Progressive for TV?

[Michael Sacci]

I would guess that most things that are on TV have been shoot as Progressive. Most TV shows, most commercials. What is not is mostly sports and news.

[Ken Pugh]

Although here in Europe most shooting and post production is done HD, there are comparatively few HD channels, most of the audience watches SD and on CRT monitors, and in post production suites CRT monitors are still considered the reference by which others are judged – and this is my stumbling point, progressive video may look great on a progressive LCD screen, but it doesn’t on an interlaced CRT, which I understand is what most people still watch, and most facilities still use for reference. I certainly do – but maybe I need to change?

Best,

Ken.

[Pete Burger]

I was working with SD and HDV interlaced footage for similar reasons, until I was “forced” to produce progressive footage for some web-clips, switching back to interlaced for the next projects whenever possible.

For about two years now, I have to produce material that will be shown on both: on TV and on the web. So I use a CRT monitor for the TV/DVD version for post work (color correction etc).

Unless it’s not sports (where my footage must be interlace for a couple of reasons), I shoot progressive, because over time I got so used to the progressive look (even on my CRT and an TV), that I really started to like it so much that I don’t want to switch back to interlaced.

Just my thoughts. HTH

[Michael Sacci]

What it is watched on it not my point. We have been watching Material shoot as progressive on interlaced TVs for years. This is not a new thing at all. Almost every VHS was originally a Progressive movie that had pulldown add to make the interlaced tapes. Most hollywood DVDs are 24p with players adding the pulldown and interlacing.

My point is that Progressive to interlace looks fine, we watch it all the time, it is not a new thing, new problem. The difference is that it doesn’t look like interlaced footage on an interlaced TV, which for most people is a good thing.

30p to 30i or 25p to 25i is a none issue IMO unless you are shooting sports or you want the video look.

[Casey Petersen]

This is something I have been wondering about as well.

For me, and my mostly-self-taught experience with the 7D and progressive footage this past year, I have had mixed emotions about it. I have not used 24p or any flavor of progressive footage (I am from the US, BTW, and have been using HDV 1080i60 for the past 6 years). I am still learning, and that’s why I’m posting now.

My opinion of the footage from the 7D is that it looks awesome on the computer/internet, it looks awesome on a Blu-ray, it looks pretty good on a SD DVD on a LCD TV, and it doesn’t look very good on a SD-DVD on a tube TV.

I now understand that “Most hollywood DVDs are 24p with players adding the pulldown and interlacing”, which is good to know!

However, in my experience, my 7D with 24p on a DVD does not look nearly as good as a typical hollywood DVD. My footage on a tube TV looks like a cheap film effect…it has the strobe/flicker look to it, which the hollywood DVDs don’t have.

I like when Ken said “Should I train myself to like strobing video and call it a film effect?”, because that’s how I feel too. I don’t think it looks as good and I have to pretend that it does.

I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong in the conversion process from h.264 to ProRes…I am using the same method and settings (even Final Cut Pro settings) that many respectable people recommend. However, I have only seen samples of their work online, where my stuff looks just as good.

Is there something in the DVD compression/authoring process that needs to be done differently than I have been doing for years with my interlaced footage. I use Compressor’s presets for DVD encoding (DVD Best Settings 90 minutes or 120 minutes), and I just drop those files into DVD Studio Pro without changing any settings or doing anything different. Is there somewhere where I need to tell Compressor or DVDSP that it is 24p and it would handle it correctly?

I watched the House finale that was shot on 5DMKII cameras, and watched it both on an HDTV and a tube TV, and they both looked fantastic…so what am I doing wrong? I assume that if this were a problem, everybody would be complaining about it, and since that’s not happening, I think it’s an issue of people like me who are not experienced with using progressive footage correctly.

Any thoughts/help would be greatly appreciated!

Casey Petersen

[Casey Petersen]

I uploaded a short sample of a DVD that I made that shows my attempt at 24p. It looks like it’s in slow motion, but it isn’t.

It’s 45mb and you can download a ZIP file of my VIDEO_TS folder here

I would appreciate it if someone would burn it to DVD, look at it on a tube TV and tell me what I’m doing wrong.

Thanks!
Casey

[Michael Sacci]

I took a look at it and to me it looked pretty good to me. I played it on my Sony Broadcast monitor via component and a consumer Sony via S-VHS. The one thing that is noticeable is the aliasing around the sharp edges of the canvas, which is to be excepted with the interlacing. But I didn’t think there was any bad jittering/strobing on the movement. I have also been shooting only progressive for years, even with DV we where shooting 95% as 24P with the DVX100s.

The encoding could be a bit better, do you have to use 120 minute preset? You do need to make sure the Compressor’s Frame Rate is set to 24P and not 29.97.

[Casey Petersen]

Thanks Michael,

Compressor’s frame rate was set for 24p (The inspector’s A/V attributes reads 1920×1080, pixel aspect ratio-square, native field dominance-progressive, frame rate 23.976). I was using the Best Quality 90 minutes setting (frame rate-100% of source, selected 23.976). I didn’t change anything on the Compressor settings…just the default.

One thing I have noticed with Compressor is that it is not very good at going from HDV to standard def. mpeg2 video. I get better results taking my edit back to HDV tape and recapturing as NTSC, then doing the encode. Maybe I’m having the same type of issue here? I suppose hollywood isn’t using Compressor or going to DVD before broadcasting.

Thoughts?
Casey

[Michael Sacci]

[Casey Petersen] ” I suppose hollywood isn’t using Compressor or going to DVD before broadcasting.” I would say that COmpressor is not in there workflow, unless they are using additional plug-ins inside of compressor.

Turning on Frame Controls and setting the Resize filter to best will help with the scaling to SD. I think COmpressor does a very good job with the m2v encoding but not with the VBR method (which are what the defaults all). If you change it to CBR and can have the bitrate at or above 6 Mbps I feel you get better results. 90 minutes of video can use a bitrate of 6.5Mbps with ac3 audio.

CinemaCraft MP for the Mac is getting up into a professional level encoder at a modest price. A lot of people swear by BitVice but I have had mixed results and feel I can get as good and in some case better encodes with just Compressor.

Episode is another encoder plugin that is well thought of, especially for H.264 for web and BluRay.

I recommend at least trying CBR method with Frame Controls set to best and see if you like that better.

[Casey Petersen]

I gave that a shot and it looks slightly better, but it still doesn’t have the same look as a hollywood DVD. The motion still looks a little too stuttery on my monitor. The shutter speed on this footage was at 1/50, so that shouldn’t be the issue, right?

I will run some more tests tomorrow.

Someone on another forum suggested adding a motion blur…what do you think about that?

Thanks!!!
Casey