Video Plays Great on the Computer, Yet Pixelated on DVD

H

HollywoodDreams

Member
Hello Everyone,

I hope I'm putting this in the right section. I'm also hoping someone can help me figure this out, because I'm going crazy. I have footage that I recorded with the DVX in squeeze mode at 29.97 fps. I imported the footage into Premiere Pro as NTSC DV Widescreen. When I finished editing, I used Dynamic Link, sent the footage to Encore and burned the DVD from there, just using the standard settings. When I play the DVD, the footage looks terrible. There's horrible pixelation on their faces, in the background, around lettering...It's just a total mess. I tried to snap a photo of where it's most noticable with the hopes that someone can please tell me what I'm doing wrong. The overall picture just isn't clear. These artifacts are all over the screen and I've wasted so many DVDs trying to figure this out. Please help!

Thank you!

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HollywoodDreams said:
... I recorded with the DVX in squeeze mode at 29.97 fps.
Click to expand...

I'm assuming that means your DVX was set to PROGRESSIVE: OFF? That would mean that you were shooting 60i in Squeeze mode, which will cause lots of nasty artifacts.

Never shoot in Squeeze mode unless you're shooting at 24P or 30P.

Now, if you were shooting in 24P or 30P, please let us know as that will mean that there's something else going on.
 
David, unfortunately I don't have a regular TV anymore, so I'm not sure what it will look like on there. I'll have to see if I can find someone with one so that I can test it.

Alex, I believe the camera was set to 30p. In Premiere, the frame rate is showing as 29.97 fps.

Thank you both for your help. I hope to get this figured out soon, but I'm at a loss right now.
 
HollywoodDreams said:
David, unfortunately I don't have a regular TV anymore, so I'm not sure what it will look like on there. I'll have to see if I can find someone with one so that I can test it.
Click to expand...

Even the best-coded DVDs from the best source can look not so good on a 1080 screen.

Also, is this being played on a regular DVD player or through a Blu-ray?

Alex, I believe the camera was set to 30p. In Premiere, the frame rate is showing as 29.97 fps.
Click to expand...

Is the field order No Fields (Progressive) or Lower Field First? If Lower Field First, it's 60i, not 30p.

(The confusion of them both being called "29.97" is one of the primary reasons I created the 24p & Frame Rates tutorial.)
 
David Jimerson said:
Even the best-coded DVDs from the best source can look not so good on a 1080 screen.

Also, is this being played on a regular DVD player or through a Blu-ray?



Is the field order No Fields (Progressive) or Lower Field First? If Lower Field First, it's 60i, not 30p.

(The confusion of them both being called "29.97" is one of the primary reasons I created the 24p & Frame Rates tutorial.)
Click to expand...

Oh wow, I didn't know this! The field order does show Lower Field first. I guess my question now is, how did I end up in 60i? I definitely set the camera to 30p I guess that I'm in need of your tutorial and your books as well. I'll definitely purchase those this weekend. So should I now switch this over to a 60i timeline? Will that help me get a better image on the DVD?

Thanks so much for your help. I know it can be frustrating dealing with newbies and I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions.

The screen cap above was on a 1080 screen from a Blu-Ray player. I've tried it in a regular DVD player as well, but the artifacts are still there.
 
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HollywoodDreams said:
Oh wow, I didn't know this! The field order does show Lower Field first. I guess my question now is, how did I end up in 60i? I definitely set the camera to 30p I guess that I'm in need of your tutorial and your books as well. I'll definitely purchase those this weekend. So should I now switch this over to a 60i timeline? Will that help me get a better image on the DVD?

Thanks so much for your help. I know it can be frustrating dealing with newbies and I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions.

The screen cap above was on a 1080 screen from a Blu-Ray player. I've tried it in a regular DVD player as well, but the artifacts are still there.
Click to expand...

Well, you may not have set it to 30p. If it didn't say 30p or 24p in your viewfinder, then it was 60i.

