Converting HDV footage to DVD

[mikeytown2]

@KR
Deinterlacing , for viewing on a PC is fine, most people will encourage that... deinterlacing before burning to a DVD: "The result is an abomination" - 2Bdecided, which you agree with . TV's work best when fed interlaced video. PC's work best when given deinterlaced video. U want Interlaced video on a DVD if the original footage was interlaced. I'm just driving this point home and locking the door.

As for your results, my guess is VDubMod is detecting the interlaced material, bobing before it resizes and blending the fields. Use DGMPGDec to load the m2v files directly into AviSynth, no frame serving, no color conversions, no 60GB file; overall a better way of doing things then what you suggested.

[KR]

lol thanks mikeytown2 I wasn't aware of DGMPGDec...
I had found a way to not lose quality but it sure was tedious in file manipulation and resulted in approx 100GB per hour of video.

Thanks again

[Sagekilla]

@mikeytown2: That depends on the display and it's hardware. If you're using a CRT based TV, which inherently works well with interlacing, then I'd say yes. Otherwise, if it's a standard TV I'd say be wary because some have some really poor deinterlacers so the quality might not be so great.

[vampiredom]

@sagekilla: I totally agree. I have come to realize the fact that progressive footage looks better on interlaced displays than interlaced footage on progressive screens -- especially at SD resolution on HD sets. I say 24p, 25p, 30p and the ways to go for most DVD projects these days. It's a shame, but it's simply a reality that most 720p or 1080p displays don't play nicely with true interlaced NTSC or PAL.

That said, a good deinterlacer is key. With all respect to their author(s), I believe that tools such as TempGaussMC, MCBob, MVBob, et al. are probably impractical (and often overkill) for processing large amounts of HD footage. Try Yadifmod + TomsMoComp (very fast) or EEDI2 (not so fast). Good quality at reasonable speeds.

DGMpgDec/DGIndex is great for this process. I just finished batching 200 or so source clips friom HDV60i->DV 30p. However, in support of frameserving via DebugMode: I use DMFS in Premiere Pro CS3 all the time. It works fabulously. It lets the editing program help you edit efficiently, while letting AviSynth, VirtualDub, and HCEnc handle post-processing, conversion etc. This allows you to ge the best of both worlds, so to speak.

A lot can also be said for the ability to color correct clips in a nice graphical environment. Then, when you output HD (in YUY2 or RGB) via DebugMode and scale it to SD, it will "smooth" some of the gradients, etc. that were perturbed by the limits tweaking an of an 8-bit source. In other words, it's benficial to do CC on the HD source, rather than the SD output. DebugMode facilitates the process nicely. Now you can let AviSynth excel with its excellent deinterlacing and scaling abilities (way better than Premiere).

And for any other Premiere Pro users, you can actually use DGIndex as a sort of replacement for DebugMode. Using Adobe Media Encoder you can export 4:2:2 MPEG2 I-frame (150Mpbs or so) and then index that with DGIndex. Actually, FFMpegSource seems to work well on I-frame-only .m2v elementary streams also, from what I've seen.

[2Bdecided]

Originally Posted by vampiredom

@sagekilla: I totally agree. I have come to realize the fact that progressive footage looks better on interlaced displays than interlaced footage on progressive screens -- especially at SD resolution on HD sets. I say 24p, 25p, 30p and the ways to go for most DVD projects these days. It's a shame, but it's simply a reality that most 720p or 1080p displays don't play nicely with true interlaced NTSC or PAL.

While this is undoubtedly true*, the 25 images per second of 25p look dramatically different from the 50 images per second of 50i (on any TV!). 25p stutters. 50i gives realistic fluid motion.

(The same goes for 30p vs 60i, and the difference between 24p and 60i is even greater.)

If you want the look of 25p, fine. However, if what you wanted (and therefore what you started with) was 50i, then dropping it to 25p is a far bigger change to the image than any amount of artefacts arising from interlaced MPEG-2 encoding and subsequent poor deinterlacing of 50i.


25p vs 50i/50p isn't such a dramatic difference on most PCs, because few PCs display 50p properly anyway - 50p still stutters on a PC - just less than 25p. However, on a real TV, 50i is butter smooth, while 25p is stutter stutter stutter.

(To get 50i/50p to look equally smooth on a PC requires specific hardware and drivers, and a lot of hard work.)

Cheers,
David.

P.S. * - decent TVs play everything properly - even SD interlaced content. It's at the "cheaper" end of the market where you find panels which make HD look rather good, and interlaced SD look even worse than it should. Using a good upscaling DVD player can help such a TV realise the best from SD DVDs.

[vampiredom]

Using a good upscaling DVD player can help such a TV realise the best from SD DVDs

Yes, but most film DVDs progressive anyway. Nearly all film titles that I've seen are either NTSC 23.976 fps (on which the DVD player adds pulldown for interlaced displays, or plays progressively on progressive scan setups) or PAL 25p (often sampled as interlaced, but progressive nonetheless).

Like most things, this is totally subjective -- and the results will vary depending on the type of content. I believe the reason why film titles look OK on DVD is because they were shot with 1/48 shutter speed. Film was designed to be shot and viewed at (or around) 24p, so filmmakers mind these limitations as they shoot and edit.

I am not judging my opinion based exclusively on cheap HDTV -- I've seen some really nice ones that do horrible things to interlaced SD content, such as broadcast TV.

[Comatose]

Well, many times broadcast TV is a disaster, so don't blame it on the TV right away.
You can only really blame the TV if you have the source to analyze later.