AN UNHAPPY CLIENT.....DVD Bad Quality on TV, good on compute

[devang1229]

Hi,

After reading 20 pages on this forum, I'm still lost.

I DVD Authored a wedding that is choppy on the television. Here are my steps to make it easier to understand:

CAPTURED:
Captured using Lord Smurf's Guide (Capturing AVI using an ATI Card) interlaced video with NTSC 480 lines of resolution. Hi8 video was captured to AVI with the HuffYUV Codec.

EDITED:
Adobe Premiere 6.5 to edit and using the Main Concept MPEG encoder, rendered out to MPEG 2 at about 3.5 MBps VBR.

AUTHORED: With Sonic Foundry DVD Architect, I dont think the mpeg was re-encoded.

RESULTS:
Works fine on the computer. Liney and choppy on the TV.

SOLUTION 1:
In Adobe Premiere setting, changed to "Lower Field First". Then rendered with "Upper Field First" and then with "No Field". Still no luck.

WHAT NEXT?
I have read that I need to use Re-stream. What settings should I have in Re-stream to rectify this problem? Please help... the client is not happy.

Thank You.

[lordsmurf]

Open the MPEG in RESTREAM.

See the TOP FIELD FIRST box? If checked, the new file will have top first. If unchecked, it will have bottom first.

Save a new file. It'll resave without encode.

Use a better authoring program, NOT one that will encode again. That's a time waste, and a quality waste.

[energy80s]

Also 3.5 MBPS is far too low a bitrate for home authored footage at D1 specs. You will need to go above 5 MBPS to avoid macroblocking on movement.

[devang1229]

Used Restream, here are the results.

Firstly, I output from Premiere to M2V format (6 MBps VBR) with "Lower Field", "Upper Field" and "No Fields". Tested these on the TV, no luck.

Then with restream, i outputted each one with the opposite field setting, for example, if I outputted from Premiere to Upper Field, I restreamed to Lower Field. I then tested this out on the TV, still no luck.

I'm just a beginner editing a friend's wedding, i would greatly appreciate it if someone could give me step-by-step instructions.

Thanks a million,
Devang

[Milo]

Is there any step in the process where vertical resolution is changed ?

[lordsmurf]

It may be a compounded encode error. That means you get to start over from source. Use a non-encoding authoring package this time.

And be sure proper interlace is set in Premiere at export.

And test out 2 minute clips on a DVD'RW ... don't redo the whole thing only to find out it's still bad.

[devang1229]

LordSmurf, are you suggesting I have to start the project all over? re-capture everything? I've spent over 200 hours editing this project that re-starting would be a nightmare.

As you can see, this is the clip i started off with.



Milo, yes I do believe the vertical resolution has changed from the one above. I converted to 720 x 480.

I've tried every possible permutation and combination in re-stream in the RED circled portion.



I made a test DVD for TV viewing:



What my next step?

[tito13kfm]

Please tell me you didn't set those capture settings yourself...

632x464??? 15fps?!??!

Um.. yeah.. start over is all I can suggest unless somebody can work there magic here on the boards.

[devang1229]

yup, i agree.... looking at the settings now, i feel like a dumbass....some of it is justified though...

this project is a wedding for a relative.. my first project. I'm being paid a minimal amount.

As long as I make the best of what I have now, the client does not mind. Just as long as it is not liney on TV. Even if I have black bars on the video on the top to cover up for the lost pixels, he does not mind.

[macleod]

as the previous poster mentioned, the settings are, well, wrong. NTSC video is 29.976 and yours is half that. DVD resolution is 704/720 X 480.

When I use to capture using a cap card (personally, I use nothing put my E30 panasonic dvd recorder which is awesome!!!!), I would cap AVI at 640x480 (or at the highest you can go without dropping frames) from the Hi8 source.

From there, I would convert using either TMPGENC or CCE and convert to: 352x480 at 48mhz audio (this is known as non-compliant CVD or half D-1 which is a valid dvd resolution).

The reason for converting to this resolution is that TV(normal),VHS, and the Hi8 video is MAX 352x480 (this has been debated back and forth, but we are talking my opinion here ) at around 5mbs. From review (and I havent experienced this on a widescreen even), the only complaints is that it might not be as clear on large widescreens).

The benefit to this is that more bits per pixel.

Anyway, after that, slap it into your authoring software (I used Movie factory2 or tmpgenc dvd author) and "make it pretty" and then burn.

Personally, if you know anyone with a standalone dvd recorder, cap it to dvdr on that and then do the editing on your computer.

Let me know if you need more details.

[devang1229]

is there any way to make the video NOT choppy... smoothen it out given that the frame rate is 15.

In the premiere video encoder quality? Should I increase it?
Or in the advance settings?

[FulciLives]

Trash it and start over and capture it proper this time.

Depending on your capture card you should either use 720x480 or 704x480 with a frame frame of 29.970 and set the audio to PCM WAV 16-bit 48k Stereo

- John "FulciLives" Coleman