HELP! Taking HD videos from the iPad's screen to SD DVD

[aliagha77]

Hello everyone, I’m having a huge problem with taking HD video clips ive recorded off my iPad’s screen and burning them to SD DVD. The quality that it puts out is horrible when it comes to the text.

Below is a link to each available option that I can recordmy videos in from the iPad. They are 5 second clips for the most part just togive an example. They are in portrait orientation and made using the ReflectionApp.


http://www.filefactory.com/file/10ls6l7c57t9/n/13_1920x1080actnb_mov

http://www.filefactory.com/file/1a4akccgjv1/n/7_640x960st_mov

http://www.filefactory.com/file/234xrjrsm4od/n/11_1280x720st_mov

http://www.filefactory.com/file/2lhflq3mlq9n/n/9_1024x768st_mov

http://www.filefactory.com/file/39hk3r9iznw5/n/2_ipad_768x1024_mp4

http://www.filefactory.com/file/3a1qswtctpfb/n/8_640x960wb_mov

http://www.filefactory.com/file/3crf2vv0z5gt/n/3_hi-res_540x720_mp4

http://www.filefactory.com/file/3h4ykjzo07o9/n/4_any_device_540x720_mp4

http://www.filefactory.com/file/3jxahei5jslt/n/10_1024x768wb_mov

http://www.filefactory.com/file/3kywo1i2ak57/n/6_320x480wb_mov

http://www.filefactory.com/file/5qzsh884wcxn/n/14_1920x1080st_mov

http://www.filefactory.com/file/6lk4ejhaejyn/n/5_320x480st_mov

http://www.filefactory.com/file/7bvufjddia6d/n/15_1920x1080wb_mov

http://www.filefactory.com/file/n60szig3vn3/n/12_1280x720wb_mov


Now what im trying to do is create a DVD in widescreenformat to have a background image that is 720x480 which has an iPad’s “outerframe” in portrait orientation and play my video inside of that frame. So thevideo would have to be resized to something like 300x400. Now, the graphicscome out “pretty decent” but the text is just unreadable and looks horrible.

A friend of mine is helping me with this part of the processand has access to Sony Vegas, After effects & premier to encode it.

Anyone have any insight how I can accomplish this and getthe best possible picture on a DVD so that the text is clear? Or is this justnot possible to resize down that much and still have the text look decent?Should I forget about the background image and just have the video fit insidethe 720x480 its self with the dead space to the left and right? Or use 4:3format for the encoding? Or my other option is to record it in landscape modein 1440 x 1080 like the link below.


http://www.filefactory.com/file/2r1zrivgqmb/n/video2_mov

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thank you

[hech54]

"DVD" isn't MOV or MP4....it's MPEG2. Going from the iPad clips to MOV or MP4, then going to DVD is just an extra quality-killing, time-wasting step.

[aliagha77]

Well the format that the Reflections App records is .mov & .mp4 I have no control over that. So it must be converted to MPEG2...

[hech54]

Well the format that the Reflections App records is .mov & .mp4 I have no control over that. So it must be converted to MPEG2...

Never heard of "Reflections"....just copy and paste the iPad videos to your computer and convert them to MPEG2....then author the clips to DVD specs.
And..."HD" is probably THE most misused term of the past 10 years. You're not going to get real HD quality through a lens that is the size of your pinky finger nail I'm afraid.

[aliagha77]

Well the reflections app doesn't use any of the camera's of the ipad to record. Instead what its doing and Im doing is mirroring and recording whats happening on my screen on the pc or mac as I mentioned, so when the recordings done, I have a file already saved on my computer in either .mp4 or .mov depdning if I use a pc or mac. I do have some controls over the resolution that it is putting the video out, but that's about it.

So when we do convert it to MPEG2 & and resize them to fit in the area of the screen within the ipad frame, and author them to DVD ntsc dv widescreen the text is unfortunately unreadable on the finished DVD.

Im pretty sure its a resizing issue, but cant figure out how to solve the problem so that the text is legible...as the graphics and other things look decent enough.

[aedipuss]

the only source that i'd use is the last one, 1440x1080. the one you call 1920x1080 is actually 810x1080 and vfr, and i assume the rest are as weird. the vegas produced mpv from the video2.mov isn't too bad.

