Making Best Quality DVD's from 24Pa workflow

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bayarea_dvxer

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[perhaps this needs to move to a different forum? I'm not sure if this is an issue with DVX100a, FCP, Compressor, DVDSP.]

I'm having a problem making a high quality, sharp 24p DVD from my 24Pa squeeze mode video for a 45-minute documentary project. The DVD looks sharp on a 16 inch, 600 line resolution production monitor. Shots appear to be well in focus.

But, when I view the DVD on widescreen tv's (50+ inch) it's blurry. Soft focus, some pixillation. The same thing, of course, happens when I blow up the MPEG-2 files. They are sharp at actual size (720x480), but ugly at Double Size. I realize it's hard to blow something up when there's no extra data there to help. But, in the past I've made 60i projects that looked much sharper on the big tvs. The big tv's seem to do a better job blowing up my 4:3 60i material compared to the Squeeze mode material.

I realize I'm not using a $50k+ camera, or even the HVX200 but my expectations for the DVX100 were higher than this. Perhaps there's something I'm doing wrong?

My workflow:
DVX-100a camera shooting 24PA, Squeeze Mode, F6 Scene dial.
Detail Level 3, Master Pd -5, Gamma Cine-Like_D, Matrix Cine-Like, Skin Tone DTL off, V Detail, Thin
Capture into FCP 5.1.3 with DV NTSC Advanced 2:3:3:2 Pulldown at 29.97 Anamorphic
Edit on DV NTSC 23.98 Anamorphic timeline

Then, I've tried both
A) export timeline as Quicktime movie, current settings, Don't check recompress all frames and don't check make movie self-contained. Select the 'high-quality' checkbox and save (not sure if this is necessary for making the dvd or only affects computer preview). Then to compressor and export to mpeg2.
B) export directly to mpeg2 using Compressor from within FCP.

In Compressor 2, i've read 1-pass can be better than 2-pass and bettter motion sometimes better than best.
I've tried the following Compressor presets:
1. DVD: Best Quality 90 minutes 16:9 (uses 6.2 Mbps 2-pass, best motion)
2. Default MPEG-2 60min High Quality Encode Widescreen (uses 6.8Mbps, 2-Pass VBR, best motion)
3. My own Custom setting: 7.5Mbps 1-pass, better motion estimation

The resulting DVD (widescreen option selected in the track) looks sharp on the 16" 16x9 production monitor.
But slow focus and blurry on bigger sets.

More options:
1. I've tried exporting the sequence as TIFs and using PhotoZoom Pro 2, S-Spline XL and regular S-Spline (with unsharp masking and without.. but tons of options here), to save as original size (720x480) and then import image sequence back to FCP. I haven't tried Uprezzing to HD with PhotoZoom (not sure which HD to use) and I'm not sure how bumping it up AND then back down to 720x480 for DVD would improve things. I see many (most) DV projects get bumped to HD for digital projection/film out, but would like really help for a DVD and what workflow/format to use?

2. I've tried unsharp mask and sharpen filters in FCP. I can't get a noticeable improvement.

3. Other MPEG2 compressor? Squeeze? Hardware encoder?

4. Buy a native 16:9 camera (HVX200) and reshoot in HD.
 
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I'm just learning this camera myself, so I dont know half of what you seem to know already but

Isnt squeeze mode a lesser resolution....like by >25% loss?
and a big wide screen: isn't this best done with the anamorphic adapter?

I'm just reading this in Barry's book now
 
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Squeeze mode might have something to do with it.
Per Barry, "squeeze mode uses the same image area as Letterbox mode, but it stretches it vertically to give it the anamorphic widescreen shape it needs to display properly on widescreen tv". So, you are not using some of the DVX's pixels and stretching ohters.

Most people would say an anamorphic adapter does a better job than squeeze (crisper, sharper), but it comes with it's own issues such as getting it focused, especially in run and gun shooting.
 
bayarea_dvxer said:
The DVD looks sharp on a 16 inch, 600 line resolution production monitor. Shots appear to be well in focus. But, when I view the DVD on widescreen tv's (50+ inch) it's blurry.
Click to expand...

Would that widescreen TV be a plasma or LCD screen? I'm sure what you're seeing is a case of bad de-interlacing on the monitor, even though you've shot progressive. The video is still being read off the DVD as interlaced, and the monitor is deinterlacing it (either chucking half the fields away, or doing a blend) where it doesn't need to be.

Also, I was told the technical reason why some effects of MPEG compression are far more visible on an LCD than on a CRT, but it went over my head. Basically, DCT compression was designed for CRTs, not LCDs or Plasmas.
 
Check the output on the large screen. I have a 42inch plasma i ran a DVD through this morning and it looked like rubbish, wasnt until I realised someone had messed it up and played with the settings. My plasma has (apart from the general picture adjustments) cinema mode, standard mode, bright mode and a nasty, pumped up gamma setting (which it was on this morning when I ran my DVD through). I ran back to view the footage on my monitor from the NLE scratched my head, picked up the remote and flicked the TV to standard to discover the nice image returned. Might not be your problem but could be.
 
Thanks for the ideas Noah, Matt and ncje!

I tried 'self-contained'. Didn't seem to make a difference.

Yes, I've tried on a both widescreen CRTs and widescreen LCDs. Don't seem to matter.

I've messed with the TV's settings. Now using Cinema setting. That seems best for the colors. The different modes seem to affect the colors but not the sharpness.

I should point out that I'm using a DVD player that can do progressive and using Pr/Pb/Y cables to get from DVD player to TV.

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The best way I can describe the problem is that the big tv images look like the QT-like with the 'high-quality' checkbox not selected. (I did check the box and save prior to making the MPEG2.)
 
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