Why does my 7 min film look gross on DVD?

S

sean90291

Veteran
I know, the pros have all the high-tech equipment, and charge big bucks for a pro encoding job...but I'm still wondering, in this age of rapdily consumerized software and increasingly powerful home computers, why I can't burn a DVD that looks as good as the film I watch in my edit suite? My DVD results are looking pretty passable on a conventional TV but total crap on an LCD TV.

Cut in Avid.

Compressed in Sorenson.

Burned with Ulead.

It's only a 7 minute film!

s.
 
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a) You need to denoise your videos before DVD-encoding them.
b) You need to encode with Tsunami Mpeg or CCE Basic.
c) You ought to use the highest bitrate the DVD specs allow: 8-9.8mbps.
 
A 720p LCD Television. Not a computer monitor or anything. Is that the kind you were wondering?

Why is Tsunami Mpeg so much better than Sorenson?

De-noise? Hm, my images are so clean, I don't see any noise in them.

I'll continue to up the bitrate and see what happens.
 
Yes, that is the kind of LCD I meant. So you're looking at an SD source on an HDTV. Yes, it's going to look soft. And the scaling on the TV is going to cause some issues too.

Can you post a still of the same frame from your original, and the encoded file?
 
Yeah, we'll need to see framegrabs to provide any further help. The advantage of denoising is that when your DVD is scaled to HD resolutions, the diameter of your grain is also magnified. Which looks gross. Any compression artifacts are also magnified.

A properly denoised and encoded image should look soft - but not gross - on your TV.
 
Very valuable advice! Thanks. Here are a couple grabs, as you requested.

Kyle_in_kitchen.jpg


Robert_1.jpg


Robert_3.jpg
 
If this is the original stuff, it looks good and should compress just fine. BUT, you have to remember that you are doing nearly a 100% blowup to get this thing onto 720p. It's not going to be super sharp. You might actually add a bit of edge sharpening (and I do mean a BIT) since the image is going to soften up going to mpeg2. I've done this myself on some footage and have been generally pleased with the results.

Do you have any grabs of what it looks like AFTER processing to Mpeg2?
 
These are jpegs from the timeline. It's 1080p to start, so it's a shame it goes way down in res and then back up again for the LCD TV. But everyone still watches DVDs in an SD world, yet despite this, my Hollywood movie DVDs all look stunning on the same LCD TV.

I think soft and fuzzy would be preferable to the grossness I'm talking about. Like I said, it looks good on the conventional TV and bad on the LCD TV. My Hollywood DVDs look great on both! Which makes me think I'm doing something wrong.

I'll check out adding a bit of sharpening and see what happens. I'll try some other parameters too. I wonder if a BLUR would actually help! I know that's going in the other direction, but...

I'll try and post a grab from the encoded file tomorrow morn. Thanks again for you thoughts guys. Much appreciated.
 
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Whoa, wait a second. You originate in 1080p? So what are you talking about going down in res, and then going back up? Why are you doing that?

Stay int 1080p until you render the mpeg2. Where are you downresing in your workflow?
 
Your grabs look very nice, but a bit soft for a downsampled HD video.

More suggestions:
1) Sharpen with an unsharp mask filter before downsampling, then denoise.
2) Make sure you downsample in your NLE's best/bicubic mode.
3) Make sure that your video is treated as a progressive video from end to end. Your MPEG2 file should be encoded as progressive.
 
I will post those grabs. Yes. Not yet sure how to get a grab out of an mpeg2 file. But I'll figure it out.

Perrone, to clarify, I'm not doing all that up-down-up converting. I just downconvert once to SD DVD. Because as you know, you have to in order to burn to DVD. It's the DVD player that up-converts again. So I led you astray in something I said--I'm not the one upconverting again. The DVD player re-scales it when I put an SD disc in and watch it on a 720p LCD TV.

I'm gonna try the unsharpening filter suggestion. Any suggestion for the degree of unsharp mask?
 
I'm having similar issues. Shooting 720/24p in HVX... editing in a DVCPro HD 720/24 timeline in FCP.... once the edit is finished, I export a QT master, then import that into an NTSC timeline... export MPEG2 for DVD. The image on a five minute short definitely gets funky, yet a two hour "Hollywood" film looks outstanding on DVD. Any tips or suggestions, as far as workflow goes?
 
So you originate in 1280x720, drop it onto a DVCProHD timeline (re-compress), export that at 1280x1080, recompress that to 720x480 for DVD. Yea, I can see why it looks funky.
 
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I don't have much to add to what I've already said.
You don't want to do the things that need to be done.
You should be able to get perfect DVDs from any HD cam.
 
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