Project looks better on CRT than HD LCD?

[Scott Douglas]

Its not you, its them. lol

Unless you are feeding those LCDs true HD, the chances of them looking as crisp or sharp as they do everywhere else is slim to none, and I’d bet on the latter.

I’ve tried even hooking up an LCD monitor to our system via the AJA IO La and it doesn’t help, heh.

Maybe someone out there knows the secret, but if it makes you feel any better, you are not alone in the quest. lol. Though my general theory is that we are not sending an HD output into the LDC HD sets, thus the lower quality. But thats just my 1 cent.

Scott

——————–

check my stuff out at https://scottkdouglas.com

[Jeff Carpenter]

1) Export from Final Cut using the export-using-Compressor method. Go right from the timeline to your MPEG II file. No need to use an extra export in the middle.

2)How long is your program? You may be able to use a better setting than you currently are if it’s short enough.

3) Do any DVDs look good on that LCD screen? Make sure it’s not an issue with the DVD player or the TV up-scaling poorly. I have 2 DVD players on my HD TV at home. One player upconverts itself and puts out a great images from DVDs (Hollywood-made) and the other (older player) doesn’t and the TV does the up-scaling. It generally looks pretty poor. Both are using component connections.

[Cliff Vaughn]

Thanks for the comments so far. Right now, most of what I put on DVD won’t exceed 30 minutes, so I need to render/prep for that parameter.

It’s just that my DVDs seem worse than other DVDs I watch on the display. But I suppose most everything I’m comparing it to is a Hollywood DVD.

So y’all think it’s normal for a SD Hollywood studio DVD to look a lot better (though by no means perfect) on a HD display than what I might author using DVDSP? Again, my renders look good, and I don’t have much to complain about as they appear on a CRT.

Thanks again.

[David Roth weiss]

[Jeff Carpenter] “3) Do any DVDs look good on that LCD screen?”

As Jeff says, some LCDs (most unfortunately) just do not deal well with SD video. Plasmas and TVs that leave SD at 480 lines of resolution instead of upscaling do it much better. Most scale to 720 or even 1080 and do the job poorly.

One secret is to stand back from your LCD monitor as far as you can in the room and judge from there. Few LCD screens can stand up to judging from up close by when displaying SD.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[David Roth Weiss] “One secret is to stand back from your LCD monitor as far as you can in the room and judge from there.”

Oh yeah? How far back….like…..Cleveland?

🙂

[Jeff Carpenter]

For anything less than 60 min, try this:

– Duplicate any DVD setting in Compressor. Change it to a CBR with a bit rate of 7.1. Use that along with a Dolby audio compressor.

That’s about the higest quality you can get. It might not look better than what you’re using now, but it shouldn’t look worse and it will give you your best possible chance.

[David Roth weiss]

[Jeremy Garchow] “How far back….like…..Cleveland?”

Actually, its Pittsburgh Jeremy.

In the movie Tootsie, after one look at Dustin Hoffman (who’s “in drag” of course), the soap opera producer asks one of the camera operators, “is there some where you can move the camera to make her more attractive?” He replies, “Yeah, Pittsburgh…”

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Cory Caplan]

[Cliff Vaughn] “o y’all think it’s normal for a SD Hollywood studio DVD to look a lot better (though by no means perfect) on a HD display than what I might author using DVDSP?”

What’s your source? Mpeg-2 compression is very much optimized for exactly that– Hollywood film, meaning shallow depth of field shot to grainy celluloid. It hides the majority of its compression in the “soft focus” areas and grain. Whereas most video that you will shoot, even HD has a very deep DoF, meaning lots of image detail that really exceeds the amount of data available– so lots more noise.

One thing I’ve notices is that LCDs show compression artifacts in much higher contrast than CRTs, probably to do with the enhanced contrast ratios (they boost these for “sharpness”)

Keep in mind that LCDs have a native display resolution, and unless you have a 720×480 LCD (you don’t) You’re scaling the video– and this is going to make things look not as good as they do at native resolution (or native upscaled resolution)
CRTs show things in “native resolution” of course.. 🙂

Furthermore, as others have said, make sure to go through all the settings on compressor. Even on “best” there is still one or two settings that can be cranked higher– the bitrate, resize filter, and rate conversion (if applicable) can all be set “higher” than the default DVD “best quality”

Finally, you might even try different encoders. Encore’s encoder is really nice for some stuff. I’ve never tried to quantify exactly *what* type of source does better, but I have noticed occasional better results.

I still use procoder on occasion (especially from my Avid system) Slow on best settings, but superb compression result, with tons of tweakable options.

[Bret Williams]

You said you were letterboxing, so your DVD is going to look pretty bad on a HD monitor, especially if you’re blowing it up to fill the screen!

You want to go anamorphic, which is of course what hollywood DVDs use for widescreen. Your vertical resolution will be improved dramatically. The horizontal will stay the same.

[Gary Hazen]

Jeremy is correct, the line from the movie refers to Cleveland.

Make her look a little more attractive.
How far can you pull back?

-How do you feel about Cleveland?
-Knock it off.