HD to DVD – Blurry text with PP

[Tim Kolb]

Do you have some screen grabs to compare?

Keep in mind that taking square pixel 1920×1080 down to non-square 720×480 isn’t a process which will handle light weight or small point-size fonts very well. You are taking each frame, represented by over 2 million pixels and forcing it to map the same image into 345,000 pixels…17% of the original pixel count.

Years ago there used to be a lot of discussion about various encoders and what one does better than another, or whatever ‘secret sauce’ conjecture was floating around (I remain a HUGE fan of GV ProCoder for transcoding)…over the last 5-6 years, Adobe’s encoder has historically worked well for me.

However when I go to DVD, I’m typically going from 1920x1080p23.976 square pixel to 720x480i29.97 non-square (1.2) pixel…but if I know I’ll end up on a standard def distribution copy, I don’t use exceptionally fine onscreen text…or at least I don’t expect that it will reproduce well at less than a quarter of the original resolution and a change in pixel shape on top of it (we haven’t even addressed whether you might be going from progressive to interlace.)

So, I haven’t seen your results of course, but I doubt anyone is truly ‘satisfied’ with onscreen text that goes through that sort of resolution reduction. I don’t do a lot of SD delivery anymore, so I haven’t noted any specific changes in Adobe’s encoder in the last handful of releases myself…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Victor,

What is the source video? If 1080i, that is notorious for issues with DVD conversions. Not only are you scaling the video as Tim mentioned, there are also fields to deal with (HD is Upper, DVD is Lower).

I use the “HD2SD” method for some of my projects, though the Adobe tools are still viable for many of my jobs. The HD2SD especially preserves quality on extra-long projects, such as dance recitals at 2.5 hours or more going onto a single 4.7GB DVD, and yes they look great!

If you’re not afraid of installing a bunch of third-party software and plug-ins (and can read directions), you might roll up your sleeves and try HD2SD methods. Be prepared for trial and error and maybe some headaches, but once you get the workflow down, you will love the results.

I can provide detailed instructions on request

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Victor Clausson]

Thanks Tim and Jeff!

I finally took my time to dig into the SD2HD method.
It sure is a process but the output file looks good!

I found this video tutorial on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LrRLOtSVew
And after trying that method I made some snapshot comparisons on titles:

Adobe Media Encoder adds somekind of sharpness filter and boost the contrast or something.
The TMPGENc method looks really good (if not exactly) to the SD2HD-method. Maybe I can adjust the colors on the TMPGEnc method a little bit but still, it looks really good compared to the SD2HD method.

I can live with this because it’s so much easier for me to export this way and If I can’t see a big difference, I’m happy 🙂

Now, I preview all this on my computer monitor. Will this look any better if I burn it on a DVD and put it in say a XBOX 360, PS3, etc and viewed it on a flat-screen TV. Is there other ways to play ISO files to avoid burning DVD’s to preview see result?

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