-
HD to SD DVD through BitVice
Hi Folks,
I’m trying to get the best quality Mpeg2 using BitVice (2.9.5)and find the material that I export looks excellent in the timeline yet when encoded into a DVD appears like VHS! I ingest into the M100 (1.5.1) at 1080p from a Sony EX-1R (35 mps) camera. The final show is then exported as a reference QT. Would I be better to render the final show as an animation codec or to 4:4:4? I’ve found going from ProRez HQ (both import and export) looks worse. This problem mystifies me since I’ve always had superb results with SD material when using BitVice.
Roger Anderson from Innobits suggested that I bring this question to the group. He suggested going with no compression, however, I assume that would take a long time to do. Thank you for your responses.
Cheers,
Jim
-
3 Replies
-
What is it about the quality that you don’t like?
One thing to bear in mind when down converting HD material to SD is the increase in aliasing (jagged lines and moire) as a result of taking a high-res image and squashing the resolution into SD. Some combinations of subject matter and compression system give poor results.
One thing you could try if it’s the increase in aliasing artefacts that is the problem is to slightly soften the image before compression in BitVice.
The simplest way to do this if you have After Effects is to apply a slight gaussian blur, or the interlace flicker filter (which blurs vertically) to soften the sharp edges that don’t always down convert cleanly.
Hope this helps.
-
The thing I don’t like is that the overall resolution seems softer than SD. I realize this doesn’t make sense. It looks like second generation VHS.
-
Jim, I follow exactly the same workflow as you outlined and have been getting very good SD DVD.s with the same version of BitVice. What bit rates are you setting? I set two passes, VBR, and an average of about 7.25 depending on the programme time. Minimum of 4.5, maximum of 8.25. I find that the downscale quality of BitVice is better than that of Media 100, especially now that we don.t have the magic HDx board.
Roger Anderson also advised that the RGB box should be checked but nothing else. There has been an issue in the past with the Media 100 colour space.
I do find that quality differs DVD to DVD, try another with these settings and see what happens. We will all be making Blu-Ray from our HD timelines within a year or two wont we?
Michael Slowe
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up