Will a progressive scan MPEG2 work on all DVD Players?

[jnms]

Hi, I am currently making a DVD that will be available commercially. The footage is currently in 1080p, which I will be rendering at PAL DVD resolution.

It seems that when I render the MPEG2 video in Sony Movie Studio - I get the best results when I use 'Progressive Scan'. However, if I decide to use progressive scan - will it still work with all DVD Players?

Many of the people that will be buying this DVD will likely have pretty old equipment.

[edDV]

Hi, I am currently making a DVD that will be available commercially. The footage is currently in 1080p, which I will be rendering at PAL DVD resolution.

It seems that when I render the MPEG2 video in Sony Movie Studio - I get the best results when I use 'Progressive Scan'. However, if I decide to use progressive scan - will it still work with all DVD Players?

Many of the people that will be buying this DVD will likely have pretty old equipment.

Most commercial "PAL" DVD use interlace. Let me explain.

Typical PAL camcorders shoot 1080 50i (50 fields per sec, 25 frames per second)*.

Film source is sped up 24p to 25p, then interlaced for DVD.

Some camcorders shoot 25p. If so you can make a 25p disc but most pros will intelace it to 50i.

In the case of progressive source, both fields are taken from the same progressive frame so you won't see line split. Interlace TV sets will display it 50i. Progressive TV sets will weave the fields back to 25p then frame repeat to 50p or 100p for display.

Note that "PAL" DVD/Blu-Ray discs won't play on most "NTSC" DVD/Blu-Ray players but it will play on computers anywhere.


* Forgot to mention: If your source is 50i (interlace) and if you encode to 25p, Vegas will first deinterlace (blend or interpolate fields) which introduces artifacts before downsize to 720x576. The result is poor to fair depending on the type of source. Better to downsize with avisynth pre-encode.

Best to render interlace 50i for 720x576 50i source. A progressive TV will do a better job at deinterlace. On a computer use a deinterlacing player like WMP, MPCHC or VLC

[jnms]

Ok edDV, thanks for that - some extensive info. there that sure is a big help!

So it seems the method of encoding I use is dependant upon my source material. I will explain a little more about my source.

I am creating an animation from still images. Each image is 1920x1080 and is created in Photoshop and saved as a PNG file. So in essance there isn't any interlacing on those files from what I understand. There is also no source frame rate.

I want to create both a PAL and NTSC DVD, but am starting with the PAL DVD first.

Do you have any recommendations on what encode method I should use? Should I resize the images to PAL and NTSC resolution inside Photoshop (I assume Photoshop will do a better job at resizing than Vegas will)?

Thanks again for the help, it is appreciated!

[edDV]

Ok edDV, thanks for that - some extensive info. there that sure is a big help!

So it seems the method of encoding I use is dependant upon my source material. I will explain a little more about my source.

I am creating an animation from still images. Each image is 1920x1080 and is created in Photoshop and saved as a PNG file. So in essance there isn't any interlacing on those files from what I understand. There is also no source frame rate.

I want to create both a PAL and NTSC DVD, but am starting with the PAL DVD first.

Do you have any recommendations on what encode method I should use? Should I resize the images to PAL and NTSC resolution inside Photoshop (I assume Photoshop will do a better job at resizing than Vegas will)?

Thanks again for the help, it is appreciated!

The additional info is helpful.

Not sure about Vegas Movie Studio but Platinum and Pro can do 1080 25p or 50p project templates and can down scale to either 720x576 25p or 50i. I've shown in another thread that 1080 50p to 720x576 50i and 1080 60p to 720x480 60i work great in in Vegas. I'd need to test 25p to 50i. It should work.

So you can make either a progressive or interlace DVD from progressive source. For "PAL" DVD either should work. As said the pros usually encode 25p as 50i.

The "NTSC" DVD will need to have either a 23.976p or 60i (29.97) frame rate. For the latter you can go 60p project to 60i DVD or 30p project to 60i DVD.

[jnms]

Thanks again for the reply.

So as I have a progressive source, is there any reason to create a interlace DVD?

If I create a progressive DVD for both NTSC and PAL - would there be problems with the DVD working on some players/TVs?

[jagabo]

For PAL DVD encode at 720x576 25p. For NTSC DVD encode at 720x480, 25p, then use DgPulldown to add pulldown flags for 29.97i.

Encoding interlaced will result in artifacts:
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/the-dvd-benchmark/179-the-chroma-upsampling-error-and-t...a-problem.html
See the images in the section entitled "4:2:0 Interlaced: Fundamentally Broken".

[poisondeathray]

So as I have a progressive source, is there any reason to create a interlace DVD?

Unlikely in your case, but it depends on the specifics of your animation

One reason would be if your animation required a high sampling rate, 50Hz or 60Hz

Interlace provides 50 fields per second or 60 fields per second, so motion is rendered smoother. So it's good for things like sports for example.