[aliagha77]

Aedipuss, yea one note on that...it "says" that's what the resolution will be but you're 100% correct it's output is something totally different, sorry for neglecting to mention that. These were all recorded in the vertical orientation and the video2 was in horizontal "1920x1080" which gave out 1440x1080.

When i view that file you attached on my laptop it doesnt seem too clear, but I know it will show up bigger/more clear on a 720x480 DVD. Could you take a screen shot of what it would look like at that resolution? I dont have the software on my laptop to convert it to a .iso and view it that way on my dvd player... and would it be possible to compare that to one of the 810x1080 vertical format ones?

Im guessing that you resized it to something lie 360x480?

Thanks for your help.

[aedipuss]

here's the video2.mpv screenshot. it's not as clear as the original as any rendering causes losses in quality.


i didn't resize it at all, i let vegas do that when it rendered to mpeg2. i didn't save any of the others. there isn't any way to make them clearer going from highly compressed mpeg4 to mpeg2. you would need a way to do your screen captures in dvd spec mpeg2 or an uncompressed/ lossless codec like huffyuv to make them better.

[poisondeathray]

Aedipuss - I think if you rendered it full frame (instead of pillarboxed 16:9) and progressive it would be more clear



aligha77 -

What is the context of this project? What is it about ? What message are you trying to convey , or what goal ?

And why DVD ?

Is it necessary to display entire screen of the ipad always?

What people do for DVD (or any SD project) is "creative editing". Having an HD source allows you to show only parts of the screen at any point in time . ie. You can "reframe the image" - e.g you can pan over sections, zoom into areas that you want to show. This way everything is completely legible .

Viewers might not even know this is supposed to be an ipad unless the model or border is actually visible in the frame (I think this is what you were referring to as "outerframe" in the 1st post). So you might begin with a wider establishing shot that shows the entire frame including the device (ipad), then zoom in to parts of the screen as the video plays, showing the critical areas (e.g. if this was an advertisement for a web store, pan over the logo slowly etc... ) . The actual video itself (the one you took) is motion tracked into screen of the model ipad, so you can orbit around the ipad or include that into other animations - whatever to get your point across. Everyone and their dog has seen "ipad" type commercials - surely you know what I'm referring to?. It's quite simple to do with after effects, and your friend that uses AE should know how to do this

[aedipuss]

Aedipuss - I think if you rendered it full frame (instead of pillarboxed 16:9) and progressive it would be more clear

hehe yeah but then it wouldn't be widescreen dvd compliant mpeg-2 like he wants.

[poisondeathray]

Aedipuss - I think if you rendered it full frame (instead of pillarboxed 16:9) and progressive it would be more clear

hehe yeah but then it wouldn't be widescreen dvd compliant mpeg-2 like he wants.

ahhh missed that requirement

I know aedipus knows this - But then I'm going to say that's a bad requirement. You have more "active area" pixels with 4:3 full frame when using 4:3 content . It's still going to be pillarboxed when viewed on a 16:9 HDTV, the TV will put the pillar bars on (assuming you don't want to distort or stretch the image) . Instead of wasting encoded pixels on black bars, that might as well be put to clearer text IMO.



But you can still make it progressive eitherway - Higher effective resolution and 29.97p is legal for DVD, and since the source is 30.0 FPS it makes sense

[aliagha77]

Hey Poisondeathray....yea my main goal was to display the entire screen and that seems to be the big issue with clarity of the text due to resizing, we just tried to play the hd video on the computer and do a screen capture using a lossless codec like aedipus mentioned but it didnt seem to look much better.

We've tried both the 4:3 and widescreen format and that didnt helpt the quality of the text...ive attached a screen shot of what were trying to get it to fit in.

Like you say when we zoom in to an area it gets pretty clear, but when its displaying the entire screen (like 90% of what we need to do) it looks very poor...

[aedipuss]

you keep saying "we", if this is for a professional video then ditch the screen captures and have the creative folk make up look alike ipad screens in illustrator or photoshop and then animate them together.

[aliagha77]

Yes we (me and my friend)....are trying to demo an app which will show text and graphics, so we'd like to just capture the demo's off the screen it would be too difficult to do the animations that way, plus our budget wont allow anything like that...

[poisondeathray]

We've tried both the 4:3 and widescreen format and that didnt helpt the quality of the text...ive attached a screen shot of what were trying to get it to fit in.

