is there, no error, but since hd2sd resizes etc. MT() will not work (as said in the avisynth wiki).

So, anybody has any idea to have the actual versions of Virtual Dub and AviSynth working together with MT on Win7 64 bit? If not, I will stay without MT, which is sloooooooow

Thanks for any hint!

[Dan Isaacs]

Everything seems correct. Here are two suggestions for getting MT() to work for you:

a.) Try using the MPEG2 I-frame export method instead of an HD Lagarith file. This may provide more stability.

b.) Don't scrub in VirtualDub… just load the script, select the Lagarith  and codec and choose "Fast Recompress" and crunch it to a file

[mufananidzo_pamberi]

Kuro,

I am using Win 7 64-bit with no problems. Follow Dan's advice and it works fine with the 32-bit version of AviSynth and SetMTMode(2,0). I did not notice issues with speed. In addition Dan suggested further encoding the Lagarith AVI output from VirtualDub in HCEncoder., which resolved quality issues on the DVD for me with 1080p/25p material in PPro.

Good luck.

[naartjie_gello]

I shoot XDCAM EX 1080p. Does this tutorial only apply to interlaced source material? Someone please tell me I don't need to go through this rigmarole to get good looking DVDs! I normally output for web, PC or Bluray.

Thanks

[naartjie_gello]

Ok, I'll answer my own stupid question. If you want to produce a great looking DVD, then yes, follow the workflow, you lazy fool.

(Original post was done in a moment of exhaustion and frustration. My apologies.)

[mufananidzo_pamberi]

Thanks Dan for your hard work on this workflow and also to Jeff for his excellent video tutorials.

The workflow and tutorials seem to deal mostly with CS3 and CS4, and opinions seems to vary when comparing CS5 with HD2SD. I am doing some tests with various settings in CS5 AME to compare with the MPEG2 I-frame HD2SD method. Has anyone done extensive comparions between HD2SD and CS5 AME?

[lin2m3]

Well, I've tried to direct output in dvd format from CS5 and I was't satisfied of results. The quality was far inferior than one from the workflow even with the MRQ checked. Now I'm doing all my conversion with this workflow. I'm very satisfied of the results. Thank you Dan and Jeff.

[mufananidzo_pamberi]

My source material is 1080p 25fps. I followed Jeff's tutorial and everything seemed to work ok, but the quality is no different to the MPEG2 export using AME and I'm not happy with either version. My script is:

SetMTMode(2,0)
MPEG2Source("LearningthruPlayEnglish.d2v")
hd2sd(interlaced=false,OutputColorSpace="YUY2")

Can you perhaps suggest parameters I could include to improve the quality?

Thank you