[Ernie Santella]

[i]Have you marked your movie in Compressor as 16×9 and the track you used in DVDSP as 16×9?[/i]

YES

[i]What it looks like to me is either a bad field setting somewhere in your chain (like a bad deinterlace would look, and there are plenty of places in compressor to mess it up) or an aspect ratio conversion problem.

I’ve tried every setting you can for Progressive frame rates in DVDSP. The only last thing to do is to try the suggestion of creating a 720p30 timeline instead of 720p60. I’ll do some tests for that.

Other than that, I may have to pay a local editor to come over and trouble shoot it for me. I hate things like this!

Thanks for all your help and suggestions. The Cow is the greatest place on earth. It’s awesome that everyone is willing to help each other. We all go through issues and it’s nice to have have a place to go when you really need it!

[Ernie Santella]

Jeremy,

Here’s two links to two clips. I grabbed these off the two DVD’s using Cinematize. The ‘Bad’ clip is from HD and the ‘Good’ is from a HD-to-SD conversion in FCP.

Notice the aliasing on the engine fan belt and on the following shot of the grain tower is terrible.

https://www.santellaproductions.com/bad.mov
https://www.santellaproductions.com/good.mov

[Ernie Santella]

So, Gary, what do you use when you are editing 720p footage shot at 30fps? The 720p/60 or the ProRes/30 compressor settings?

What’s the downside to using the stock 720p/60 setting with 30fps material?

[Ernie Santella]

My DVD player is hooked up by Composite to my pro JVC SD 19″ monitor.

Again, I do not see the alaising issue with DVD’s created from the HD down-converted to SD, then thru compressor timelines. Only the DVD’s created directly from the 720p to Compressor timelines. That’s the crazy part.

And again, any DVD’s made from 8-Bit Uncompressed SD sources look fine on the same DVD player/monitor. It’s just this silly 720p timeline.

[Ernie Santella]

“Now, if you open the MPEG2 file created by Compressor in Quicktime, what does it look like? Aliasing?”

Nope. Clean as a whistle. So, that seems to eliminate something funky going on in Compressor. But, that’s looking at it on a progressive-scan MAC 30″ monitor.

It seems the issue is when DVDSP makes the DVD, then it looks bad.

[Ernie Santella]

All the files on the my mac monitors and thru my Kona card look absolutely perfect. The DVD made from the HD-to-Compressor-DVDSP-DVD, played back on a stand-alone NTSC monitor look crappy.

The DVD’s out of DVDSP made from an HD dragged into SD timeline to Compressor-DVDSP-DVD look perfect.

Thanks guys for the help, keep the questions coming, we’ll figure it out.

Yes, I know “why not just do the HD-SD conversion and be done with it. I will, but I want to know why for future HD projects that I have to make client DVD’s.

[Ernie Santella]

It was all captured from tape with the Easy Setup 720p30 preset. Does everyone have to modify a 720p24 timeline to be 30? That’s seems dumb, that they don’t make a 720p30 setting?

To be correct in what your saying, you create a new seq (which comes up as 720p24 (not 24pA) and then change the Editing Timebas to 29.97, correct? Why will this make a difference?

I will try to post a pic of the aliasing. As you don’t see it on any of the mac files, just the final DVD. I will have to figure out the best way to grab a shot off the DVD.

[Ernie Santella]

Kona 3 Card. I see that setting in Easy Setup, but when I make a sequence, I only get 720p50 or 60, no 30?

Ask all the question you can. There has to be one simple thing I’m missing?

Can you change your timeline sequence settings to 720p30

[Ernie Santella]

I don’t have that preset in my FCP settings window? I have:

DVCPro1080i50
DVCPro1080i60
DVCPro1080p25
DVCPro1080p30

DVCPro720p50
DVCPro720p60

No DVCPro720p30. Where can I load that setting?

[Ernie Santella]

Aren’t you editing @ 30fps and not 60?

You have exported a reference movie and brought this movie to compressor, right?

I’m using the FCP 720p60 timeline preset. The footage is all at 30fps. It looks perfect on all my HD monitors. And yes, I am exporting as a QT reference movie. I do the exactly the same thing for all my SD projects with no issues.

This is driving me crazy.