If you're using 4:3 content , like the last video "video2.mov" , then 4:3 will definitely help. You have more pixels that represent text . This is plain math.

Sorry - I don't understand what this screen shot is supposed to show? Is this the framing that you want? The ipad is in portrait mode, but you're viewing 16:9 TV ?

IMO, the portrait mode of ipad is way more "sexy" than the landscape mode. But DVD only support 4:3 and 16:9 . Portrait is about 0.8:1. It's going to be the absolute worst for clarity on a DVD

[aedipuss]

how about shooting it as live video. a dslr with a short 35mm or 50mm lens between the person and the ipad, green screen backdrop so you can add a background later.

[aliagha77]

Poison...I think from the test that we have done 4:3 would be the way to go for the video inside the ipad. With the image, yes thats an example of a background we'd use with a frame of an ipad...and place the video footage inside of it. We'd like to keep the ipad in portrait mode for the most part.

4:3 does seem to be a little better for the text, but still there's alot of loss of quality from start to finish. I've seen such examples of the ipads text looking much more clear, is there any way to take an .iso file and see how the raw file was encoded off of that?

[aliagha77]

aedipuss...ive thought about doing something like that as a last resort but alot of editing would have to be done, perhaps record with the edited video playing on the ipad against the greeen screen would be the last option.

I was just hoping for an easier way to do this...

[poisondeathray]

Poison...I think from the test that we have done 4:3 would be the way to go for the video inside the ipad. With the image, yes thats an example of a background we'd use with a frame of an ipad...and place the video footage inside of it. We'd like to keep the ipad in portrait mode for the most part.

But is it going to be at that distance? Or are you going to zoom in ? (are you going to show it that far away?)

4:3 does seem to be a little better for the text, but still there's alot of loss of quality from start to finish. I've seen such examples of the ipads text looking much more clear, is there any way to take an .iso file and see how the raw file was encoded off of that?

Of course there is a lot of quality loss, that's expected and normal

Are you sure in those examples that their framing is the same? Showing the whole screen ? Or are they doing what I suggested earlier?

You can mount the iso (e.g. virtual clone drive, daemon tools), and rip it with something like DVD shrink, DVD decrypter. If it's newer and copy protected you might need DVD Fab or Any DVD





The screen captures aren't the problem. The problem is trying to show 100% of the ipad screen in a 720x480 frame. Small text is always a problem with any DVD. Even more with interlaced DVD. The limiting factor is SD resolution, not the capture quality or anything else. You can use 100% computer generated RGB graphics and small text will still look like sh!t

If you're insistent on showing the entire screen, the best you can do is fit 4:3 content in a 4:3 frame (this way 100% of the pixels are used towards the actual content instead of a fraction) . (or 16:9 content in a 16:9 frame, but you don't have 16:9 content in any of the options)

Here is a few seconds of the 4:3 content with a 4:3 720x480 DVD compatible progressive stream . It's oversharpened on purpose to make the text more legible (you normally wouldn't do this) . It's still crappy, but you won't get much more clearer on a DVD than using full frame, progressive

In theory, an interlaced (content and encoded) DVD shouldn't be that much of a deteriment with static text (with hardware deinterlacers that do adaptive deinterlacing, they are supposed to weave progressive content), but in practice , almost everything gets deinterlaced with a 59.94i DVD (not counting telecined DVD's), thus the resolution becomes even lower, text even more illegible => It's almost mandatory to use progressive for something like this.




Sorry to be blunt, but if you're trying to promote an app that displays text and graphics - you're just shooting yourself in the foot. You usually want to "sell" the app. This is basic marketing. Show off the positives - why would a potential client want to buy this?. Or why would an investor invest in this app? If it's blurry text on the DVD (especially for an application geared at displaying text), it's going to be a major put off.

And I have to ask again, why DVD? Even crappy youtube HD will look 100x better for promoting this. It's the resolution that's killing you.

[aliagha77]

I'd say we'd probably zoom in 30 - 40% of the time, and it does look alot more clear in those instances, but a majority of it will be showing the full screen.

