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SD DVD looks terrible projected through Blu-Ray
Screening our short films at the cinema on Monday. We burned an SD DVD from an HD project in DVDSP using some settings from an editor friend.
DVD looks great on the computer monitor and on a crappy DVD player and crappy TV. Cinema manager said that an SD DVD would look fine through their Blu-Ray. Went to test yesterday, and the films looked awful.
Blacks were milky, whites were blown out (no information) colors were desaturated and, at times, they were not accurately represented (skin tones were yellow, etc.). I know that SD DVDs will not look as good as Blu-Ray, but, from what little I’ve read in trying to research this situation, the quality is supposed to be “fine” or “pretty good.” The quality yesterday was really, really bad. Unfortunately, the cinema will not let us plug the computer straight into the projector, which we have done before in other venues, and the projection looks fine. So, I’m trying to find a solution. Funnily enough, they *will* let us plug any kind of deck into the projector, so I’m going today to test with the crappy DVD player.
Has anyone had these issues with playing and projecting SD DVDs through Blu-Ray players?
Could it possibly be the projector itself?
Is there something else we can do in the authoring?
Obviously, we should eventually make a Blu-Ray, but this is New Orleans, baby, and we don’t have that kind of facility here to get it done before Monday.
Any, any help, rumination, guesses would be very helpful.
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3 Replies
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Depends entirely on the player and the projector- their ability to upconvert makes all the difference. If you want to quickly project nice looking HD- best way is burn an HD ProRes and connect your computer to the projector via DVI.
Noah
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Very true. We’ve screened before by connecting projector straight to computer, and it looks beautiful.
Went for another test last night, and the projectionist fiddled around with the settings on the projector. We chose a “graphic” look, which, at first looked really dark until we changed contrast and brightness. It looks passable now. At least the skin tones look more natural.
Obviously, the sound is brilliant! Funnily enough, I’ve found that the regular cinema goer does not notice poor picture quality as much as the notice poor sound quality.
Going to make HDCAM for festival screenings and maybe a Blu-Ray. All of these formats, etc. are doing my head in. I long for the days when it was just film and prints. Sadly, those days are gone.
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Another option Daneeta would be those Western Digital Media Players. They play every file format under the sun with HDMI outputs.
Every theatre house should have one regardless for festivals
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