HDV --> SD DVD Workflow?

[hhansard]

Dont want to sound stupid or naive, but probably going to come across that way

I have shot [underwater] dv for years, and moved to hdv in 06. Since I have an end-to-end blu-ray setup with a broadcast scalier, my hdv footage looks great at home.

I was asked to take some of my hdv footage and burn an sd dvd for distribution. I took an edit of 1440x1080 and exported in PP-CS3 [movie] [Sorenson] as 720x480dv, no recompression highest quality (26G for a 30minute vid), etc, etc.. and imported it into a new PP3 d1 project. Burned the DVD again highest quality

I looked at the results on an sd 4:3 monitor terrible much worse then my old native dv footage. I expected to loose quality, but assumed that the scaling algorithm would smooth, and I would end-up with something acceptable --- but it does not look like it it looks like pixels are just dropped with no interpellation at all. I mean if you never saw the original footage, you might let it pass, but having seen the original footage, you can tell that the compression has killed it. I know that this is like a 2 (maybe 3) generation dupe, but I have access to the original pixels and would have assumed with minimal recompression/expansion the results would be as good as 1gen dv but I cant seem to get there

Can anyone point me to a good workflow [or some settings] to take hdv footage and cut a decent quality sd dvd using the production suite??

Thanks in advance,

Hugh

[Steven L. Gotz]

Ozpeter,

There were major changes between Premiere Pro 2.0 and Premiere Pro 3.0 which eliminated the softness on the SD export from HDV. SO use whatever workaround you need or upgrade to a current product. This is the CS3 discussion area after all....

[_Robert_P_Young_]

I agree with Joe Simon- if you want your audience to see your product in Hi Def, you need to deliver it in Hi Def (Blu Ray).
However, as a practical matter- probably for years to come, if you have content destined for general distribution on DVD, it's got to be playable by the general population. In other words SD DVD. It seems a bit nutty to shoot and edit in HD and squeeze it down to SD for distribution. But you can get a better looking image from HDV (using the tools available to us small guys) than you get with SD originated material. Plus, with your program archived as HD, you can always put it out again as Blu Ray, or whatever unknown new thing is over the horizon.
I think the new, cheap "upscaling" HDMI DVD players are a significant development. They do a surprisingly good job of getting SD DVDs up to 720 and 1080 HDTV resolution. As the word gets out I think an awful lot of consumers will go this route for a while instead of the expense of Blu Ray players, the extra cost of Blu Ray movies, the cost of upgrading their existing DVD library, etc.
I think that SD DVDs are going to be around for quite a while.

[Dan Isaacs]

Well, I think I've verified another one of the PPro weaknesses in doing HDV->DVD transfers. Actually, it applies to SD-only workflows also. Premiere's handling of RGB<->YUV conversions is really out of whack. Premiere/Adobe Media Encoder/Encore allegedly make BT.709 output given RGB sources, but I think that's not really true at all.

Dan Isaacs, "PPro YUV <-> RGB conversions are incorrect ?!?" #28, 12 Mar 2008 9:58 pm

It's a real simple test that everyone can use to see how RGB data is being handled in their DVD workflow-of-choice. It seems to me that this might be an issue in any suggested workflow (including mine).

[_Adrian_South_]

Dan,

There is no issue.You think you are a legend cause you think you found a bug. No one cares.

Mountains out of mole hills.

[_David_Budhoo_]

Hi Dan,

I myself have tried unsuccefully to make a decent looking DVD in premiere with no success. Since abandoning Premiere's built in deinterlacer I've tried Virtual Dub. However I resized before deinterlacing which defeated the purpose in the first place. I've since then deinterlaced and then resized, but I now confused as to how to weave them back together. I videotape at native 60i and edit in 60i as well. Is there any special weave I need to apply.

I'm now try to switch over to avisynth b/c of its better color support than virtualdub's rgb24. The scripting is a bit complicated. Does premiere edit in YUV12 or RGB?