That looks pretty sharp at 720x480 but would something like work in a portrait format inside of the ipad frame were looking to put it in? Im not sure i follow you on the mounting the iso....(sorry, i have 1/10 the knowledge you guys have on this matter, please bear with me...) the iso i have in the link below had the best clarity, but we weren't able to replicate it again after doing about 30-40 tests. Is there anyway to see what was done to it? its using that same video2 file, but ultimately we'd like to resize things and use portrait style footage vs. landscape...

http://www.filefactory.com/file/5zvl8l589wth/n/test_video2.iso

[poisondeathray]

I'd say we'd probably zoom in 30 - 40% of the time, and it does look alot more clear in those instances, but a majority of it will be showing the full screen.

But full screen and zoomed out, like with your screenshot? (with the the person holding the ipad, the hands etc..)?

Are we on the same page here? Are you replacing the screen of the ipad with your screenshot video? Or are you showing the actual video only?

It will be even less legible framed with the person holding the ipad - this is zoomed way out

When I mentioned zooming in earlier, I meant more than 100% zoom. I meant a portion of the ipad screen

That looks pretty sharp at 720x480 but would something like work in a portrait format inside of the ipad frame were looking to put it in?

Not for DVD, because portrait is about 0.8:1 aspect ratio. You're only going a fraction of the available pixels (the rest will be black borders)

Im not sure i follow you on the mounting the iso....(sorry, i have 1/10 the knowledge you guys have on this matter, please bear with me...) the iso i have in the link below had the best clarity, but we weren't able to replicate it again after doing about 30-40 tests. Is there anyway to see what was done to it? its using that same video2 file, but ultimately we'd like to resize things and use portrait style footage vs. landscape...



http://www.filefactory.com/file/5zvl8l589wth/n/test_video2.iso

I check it out and report back

[aliagha77]

Yea with the zoom we were thinking about very close to the actual image you see...i believe my friend has it in 1440x960 then has it all resized together to fit the 720 x 480 size.

[poisondeathray]

http://www.filefactory.com/file/5zvl8l589wth/n/test_video2.iso

This is done approximately the same way, but he's used slightly different resizing (based on 704px width + pillarbars , instead of 720px width - don't worry about the details, but there are ITU and non ITU resizing methods, but it's a fairly big "geeky" topic)

Also, it's not sharpened , and he's converted it to 23.976p with soft pulldown flags

He's also used 16:9 flags instead of 4:3

Here are the non-PAR corrrected (1:1 screenshots, not with the aspect ratio correction)

[poisondeathray]

ultimately we'd like to resize things and use portrait style footage vs. landscape...

I agree "portrait" is way better looking in terms of style and "coolness" factor, but for DVD, you won't be able to do it (and be legible) . Simply because it "won't fit" into DVD standards. You would have to scale it way down to fit the entire ipad (you will be filled with encoded black borders, a waste of pixels)

Here is the non PAR corrected (i.e. 1:1 screenshots) of what it would "portrait" would look like (and for comparision "landscape" although it' s isn't the same screen you get a rough idea of "legibility" (these are non sharpened):

[aedipuss]

the cartoonish arms you are using suck, along with the fake blurry beach background. not to mention trying to match screen captures into a handheld tilted ipad screen is going to be a nightmare. i'd give live with a canon 5d mkII/III & a 35 or 50mm lens a try. with proper lighting and a green-screen backdrop it should turn out a1. someone there has to have girlfriend with decent forearms/hands...

[poisondeathray]

the cartoonish arms you are using suck, along with the fake blurry beach background.

someone there has to have girlfriend with decent forearms/hands...

Haha maybe he should hire aedipuss as a hand/arm model for his 24" pythons!

not to mention trying to match screen captures into a handheld tilted ipad screen is going to be a nightmare.

This part is actually not too bad . Screen replacements are bread and butter stuff for mocha/AE. Plenty of tutorials on how to do this

i'd give live with a canon 5d mkII/III & a 35 or 50mm lens a try. with proper lighting and a green-screen backdrop it should turn out a1.

I agree, if that's the "background" with lighting and set design... it's not ideal

[aliagha77]

lol @ aedipuss....the arms aren't too manly huh??

Poison, thanks for all your help...so perhaps we should just stick to landscape format because of that? So what exactly should I tell him to do if you would outline the encoding steps you think he went through?

[poisondeathray]

Poison, thanks for all your help...so perhaps we should just stick to landscape format because of that? So what exactly should I tell him to do if you would outline the encoding steps you think he went through?