You should match your timeline to your footage, yes. Premiere is trying to conform the 60i to 30p, so it's deinterlacing the 60i, costing you resolution. (Though that would not affect the text you add in Premiere.)

I would have to bet the upscaling of the DVD to 1080 revealed a lot of the video's shortcomings, which may not be a problem at all viewed on a standard SD TV. In other words, you may have done the best you can already (except for the possible deinterlacing/resolution loss I mentioned above). The mosquito noise around the text looks pretty par for the course.

Play the DVD on your computer. How does it look if you don't play it full-screen?
 
The DVD looks good on the computer when it's not full screen. How can I at least get some of the resolution back? The only 60i presets that I see in Premiere are for HD video.
 
You might want to check a bit of your footage in Media Info (free) to see if it is actually progressive. Don't know about Premiere, but my version of Sony Vegas always brings in footage as "lower field first" even when it's progressive (I only shoot 30P and occasionally 24PA). I have to right click on the event to change it to "none" (progressive), to match my project settings.
Premiere may have a similar quirk.
Hope this helps.
Ken
 
kplo said:
my version of Sony Vegas always brings in footage as "lower field first" even when it's progressive (I only shoot 30P and occasionally 24PA).
Click to expand...

If it's Vegas Pro, it absolutely should not -- unless you have the option disabled in your preferences. Vegas is just about the best at getting DVX footage right.
 
HollywoodDreams said:
The DVD looks good on the computer when it's not full screen. How can I at least get some of the resolution back?
Click to expand...

You can't. It is what it is. DVD is 720x480 and that's all the resolution you get.

The only thing you can do with the footage is shoot progressive and set the Vert. Det. Freq. to THIN, which will give you the most vertical detail. (Option isn't available in 60i.)
 
David Jimerson said:
You can't. It is what it is. DVD is 720x480 and that's all the resolution you get.

The only thing you can do with the footage is shoot progressive and set the Vert. Det. Freq. to THIN, which will give you the most vertical detail. (Option isn't available in 60i.)
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's what I did when I set up the camera for the shoot. I checked the camera again last night and it was set to 30p with vertical frequency set to thin. I knew I should have gotten much better footage than I was getting. So, here's what I ended up doing. I right clicked my clip in the project panel, then went to interpret footage. I changed the field order to None (Progressive). I dragged that clip to the new item icon and let Premiere make a sequence. Then I deleted the clip and pasted all of the edited footage onto the timeline of Premiere's automatic sequence and sent everything over to Encore.

In Encore, I went under File and Edit Quality Presets and changed all of the setting to match the settings of my source footage, with the exception of field order, which I switched to None (Progressive) again. I increased the bitrate to 8 and burned the DVD. This may not be how the pros would do it, but I'm pretty happy with the results. The quality is so much better. The artifacts are barely noticeable now and the image over all is just much cleaner.

Ken, I've never used Vegas but if it's as good with DVX footage as David says, I may have to try it.
 
It's Vegas 7.0d. Same with my old version 4.
Edit: I just checked again with V7. First time import came in as actual progressive, second time it was interlaced lower field first.
Same clip (30P NTSC widescreen...I shot squeeze mode).
Inconsistent, but no big deal as I'm aware of it and always check when I import media.
Ken
 
Version 4 would make some sense as it didn't handle progressive footage/pulldown removal until a later update (4.0d, I think).
 
Mine was 4.0e.
This primarily happens (even in 7.0d) when I render out a piece (a comp or CCd bit) to uncompressed progressive 30P.
When I bring the saved file back into Vegas, I almost always have to right click on it and change it from lower field first, back to progressive. I've just absorbed that extra step into my workflow as a normal Vegas "feature" :).
Ken
 
Oh. Well, OK; then you're describing something different than capturing DVX footage and having Vegas read it incorrectly. The variables of export are many.
 
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