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Client issue with DVD
I have gone through several threads here regarding a video we shot on a Sony EX1 and edited in FCP. The end use was for a client to show it on a 50″ Plasma Screen. I’ve followed Rafael’s direction on outputting from EX! to SD and followed various advise on compressor settings and DVD SP settings.
My shooter says he just outputs the ex1 timeline to Compressor and DVD with no problems.
The client told me that on their plasma screens at their trade show the video was very pixelated. I burned numerous DVDs and on my 46″ samsung LCD the video looked okay for SD video. There was some minor pixelation in find lines of the video. Why would my Samsung look better than the AV companies Plasma screen?
Today I travelled to the AV Company to view my DVD on their Plasma screen (the same set up they used at the client’s trade show. I was shocked! The video looks terrible. Even my livetype graphics which look crisp on my LCD TV were very blocky and ghosting. I’m at a loss here. The client wants to show this video at several trade shows this coming year and I don’t have a clue how to improve it. Why would it look so crappy on a Plasma screen? Is this some kind of interlacing issue, fields issue or any other thoughts? I’m going to take my DVD to Circuit City and watch it on their screen to see how t looks. Thanks for any advise and Happy new year.
Below is the original thread for this problem.
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17 Replies
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Hi Greg,
First, to wish you the best for the 2009.
The DVD issue is strange. I think that if would be something wrong with it, it would look bad in your screen too.
The best is what you intend to do: Check the DVD in other screens and also in other players.
Cheers,
Rafael -
By any chance, are they taking your SD DVD and trying to blow it up to HD? Not all upconverting DVD players are created equal, so that would be suspect number one. If that’s not that case, what preset in Compressor did you use?
Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
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For something going to a trade show on a very large screen we do a three step process for anything that’s HD going to an SD DVD.
One – we edit everything in the native HD and then lay that off to DVCPro HD tape.
Two – we recapture the footage in SD anamorphic allowing the Kona 3 to perform the HD to SD downconversion.
Three – we use BitVice for the DVD compression, not Compressor. The quality of BitVice is far superior to that of Compressor for Standard DVDs. The version of BitVice we own cannot convert HD to SD so we use the Kona.
It’s the step of allowing the Kona to perform the downconvert that really cleans up the video. For most applications we simply send an HD timeline to Compressor to create the SD DVD and it works just fine, we’ve never had any sort of pixellation issues or anything like that. But for a trade show, we like to use this method to give the absolute maximum quality for very large screen playback.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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I suggest you watch the encoded video that comes out of compressor, in quicktime player, and compare it with the dvd image.
I have had a problem where after build, the image looked terrible (dvd sp was not re-encoding the video). I was using dvd sp 3 then. Had a copy of version 1.0 for os 9 and tried a build of this same video in a beige g3 and guess what, the video looked perfect on the same players the build from dvdsp version 3 looked horrible. I wasnt able to point what the problem was, EVEN DID A COMPLETE CLEAN SYSTEM AND APPS REINSTALL, but problem still remained.
If you can, try to build a single asset with other software, maybe even toast.
If you find a solution, please let us know
good luck
Pepo -
I agree with Walter completely…
I’m not sure about BitVice but I have heard lots of good things about it here.
BUT with your issue… The problem will always be the fact that you are taking an HD video downconverting it to SD then playing it back onto an HD monitor. You will NEVER get a perfectly clean picture that way. All LCDs or Plamsa monitors will playback SD differently. One manufacturer might look pretty good, another might look crappy.
Case in point, we have Panasonic BT-LH2600W for our production monitors. SD video looks really crappy on them. I also have a Sharp Aquos monitor for trade shows – its looks OK on it – better than the Panasonic montior.
The best an ONLY real solution is to output to Blu-Ray and play from that. Its much better to stay HD, then to do all of these conversions. If your client isn’t willing to do that, ask them why did they purchase a beautiful HD monitor to playback SD video (that’s overkill). Blu-Ray is getting rather inexpensive these days for players.
That’s my rant…
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com -
Thanks to all of you for your feedback. To answer some of your questions/comments:
Rafael: I do see minor pixelation on my 46″ LCD like in the fine lines of an object (thin eye glass frames or picture frames in the background) I attributed that to just SD Video playing on an LCD TV. The weird thing is I tried setting field dominance in compressor to Progressive and it looks somewhat better. Why would that be?
Richard: the presets in Compressor I’m using are:
90 minutes best settingSD DVD
29.97
16:9
Field Dominance: Bottom First (I’ve also tried Progressive)
Frame controls: on
Resize filter: Better Linear filter
Deinterlace: Best Motion Compensatedtwo pass VBR best
6.2 average bit rate
7.7 Max bit rate
Motion Estimation: BestWalter: I don’t have DVD Pro HD and I have a Kona LHe card. What if I were to output a quicktime file and bring it to another shop? Would that work? I also have BitVice Lite, but it doesn’t seem to offer any quality adjustments.
Pepo: The encoded video out of compressor looks fine. I have toast 6.03. Would you drop the file m2v from compressor into that? or would you drop a self contained quicktime file?
Wayne: I think Blu Ray is out of the question. The client didn’t buy Plasma screens, they rented them. How would I create a blu ray out of FCP? BTW the shop I use locally charges $750 to create a blu ray.
Is there some way I can create a file on my FCP system that I can bring to another shop either on Disk or on a hard drive for them to layoff better? Any suggestions?
Thanks to all of you. Happy New Year.
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[walter biscardi] “The quality of BitVice is far superior to that of Compressor for Standard DVDs”
For visual quality at lower bit rates that might be true, but compressor
is VERY capable of excellent encoding at nominal bitrates when properly tweaked.I agree with you by default the settings don’t produce excellent results.
As others have mentioned lots of “upconverting” dvd players to a really
lousy job and that could be the problem.Make sure they are using an HDMI connection and not s-video or composite
connections to the plasma, that alone will mess up the image big time. -
[Greg Ball] “just SD Video playing on an LCD TV. The weird thing is I tried setting field dominance in compressor to Progressive and it looks somewhat better. Why would that be?
“
Because your monitor is Progressive.
Whatever movie to be played in a LCD Monitor or Plasma TV should be De-interlaced (in case haven’t been shoot Progressive).
In the case of a SD DVD to be played in a HD plasma TV, I would de-interlece it.
The new generation of domestic DVD players can up-scale SD with really good quality. They make some pixel interpolation instead of just duplicating the size of the pixels, as the TV set would do.
Cheers,
rafaelRafael
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Hi again Greg. I would drop the m2v file in the VIDEO tab (in toast). Also in toast, set the quality to automatic, or it will re-encode the video. I only suggest this as the problem I had was when dvd sp made the build. If the problem, as others say, is when upconverting, I think little can be done. You may suggest your client not to step too close to the screen. I see many people stand in front of huge screens say oh this screen is awful, look at the pixels, and they are standing one or too feet in front of it.
Good luck
Pepo -
[Chris Borjis] “For visual quality at lower bit rates that might be true, but compressor
is VERY capable of excellent encoding at nominal bitrates when properly tweaked.I agree with you by default the settings don’t produce excellent results. “
I’ve got dozens of custom settings we use for DVD’s and nothing in Compressor comes remotely close to what we can achieve with BitVice in terms of sharpness, clarity and retention of original colors. With BitVice I can run at lower bit rates than Compressor and still have higher quality than even the highest settings in Compressor.
We use Compressor for about 80% of our work, but when it’s a sales DVD or something that will be definitely playing on a large screen format, it’s BitVice all the way.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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