Can you help me come up with a script to automate my hdv to dvd conversion. I'm so bummed out right now trying to get this to work.

[Dan Isaacs]

David --

Premiere Pro apparently edits in both RGB and AYUV (alpha+YUV).

AviSynth is much more flexible than VirtualDub. See me sample .avs script (many posts back in this thread) it shows the SeparateFields() and Weave() syntax in practice.

I don't know if my AviSynth method is better than, say, Cineform but it beats the pants off the "Adobe-only" workflow.

-- Dan

[Jim_Simon]

>For those who don't, well, output to SD.

I'm not questioning the need to output a DVD from HD source. I get that a lot of folks are still in SD land. I'm one of them.

I'm questioning the desire to get an HD source downconverted to DVD to look good on a big screen HDTV. If you have a big screen HDTV, get the Blu-ray to go with it. That is the proper fix, in my opinion.

[Dan Isaacs]

I'm with you on that one, Jim. We (the editors) cannot really be responsible for how well (or not) a device such an HDTV upscales the SD/DVD content. I'm sure there is great variability here between models, makes, etc.

[Dan Isaacs]

Adrian --

> There is no issue. You think you are a legend cause you think you found a bug. No one cares.

My sense of self-importance is nothing compared to yours. If, as you allege, I think myself a "legend" for finding a bug -- that is nothing compared to you, who considers yourself relevant simply for making snide remarks.

This thread was started by Hugh, with whom I have worked to find solutions for making high-quality HD->DVD transfers. Not least among his complaints was color shifting. If you don't have any valuable input I would appreciate it if you back off so that the rest of us can learn and/or accomplish something.

-- Dan

[_hconant_]

Dan-I follow all the messages on this thread and find all your comments relevant and useful. Keep up the good work. I should be receiving Procoder 3 today UPS. Will post the results.
FYI: This is the reply I received from MainConcept in response to my inquiry as to determine the type/version codec they supply Adobe for use in PP CS3
"You should request Adobe about it.

Regards,
Ivan Andryushin
Support Team

MainConcept AG"

I still dont know how to find out what codec is being used, and am rather surprised that no one so far in this thread seems to give it much concern either. ???

[Dan Isaacs]

Thanks ---

Did you not see my reply to your other thread?

Dan Isaacs, "MainConcept MPEG video codec" #1, 12 Mar 2008 12:30 am

-- Dan

[_David_Budhoo_]

My avisynth plugin is not working. I installed the 6kb plugin containing cm-avisynth.prm and im-avisynth.prm. I also installed avisynth ver 2.5.7. When i export as link to avs in premiere and use your script to open the file avisource("test.avi") procoder says not enough memory to complete request. I have no idea where to begin to get this problem sorted out. This avisynth work-flow is proving to be near impossible

[_David_Budhoo_]

Is there any way i can do the same thing in virtual dub. I've frustrated trying to get avisynth to work as a plugin in premiere cs3. If the colors are not 100% accurate i can live with that. I am more interested in sharper pictures.

[_hconant_]

Dan: I just read it now,thanks. You haven't really commented (at least I haven't seen it), though, on the MainConcept codec or its effect on the final output. Like I said, we can get a good AVI file from several different methods. It seems to me that it is the final transcription that is giving the most trouble, and at least in my workflow, that falls squarily on the MainConcept codec. Others have posted good results (a very relative term, I know) with Procoder and even Nero.
Howell

[Dan Isaacs]

You don't need those plugins for my workflow. I'd recommend uninstalling them. I don't think they work well with CS3, if memory serves me. Get the DebugMode frameserver.

http://debugmode.com/frameserver/

I can fool around VirtualDub later tonight. It's been a while since I've done anything complicated in VirtualDub, as I pretty much just use AviSynth now.

-- Dan

[_David_Budhoo_]

Well i got the file to open in procoder, but it displays the wrong size 620 * 56.

To begin, I opened my m2t(high def) files in premiere cs3(windows XP)
. I then used the frameserve plugin you recommended. I opened the avs script linked to the video in procoder.

