Shooting SD vs. Shooting HD for SD DVD

M

mrbrycel

Well-known member
when contemplating whether to get a DVX100 now, or save for an HVX200, the first excuse I came up with to get the DVX was that "if I'm only going to put the footage on an SD DVD, the HD will get downconverted to SD anyway, so its the same quality. So why not just get the DVX now and get the HVX in a few years." But my teacher, who has a DVX and has used an HVX, told me that HVX footage still looks better even on an SD tv. He said that even though the HD footage is downconverted to the same resolution, a higher quality original makes for a better looking image even after compression. That made sense to me and was one of many factors to make me decide to save for an HVX rather than to buy a DVX.

My question is when shooting on an HVX, planning only to use the footage for SD DVD, would shooting 720p or 1080p be any better quality on a DVD than shooting SD? Since in this case all footage is downrezzed 1080 footage right?
 
there more to life than just resolution . control for one over cranking. better scene file selection. hey also the sound when shooting on p2. lots . just having a hd monitor will improve your shots.
 
If you're authoring a 4:3 DVD, the DVX will look pretty darn competitive with the HVX once it gets downconverted to DV.

If you're authoring a 16:9 DVD, the HVX will stomp the DVX. It's not so much about HD downconversion (because the HVX is always downconverted from a 1920x1080 image), it's more about the native 16:9 wide chips that give you full 16:9 resolution.

The DVX makes beautiful DVDs, but the HVX is definitly a class above when used for 16:9 DVDs.
 
DVX shoots to a 25mb 4:1:1 DV codec with lots of compression - which is very noticeable. HVX shoots to a 100mb DVCPROHD 4:2:2 codec with little compression.
 
better quality in, better quality out. footage i shoot in HD on the HVX results in some of the BEST looking SD dvds ive ever made.
 
I agree with pretty much everyone else. So far I have downconverted all of my HD movies to SD DVD and it looks great. I have also shot in SD on the HVX and made a DVD and it looks good to but I have had some compression issues with artifacting in SD. Shooting in HD took care of that because of the high bit rate.

Here is another reason to shoot in HD if you can. Like I said I have all of my films on SD DVD right now but I do plan on doing Blu Ray some day. And if I use my films for competition of festivals I would never give them a DVD for screenings. I would always use a DVCPro HD master tape for the best quality.

So basically shooting in HD can open a few more doors for you when it comes to final output and quality.
 
On the topic of shooting 16:9 and burning on to SD DVD's, I viewed a standard definition DVD created from 720/30p HVX200 footage on a 53" HDTV with an upconverting DVD player and it looked about as close to HD footage as you can get. In fact, I would almost argue that it looked better than DirectTV HD, which is horribly compressed to near-DVD bit rates.
 
Nothing too special just a regular down-conversion using compressor in Final Cut Studio. Export your final sequence using compressor and then adjust your settings. Do standard def 16x9 at the appropriate frame rate. Use the highest bit rate that you can fit on the DVD and short GOP's to have a better looking compression. Then just submit the project. The content itself is not HD but it is very good SD derived from HD.
 
Use the highest bit rate that you can fit on the DVD and short GOP's to have a better looking compression.
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Using a higher bitrate helps, but using short GOPs will not give you better looking looking compression for the same bitrate. Longer GOPs always give better quality at the same bitrate. Shorter GOPs will give you worse quality. This is a fact. You should use the longest GOP that falls within the DVD standards (15 for NTSC and 12 for PAL) and something close to the highest bitrate too (8mbps average). Cheers.
 
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