Upconvert DV?

[rbautch]

I'd like to watch my home movies on my 60" HDTV. I use Vegas 6.0 to edit and render the DV captures from my camcorder. For anything over 720x480, Vegas creates .m2t files, a format that my video server chokes on. Is there a better way to upconvert? Are the results even worth trying?

[daamon]

Are the results even worth trying?

I'd say "No" as DV AVI is 720 x 480 / 576 for NTSC / PAL - any upconverting to a higher resolution is likely to result in a blocky result.

[Wile_E]

You will probably be better off just rendering at 720x480 and burn to DVD. Then use an upconverting DVD player to play at 720p/1080.

[wwaag]

I create HDV slideshows using Vegas to render as m2t files (which really look great on my 65" HDTV). Since these are mostly vacation slidehosws, I also incorporate some DV footage which really look pretty terrible in comparison. In any case, these 720x480 DV files are "up-converted" to 1440x1080. I can tell you there is no improvement in quality. The DV footage looks the same. Bottom line--don't waste your time up-converting. Two suggestions. For the future, get an HDV camcorder--the quality is really awesome compared with regular DV when displayed on a large TV like yours. Second, for watching older DV footage, consider getting a smaller "full-screen" TV. I also have a 32" Sony HDTV. On this TV, the DV footage looks extremley good--the same footage that looks pretty bad on my 65" system. Good luck.

wwaag

[edDV]

Remember that your TV will upscale the S-Video camcorder output to the native resolution of your TV. Tell us your TV model. A few HDTV sets accept IEEE-1394 digital DV format input and upscale from that.

Next choice is standad interlace DVD at high bitrate.

As wwaag pointed out an HDV camcorder will upscale existing DV tapes to 1080i analog component to the HDTV. Compare that to the TV upscale from S-Video. It should be better since it has a component path.

Future will be full 25 Mb/s DV 480i from HD/BD DVD or authored upscales to HDV 1440x1080 or 1920x1080i. Advanced computer display cards and DVD players will upscale from IEEE-1394 inputs or DV-avi files or DV 480i on BD/HD DVDR.

Best to wait until you get a HD/BD recorder or HD/BD writer or a HD playout server.

[rbautch]

Thanks for all the responses. My TV is a Sony KDS-R60XBR1 60" Grand Wega Sxrd Rear Projection TV. It's an LCOS 1920x1080 display. It does indeed have firewire.

I play most videos by serving them to my Standard-Def Tivo, or "inserting" them on my High-Def Tivo, both connected to the TV, and both running hacked versions of the Tivo software. I've got a RAID 5 server that I like to keep all my videos on, and serve them up from there.

Maybe it's time to build a multimedia PC.

[edDV]

Thanks for all the responses. My TV is a Sony KDS-R60XBR1 60" Grand Wega Sxrd Rear Projection TV. It's an LCOS 1920x1080 display. It does indeed have firewire.

I play most videos by serving them to my Standard-Def Tivo, or "inserting" them on my High-Def Tivo, both connected to the TV, and both running hacked versions of the Tivo software. I've got a RAID 5 server that I like to keep all my videos on, and serve them up from there.

Maybe it's time to build a multimedia PC.

The Wega processor will handle the upscale from DV 480i over IEEE-1394 to your native TV resolution 1920x1080p and it will do it in real time. I doubt any software upconvert at the consumer level will do any better than the Wega hardware processor but it will take many more hours to do it.

Ask your local pro video production house for a sample of DV to 1080p upscaling using their multi-thousand dollar hardware equipment and compare that to your Wega. Problem is it will have to be 1080i because according to C-Net, your set won't accept 1080p as an input even over HDMI !!! It will only deinterlace 1080i or upscale 720p. VGA is limited to 1,280x1,024 at 60Hz.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11246_7-6388574-1.html?tag=txt
http://reviews.cnet.com/Sony_KDS_R60XBR1/4505-6484_7-31481141-4.html?tag=toc

I'm very surprised this is the case what with 1080p/24 BD/HD DVD well in design when that set was produced. It seems something is very wrong at Sony. Or maybe C-Net got it all wrong.

[rbautch]

You got it right. This TV gets rave reviews except for the lack of 1080p input. Sounds like the marketing folks won out over the engineers once again in order to get this thing to market. Still, it's a great looking TV, expecially considering my last one was a 27" standard def. I'm a little confused how to get my video to the firewire port on the TV. Are my options a) connect the camcorder directly to it, or b) connect a media PC to it?

[edDV]

You got it right. This TV gets rave reviews except for the lack of 1080p input. Sounds like the marketing folks won out over the engineers once again in order to get this thing to market. Still, it's a great looking TV, expecially considering my last one was a 27" standard def. I'm a little confused how to get my video to the firewire port on the TV. Are my options a) connect the camcorder directly to it, or b) connect a media PC to it?

That TV should still work with BD/HD DVD players but will connect HDMI as telecined 1080i. The Wega processor will then inverse telecine and produce 1080p/24 from that. The only thing you lack is the ability to input a future 1080p/59.94 source.

As for a DV camcorder, you can connect it directly with IEEE-1394 to the TV or transfer the video to the computer HDD with something like WinDV and then play that to the TV over IEEE-1394 using WinDV or another DV format player. I'm assuming that port supports DV format. I haven't seen anything yet to confirm that. The port might also support MPeg2_TS (for DVHS).

[Chaoji3791]

Red Giant software has a plugin called Instant HD which will actually upscale SD to HD and do a pretty damn fine job of it, too. You can look at examples on the company's website. Very impressive.

[edDV]

Red Giant software has a plugin called Instant HD which will actually upscale SD to HD and do a pretty damn fine job of it, too. You can look at examples on the company's website. Very impressive.

They are only doing the easy part, upscale from progressive. They leave it to you to deinterlace and that is the difficult, expensive and lossy part of the process..
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/instanthd.html

[Chaoji3791]

Believe me, it's not simple upscaling. The software uses sophisticated algorithms to interpolate details that weren't actually there before. And as for deinterlacing, there are some good-quality Virtualdub deinterlacing plugins out there that don't cost a cent, unless you count donations to their creators.