Test Footage Testing!

M

meddesigner

Active member
First I would like to thank Kaku and Jarred for their test footage. Without it I could not have performed a few quick tests to see the results of editing in HD and ending up in SD for a DVD.

For this test I used Final Cut Pro 5 and Compressor 2. I performed no adjustments other than setting up my FCP sequence to properly play the supplied files.

1. Edited the above-mentioned material into a sequence and produced a new 720p/60 master.
2. From this master I imported it into Compressor and using its default settings with no tweaking I produced a down converted MPEG-2 master for DVD.
3. Using DVD Studio Pro 4, I created a new DVD master and took this master to my Pioneer Elite DVD player and my Panasonic Plasma TV to look at the results. Video was played over component video connections.

Thoughts:

Not bad however it may end up being quite a let down going from our nice HD video to the SD version it will currently become if we are to distribute on DVD for viewing on some form of television. What I noticed most was going from HD to SD it took on a very DV like feel and the richness in color and detail was lost to some extent.

The three notable examples are:
1. The cheerleaders blue outfits went to a very soft powder blue when compared to the original. The reflections in the floor of there sneakers soften up quite a bit. The numbers in the scoreboard were not quite as crisp.
2. The faces in the crowd of the basketball game were not as defined as the HD original.
3. The detail in the pavement of Kaku’s bike footage started to smear together. The HD versions really have depth and bring out the topology of Japan where the down converted SD version do not have the impact as Kaku’s originals. This same goes for the video of the shot looking down the city street. If you look back into the distance you will see what appears to be a traffic light with blinking yellow lights that draw your attention to them. This effect is lost to some extent in the down conversion process.

So now I want to try the following:
1. Playing the HD files directly to the plasma off my PowerBook in DVCPRO HD.
2. Playing a Windows Media HD file from my Viao to the same plasma display. I will have to figure out how to convert a DVCPRO HD file on the PC with a QuickTime wrapper to the WMV-HD file.

So I am thinking that shooting and editing HD is not going to be our big problem but distributing the finished project in a manner we will be happy with what image is going to be. I think I may explore some form on HD DVD-ROM using HD QuickTime and HD Windows Media on a hybrid cross platfrom disc. This would bea good test as well.

Thoughts?
 
I took all of Kaku's 720P footage and ran it through BitVice 1.6 at target bit rate of 6.5 and a maximim of 7, 16:9, two pass VBR, DV luma and interlaced off. Encoded audio to Dolby2. (Where is the link to Jarred's?)


It looked pretty darn good on our Fijitsu plasma with a Elite DV37. I wasn't blown away, but it was good.
 
I've done some tests with Kaku's clips.

Final Cut Pro 5, used the "best" scaling setting, did a little color correction, bring the levels to broadcast limits, compress with Compressor, and the footage looks FANTASTIC on DVD !
Rich colors, good details in both highlights and shadows.
I am very impressed.
 
i could be wrong, but when going to dvd, why are we worrying about the look of hd downconverted to sd when we can shoot dvcpro50? granted we haven't seen any of that footage yet, but when we do, i'll bet we won't use the word downconvert anymore. i'm telling you now, hd to sd footage does not look good. i shot a short with the sony z1u in hd and downconverted to sd to go to dvd and it looked like crap.
just my opinion.
 
Maurice,

I have a completely opposite experience with HD converted to SD.

If the scaling algorithm is good, it WILL look fantastic.

I used the built in scaling algorithm in Final Cut Pro 5 ( much much better than previous versions).

The image still looks very "alive" and detailed.
 
Good point. I would like to see some native DVC50-50 and work with that a bit. Also -Antoine what did you scale to on export from FCP and what Compressor settings did you use? I would like to try that.
 
Antoine,
like i said, i could be wrong. i have fcp5 and don't know what scaling is. i've never used compressor and i'm probably doing the downcoversion wrong. i just downconverted to sd and looked at it. didn't look good. is there a proper way to downconvert?
 
med and Maurice,

I created a normal 720X480 sequence, checked DVCPro50, conform to broadcast (max 100 ire) went into motion tab and selected "render all YUV material in high precision yuv"and selected "Motion filtering quality" (scaling) BEST...and....render...export as a self contained file.
then i use the following settings in Compressor:
Two pass VBR best, average 7 Mbps, Max 8.5 Mbps, Motion est=better,
GOP IBBP 7 frames closed.

It works great !

good luck !
 
I downconverted the clips to SD DV and uncompressed SD. The uncompressed clips look very nice, the DV lost color info (surprise, surprise). Love 4.2.2.
 
Antoine_Fabi said:
med and Maurice,

I created a normal 720X480 sequence, checked DVCPro50, conform to broadcast (max 100 ire) went into motion tab and selected "render all YUV material in high precision yuv"and selected "Motion filtering quality" (scaling) BEST...and....render...export as a self contained file.
then i use the following settings in Compressor:
Two pass VBR best, average 7 Mbps, Max 8.5 Mbps, Motion est=better,
GOP IBBP 7 frames closed.
!
Click to expand...

A couple of comments. Isn't that kinda pushing the maximum bit rate at 8.5?

Secondly, why change from 15 to 7 frames closed?

Dolby2 audio?
 
Dolby2 audio ? Yes ! nice compression and keeps bandwith for the images.

so,,,There is no problem using 8.5 Mbps max bitrate if you use Dolby2 audio.
Average DVD players have no problems reading it.

Why, change GOPs from 15 to 7 ?
...I am not a tech, but from all the tests i made, it gives the best result.
...so you never see those portions of image changin about every 1/2 sec.
...and it is also funny that the motion estimation works better with "better" and not with "best".

...at least...with Compressor.

I like it very much. clean clean clean.
 
Why not go into compressor with a DVCPRO HD sequence? Compressor 2 should have the same scale algorithm as FCP 5. Could be interesting to know the difference....
 
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