I also noticed that they could not fing smooth deinterlace. Do i need to download this plugin. Where do i have to install it??

Thanks so much for the frameserve advice from premiere. It works..

[Dan Isaacs]

SmoothDeinterlacer
------------------
http://avisynth.org/warpenterprises/files/smoothdeinterlacer_20060910.zip

Plugins go in c:\program files\avisynth 2.5\plugins

The odd size is probably because of the error message about the missing plugin. I've never tried this with Procoder, so I can't be sure.

Get VirtualDub (virtualdub.org) and use that to preview the .avs before sending to ProCoder or CCE or whatever.

-- Dan

[Dan Isaacs]

Hi again, Howell --

Sorry. I only skimmed your last note and forget to reply.

> You haven't really commented (at least I haven't seen it), though, on the MainConcept codec or its effect on the final output.

No, I haven't really used it enough. From what I've seen, though, it seems competent enough as a compressor. The sad thing is that we're limited to the (very few) encoding parameters provided by Adobe Media Encoder. Personally, I like CCE. I like options :)

> Like I said, we can get a good AVI file from several different methods. It seems to me that it is the final transcription that is giving the most trouble.

I can't really agree with this in principle (though I've seen neither your .AVI nor MPEG output, so I really don't know). I think the hardest part of the process is getting a good interlaced 720x480 avi (or 720x576 for our PAL friends).

Sure, there's a big difference between good and bad MPEG encoding but to me the larger problem is the pre-processing of the HD material. High-quality deinterlacing/bobbing, scaling and weaving are probably the most important elements in the HD->SD process and, incidentally, some of the weaker areas of PPro.

There are other important things, too -- such as noise reduction, sharpening, softening -- which are situation-dependent. It's also important to limit luma/chroma values to "legal" range.

My position is that it is not only important to apply these to your video, but to maintain control over the exact order in which they are applied. Some things (like noise reduction and sharpening) I find best to apply to the HD resolution image -- but sharpening can only be applied successfully to a progressive frame (noise reduction, too, well maybe... that's another topic).

Other things are best applied to the final resolution image, such a mild vertical blur to reduce interlacing artifacts when needed. Again, this will work best on a progressive frame -- after scaling but before weaving. Chroma/Luma limiting is best applied at the last stage -- if only to save on system resources, as there's not really much benefit to doing it earlier in the process.

This, of course, is my process. Others may (and doubtless will) argue otherwise.

I believe that, given great looking input, most MPEG2 encoders will provide "decent enough" results. Have you ever seen some "ripped" DVDs made with DVDShrink or similar programs? All of my insticts tell me that these should look absolutely horrible, but I've been quite surprised at times. The reason they look acceptable is that the orignal material was spot-on. Sure, there's some blockiness on fades and mosquito noise on flat surfaces but it's not really that distracting. I've even seen surprisingly good results from DivX to DVD transfers.

I'm not suggesting that we set the bar as low as bootleg DVDs, but I think it's a good example of how -- if all else is right -- our eyes can forgive a little crappy compression :)

[Dan Isaacs]

Hi David --

Just following up:

> Is there any way i can do the same thing in virtual dub.

I checked it out, and the simple answer is "not really".

There's a SmartDeinterlace plugin for VirtualDub (very similar to SmoothDeinterlace) but the "double rate" option only works when its field-separated to begin with (which requires AviSynth). So... You can still use SmartDeinterlace in VirtualDub as a "regular" deinterlacer, but that means you'll only get progressive output -- which may or may not be OK, depending on your requirements.

Bottom line: Just use AviSynth

Hopefully you've gotten SmoothDeinterlace to work and you're happily frameserving to ProCoder now??? Keep me posted. I'd be glad to help you get things going.

[_David_Budhoo_]

Hey, actually, I've gotten really excellent results using virtualdub. The workflow I use is a combination of what I read in the forums.

