DVD plays lousy on HD-ready TV

[sylvanez]

Hi,

I have created a DVD from recordings I made on rather professional (although SD) recording equipment. Material was captured in DV, then edited in PremierePro 2, exported as DV, encoded with MainConcept (standard settings, dividing into elementary streams) authored with DVDLab Pro 1.53 and put on DVD with Nero.

On a standard 26inch plasma screen it plays back nicely but as I watched it on a 32inch HD-ready TV with a brand new DVD-Player the picture was full of artifacts and the overall quality was just embarrassing.

Is this a problem of the HD-ready TV doing some resizing (since it uses different resolution, doesn't it?) or is it rather to be my production process (e.g. converter settings) and how can I overcome it?

thanks for any help and congratulations on this superb site,
sylvanez

[edDV]

Hi,

I have created a DVD from recordings I made on rather professional (although SD) recording equipment. Material was captured in DV, then edited in PremierePro 2, exported as DV, encoded with MainConcept (standard settings, dividing into elementary streams) authored with DVDLab Pro 1.53 and put on DVD with Nero.

On a standard 26inch plasma screen it plays back nicely but as I watched it on a 32inch HD-ready TV with a brand new DVD-Player the picture was full of artifacts and the overall quality was just embarrassing.

Is this a problem of the HD-ready TV doing some resizing (since it uses different resolution, doesn't it?) or is it rather to be my production process (e.g. converter settings) and how can I overcome it?

thanks for any help and congratulations on this superb site,
sylvanez

More detail is needed. A screen cap example or two would help.

Was this shot with a consumer camcorder? What model?

What kind of "artifacts"? Do these correlate to motion?

[sylvanez]

The cameras are Panasonic E600 from January 2004, seem more prosumer to me (whole equipment with 3 cams and fully equipped control room cost approx. 90,000 EUR).
The artifacts look to me like displaced single pixels, especially around shapes with strong contrast but do not seem to depend on motion (I also saw them in the still background of the picture). Although they seem to move with the shapes they depend on.
At the moment I can only add a picture captured from my computer where everything looks OK since I did the testing on the big screen in a shop and have no equipment to grab pictures from a TV (I could take a photo if that helps).

What I don't understand is that it looks good on one TV and really appauling on another. Makes me feel very insecure...

Thanks and best regards,
sylvanez

screen.png

[sylvanez]

I forgot to add: The picture is taken from PowerDVD with standard settings (no change in deinterlacing or color model)

sylvanez

[edDV]

I'm not sure. The 3CCD camera outputs analog. How did you capture? The frame grab seems to have over sharpening where noise is elevated but that may not be the main problem. Did you use filters in Premiere? It could be monitor settings.

[sylvanez]

I think the capturing is done by a small box called Firestore which writes directly to HDD in DV format. For the testing sequence I had no filters in Premiere or elsewhere.

I thought of monitor settings, too. The shop personnel told me the TV was in standard settings and played back a commercial DVD which looked a little too crisp but otherwise fine (and uncomparably better than mine). But I cannot tell if this guy was competent and he wouldn't let me try around with his TV.

[jagabo]

The sample image is definitely over sharpened and blend deinterlaced. I don't know if PowerDVD did this or if it's in the video.

[sylvanez]

Deinterlacing is from PowerDVD (I think blend is standard method here).
Here is a screen from the same video played with VLC Media Player. How do you see the over sharpening? The red and green shimmers in high-contrast areas? Can this be the problem?

I viewed it today on another big HD-ready screen and it looked as bad as yesterday. The shop guy told me they had similar problems with some of the minor production DVDs they sell.

Regards,
sylvanez[/img]

vlcsnap-4394.png

[edDV]

Deinterlacing is from PowerDVD (I think blend is standard method here).
Here is a screen from the same video played with VLC Media Player. How do you see the over sharpening? The red and green shimmers in high-contrast areas? Can this be the problem?

I viewed it today on another big HD-ready screen and it looked as bad as yesterday. The shop guy told me they had similar problems with some of the minor production DVDs they sell.

Regards,
sylvanez[/img]

vlcsnap-4394.png

Oversharpening has caused noise to show as grain in smooth areas like the face. Oversharpening also causes analog PAL/NTSC decoders to false detect luminance grain as color when the frequency crosses the 4.43 MHz (3.58 MHz. NTSC) subcarrier frequency. S-Video connection should eliminate the false color issue.

The false color is a clue that oversharpening may have occured in the camera. You say some monitors display as smooth, others this way. Maybe the "smooth" monitors are lower quality and lack ability to display higher frequency detail. This is why a high quality monitor should be used for camera adjustment.

[jman98]

Please be sure that you have high quality video connections between the DVD player and your TV. Many people complain about how poor video is on their HD TVs when in fact the problem is the connection.

High quality video connections are:
component
DVI
HDMI

Low quality video connections are:
S-video
composite
old style coax as used in the USA in the past for cable TV

Also, be sure that you are watching your DVD in the correct aspect ratio. Watching 4:3 video in 16:9 on an HD TV just magnifies all the flaws in the 4:3 video source.

[sylvanez]

Initially, I wanted to test scaling from 4:3 to 16:9 on different TVs to determine if it is better than rescaling with VirtualDub beforehand. That's why the material shown is in 4:3.

Again, I would be happy with the image quality of the screens I posted, but on HD-TVs it looks terrible. I will have a test with the same material but different compression settings in MPEGEncoder today and a look for the connection used.

Is there any way to cope with over sharpening in post production? How do I get it right on the recording site (since I will be recording more concerts at the end of september)?

sylvanez

[jagabo]

Most HDTVs don't deal well with interlaced material. They are much better at handling progressive sources. MPEG encoding of 29.97 fps interlaced require more bitrate than 24 fps progressive. Getting a DV camcorder that shoots 24 fps progressive may help a lot.

The over sharpening has not only created additional noise but overshoot and undershoot at sharp edges. Note for example the bright and dark bands at the boundary between the white cloth and the violin. You need to determine where in your processing this over sharpening is occuring. In the camera? The FireStore? Premiere?

You can undo the overshoot with a blur filter. That will also reduce the noise. You can get more noise reduction with temporal noise filtering. But these techniques generally doen't work well with interlaced material. And of course, the result is a blurry image. It's better to avoid the oversharpening in the first place.

Noise is the other issue. This may be a problem of your camera and the low light conditions. Noise really kills MPEG encoding because the method by which MPEG gets the most compression is not reencoding parts of the image that don't change from frame to frame. Lots of noise means lots of changes from frame to frame, and hence, poorer MPEG encoding.