Can you clarify a few things first? I'm still confused at what you're doing

What is the DVD role in all this? The iso you posted was only the screen capture video 1:1 (it wasn't the hand model or anything else)

What is the final product or deliverable here? Do you have "cartoon arms" modelling the ipad with a screen replacement with the background ? is that what the DVD is supposed to be ? So are you going to have Mr/Ms.Arms holding it in landscape instead with the beach background ? Is that only going to be the initial "establishing shot" before you show it 1:1 or is that the majority of the framing for the video ? With that sort of framing , small text will never be legible on a DVD - It's barely legible when it's at 100%. So it doesn't matter what you do.

If you're only using this for the screen replacement video portion - you don't do anything. You don't make a dvd. You leave the video as is and let the compositor handle it


It's important you understand the differences in creating the DVD:

-He's flagged the ISO 16:9 so the content will be stretched to fill an HDTV (things will be stretched out, people will look fatter, a circle will look like an oval etc...) . 4:3 content should be pillarboxed when viewed on a 16:9 display (it should have been flagged 4:3, and the HDTV would put the pillarbox on)

-He's interpreted the frame rate as 23.976p (if you had accompanying audio recording for this app, maybe the model is hitting the buttons etc.. - it would be out of sync since the source was 30.0 fps) . If there is no audio, then it doesn't matter, it will just play slower

To do this you just resize to either 720x480 or 704x480 (with pillarbox if you want it exactly like the way the iso was done)

[aliagha77]

Poison, the demo's on dvd will be used at convention shows to pass out to people. The hand / beach background are examples of what we might use so we are leaning towards that format of some background not necessairly a beach one...and some hands to show tap this, tap that, etc... as for the final product i think we'll use some background like you saw taking up the full height / width, along with animated hands to show taps etc, and the video footage to play inside of that ipads's frame.

I'd like to demo it in Portrait mode as you said it looks better that way. But you think that the text will not be legible at all in that format? I spoke with my buddy and what he explained to me is that he's taking everything at 1440 x 960 size (background / hands / and the video's)

What I cant understand is when I take the 640 x 960 video and resized it to 50%...on the pc this looks fine and legible and is 320x480...so if we put that on to DVD how would it get distorted to the point where the text is not readable? This would fit well in the ipad frame that we have.

Thanks for the instructions with the iso file, i'll email that over to him.

[poisondeathray]

I'd like to demo it in Portrait mode as you said it looks better that way. But you think that the text will not be legible at all in that format? I spoke with my buddy and what he explained to me is that he's taking everything at 1440 x 960 size (background / hands / and the video's)


What I cant understand is when I take the 640 x 960 video and resized it to 50%...on the pc this looks fine and legible and is 320x480...so if we put that on to DVD how would it get distorted to the point where the text is not readable? This would fit well in the ipad frame that we have.

Yes, I mean stylistic/artistically it looks better (of course that's just opinion)

Small text won't be very legible on a DVD. Period. Did you look at post #24? That's without the ipad frame (just the screen) so it would actually be smaller than that (and if you have motion, the model moving it around, it will even be smaller)

All ipad generations are 4:3 width:height when in landscape , they use "square pixels" so the AR is 1.333. If you rotate it 90 degrees to portrait, it's 3:4 width:height or the AR is 0.75 . Sure, the newest gen ipad has higher resolution (2048x1536), but the AR is the same (2048/1536 = 1.333). DVD only uses 4:3 and 16:9. That's it. DVD's don't use "square pixels" so the stored image is actually distorted. When playing back, the image is "stretched" back so it looks "normal" . Above I posted "non PAR corrected" images - this means the images are shown as they are encoded and stored, not in the aspect ratio that they will be seen.

The "square pixel equivalent" for a 16:9 DVD would be 854x480 (the 720x480 is "stretched" to those dimensions), thus everything is the proper shape (circles look like circles, people don't look too tall & skinny or short & fat) . Of course when preparing the DVD, you have to know all this (square pixels, PAR corrections, I'm sure your friend knows all this) So I posted the PAR corrected portrait example below, can you read the text clearly?

You can design your video to get around these limitations (e.g. use content with larger text, show only parts of the ipad when text viewing is critical) . I don't think text is very legible when you show the entire screen, certainly it's worse than landscape when you force it to fit DVD's limitations