1. First I export the entire m2t project as a cineform file high quality.
2. I import this into virtualdub, add a sharpen filter, resize to dvd specs . There is an interlaced option to check when resizing.
3. Export this as another cineform file(could frameserve into procoder but takes really long.)
4. Pull into procoder and encode.

PS..I tried the smartdeinterlace option in virtualdub, but i think virtualdub is limited in that you cannot double the framerate or something to that extent. The results i'm getting now is excellent.

Resulting file is sharper than sd produced DVD's. I tried your method but the image comes out blurry and the colors are all washed out. I dont know if I must be doing something wrong.

[Dan Isaacs]

That's interesting. I don't really trust the "interlaced" checkbox in the resize dialog. Actually, it's not that even that sharp, even with Lanczos 3 resising. If it works for you, though, that's awesome.

> but the image comes out blurry and the colors are all washed out.

The script I posted here was really just a rough workflow idea. (plus there was a small eror in there, too 😞 ) If you learn a little AviSynth scripting, you can customize it to work any way you want!

Here's another "sharper" variation to try (using your Cineform .AVI as the source and frameserve to ProCoder). It should be even sharper than what you're getting from VirtualDub. AviSynth has the Lanczos4 method, which as about as sharp as it gets without horrible ringing artifacts.

---------------------------------------------

avisource("cineform.avi", pixel_type="RGB32")
ConvertToYUY2(matrix="rec.601")
SmoothDeinterlace(tff=true,doublerate=true,lacethresh=24,staticthresh=40,staticavg=85,edgethresh=40,blend=false,showlace=false)

lanczos4resize(720,480)
SeparateFields()

# upper field first... use SelectEvery(4,1,2).Weave() for lower
SelectEvery(4,0,3).Weave()
Limiter(16, 235, 16, 240)

---------------------------------------------

Try it out. I've never used the Cineform codec and I'd like to know the results you get with ProCoder via AviSynth and Cineform.

-- Dan

[Dan Isaacs]

BTW, David ---

AViSynth also has a sharpen function: Just add this before the "resize" line:

Sharpen(0.5)

Easy, no? :)

[PeterFDuke]

Hugh

I have just stumbled on this thread, and would like to advise you of the following thread in the Premiere Elements forum

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3c057710/20

Essentially what Roger Uzun says with respect to Premiere Elements 4 is:

1. You can edit HDV and export it with high quality
2. You can make a SD DVD from unedited HDV with high quality
3. You can't do both in the same project without serious artefacts.

His workaround is to export the edited HDV as 1080i MPEG2, load it into a new HD project and then make the DVD.

(You could also do the downconversion by writing the edited HDV project back to the camera, and recapture with downconversion to DV within the camera.)

So have you tried making a DVD with completely unedited HDV with PPro? Is its quality acceptable or are there still artefacts?

[_Peter_Hinz_]

How does downsizing of interlaced HD to SD work? I get two problems: 1.sharpnes 2. more or less jerky picture depending on setting upper field or lower field output - but never really smooth. I tried to deinterlace my 1080 50i footage. The results are not much better. Even in smooth motion occure little "jumps".
Maybe this is a new topic, but I guess I'm in line.

[Dan Isaacs]

Peter Duke, Peter Hinz...

Premiere Pro CS3 by itself will never create decent DVDs from HDV material: edited, unedited, whatever...

You may be able to get decent quality by exporting to tape and recapturing as DV (depending on the fidelity with which your camera performs this step.) Personally, I've never tried it (it takes too much time and recompressing as HDV will degrade the quality.)

In any case, PPro does not handle colorspace conversions correctly so the colors in your HDV footage will not look right on the final DVD (unless you use Cineform or some other 3rd party workflow).

Earlier in this thread (and several others) I have outlined exactly why PPro fails to make nice DVDs from HDV projects and a complete workflow using PPro + freeware tools to rectify most of these problems.

Please see this thread also:
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b4cb2f/17

I also understand that certain commercial software packages (Canopus ProCoder, Elecard Converter ProHD) can be used to facilitate such conversions, though I cannot personally attest to their quality.

-- Dan