Exporting “Self Contained” Video for SD DVD

[Floh Peters]

Yeah, the usual “mixed color ranges” problem. Since Media 100 can use a range of codecs, and some of them are decoded as 16-235 (luma range) and some as 0-255, you will see jumps if you open the exported clip in a QuickTime based application. For DVDs, you should do a QuickTime export, e.g. to ProRes. Make sure that you use the “Computer (0-255)” color Range, which is what Compressor expects.

If you are working in NTSC land, you probably should export to DV anyway, since Media 100 corrects for the 480/486 lines problem during this export automatically.

[Bob Karsner]

Thanks Floh,

I know this has been addressed before, but when I export my programs and ultimately put them to DVD, I experience a lot of alias on text and graphics. Is it just the nature of the HD TVs not reproducing the
graphics well or is there a trick in the compression I should be aware of?

Thanks again for you help. You are saving so many of us from a ton of headaches.

Bob

Bob Karsner
Destiny Productions – Kentucky

[Floh Peters]

Now, that´s a question…

If you produce only for DVD and computer monitors, you should be shooting progressive, since (most) LCDs/LEDs/Plasmas only can display progressive images. So everything that is interlaced has to become progressive somewhere, and that usually means losing resolution.

And, if you take a 720*480 or 720*576 image, and if you then scale it up to 1920*1080, you once again introduce artifacts during the upscaling. This depends heavily on the DVD player or display which does the scaling, and usually older and/or cheaper displays do that worse than newer and more expensive ones.

Now, if you want to or need to deliver by DVD, you should check your images on a CRT or at least on a Mac DVD drive playing back the image at 100% resolution, not scaling it up to show it full screen. This way you should be able to tell if your DVD is okay, or if you already introduced artifacts when compressing your footage for DVD.

From there, you can only try to educate your clients about how to improve image quality (like producing in HD, playing back from Blu-Ray, keeping the image size reasonable for SD sources, setting a DVD player up correctly to play widescreen DVDs back as widescreen,…)

[Bob Karsner]

Hahaha… i was thinking that would be the answer. The project I am working on is a combination HD/SD project in that we have 16×9 SD footage and P2 (DVCProHD) footage. We shot the HD in 1080i so everything is interlaced.

Should I export my Quicktime (DV / ProRes) files from Media 100 as progressive? Would that help with the new HD monitors?

I put an S-Video cable from my DVD player and the quality of the picture and graphics actually look better than the component or HDMI on a newer HD TV.

Thanks

Bob Karsner
Destiny Productions – Kentucky