50p and 60p are not supported by DVD-video, only by blu-ray as 1280x720p50 and 1280x720p60

Are you "burning" this dvd homebrew style, or having it commercially pressed at a replication plant ?

[jnms]

The animation is slow moving cgi - geometric patterns and the like. Lots of very bright and vivid colours:



The DVD will be burnt onto a DVD-R - but that is being done at a distribution plant, which specialises in DVD duplication as opposed to replication.

[edDV]

The animation is slow moving cgi - geometric patterns and the like. Lots of very bright and vivid colours:


[Attachment 9409 - Click to enlarge]

The DVD will be burnt onto a DVD-R - but that is being done at a distribution plant, which specialises in DVD duplication as opposed to replication.

What frame rate is your animation? 25p?

Can it be rendered as 23.976p, 29.97p or 59.94p?

If it is 25p and you just run it 23.976p it will run 4% slow.

[jnms]

The animation can run at any frame-rate...due to the nature of the cgi the animation speed doesn't really matter.

Is there a preferance for 23.976 or 29.97?

Also - one other question (sorry) - as the source material is still images...what field order should I use on the encode? (At the moment I have selected 'Progressive (NONE)' in Vegas. Will this result in jitter?

[pandy]

For PAL i see only one issue - how various DVD player's deal with chroma sampling (different for progressive and for interlaced) - for sure any PAL DVD is able to play 720x576i25, and seems that this is safe fromat, maybe they can deal with 720x576p25 but maybe not. For CGI my advice - render animation with two different frame speeds ie with different numbers of frames - separate for PAL and separate for NTSC - this not a problem these day but it will give You best possible quality.

[jnms]

Thanks pandy. Are you saying that chroma sampling is related to interlacing? (Sorry for the amature questions - I'm pretty new to this, and am reading as much as I can).

Also great advice for the separate NTSC and PAL renderings. I will be sure to do that.

[jagabo]

Are you saying that chroma sampling is related to interlacing?

The link I gave earlier explains 4:2:0 chroma subsampling as it pertains to progressive and interlaced encoding for DVD.

All PAL players support 25p encoding.

With progressive frames encoded as interlaced you can use either field order. It doesn't matter. But top field first is more common.

[edDV]

The animation can run at any frame-rate...due to the nature of the cgi the animation speed doesn't really matter.

Is there a preferance for 23.976 or 29.97?

A "progressive" NTSC DVD needs to be 23.976+pulldown flag.
In Vegas you would spec progressive (no fields), and 23.976 under DVD Architect "24p" MPeg2 templates.



Alternative 2 is render 29.97 fps progressive project then encode interlace 29.97.

Alternative 3 is Jagabo's suggestion 25p with pad fields to interlace 29.97*.

Interlace field order depends on any interlace video source in the timeline. If DV format clips are present, use lower field first. Otherwise use upper field first.


*Best done in avisynth. Not possible in Vegas.

[jagabo]

Progressive NTSC DVD can be any frame rate from 19.98 to 29.97 as long as the appropriate pulldown flags are applied. Though much PC software assumes 23.976 fps and may screw up with other rates. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the advanced deinterlacing and motion processing on HDTVs also screws up with other frame rates since they are less common.

If your computer monitor runs at 60 Hz view the video in this post as an example of the jerkiness of 24p and 30p vs 60p:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/307004-Best-framerate-conversion-%28eg-23-97-to-30-...=1#post1888926

That is something of a worst case example. It's much less obvious with slower motions and faster motions and images with motion blur.

Obviously, you can't encode as 60p for DVD but that will give you an idea of the different smoothness of 30i (with 60 different fields per second) vs 30p vs 24p.

[jnms]

I've been reading that link jagabo, there's a lot to take in...and I have had to start reading another link on that same site that goes into more depth on the nature of interlacing, pulldown and progressive. It's a great site for sure.

So regarding the PAL DVD - I can encoded to Progressive (i.e. choose NONE for field order) and this will work fine on all (most?) PAL DVD Players?

edDV; I've been using the wrong template. That one you show looks to do exactly what I am after. So, if I understand this correctly - Vegas will ecode the NTSC MPEG as progressive (no field order), and then the DVD Player will use the pulldown flags in order to interlace the video if necessary?

EDIT: jagabo; that video shows an insane difference between those frame rates. Really interesting stuff. Fortunatly most of my animations are on the slow side - but there are elements that move fast, and I notice flicker within those elements when encoding with interlace.

[edDV]

...
Also - one other question (sorry) - as the source material is still images...what field order should I use on the encode? (At the moment I have selected 'Progressive (NONE)' in Vegas. Will this result in jitter?

Set project to 1920x1080 25p


For a PAL DVD render you have two choices.

1. Render interlace -- use "DVD Architect PAL Widescreen video stream" template. It defaults to interlace lower field first. You can change that to upper field first optional.

2. Render progressive -- start with template above and change to None (progressive)



I'd render both ways and test in various DVD, Blu-Ray and computer players.

[jnms]

Perfect!

I will give both methods a try - though I expect there is likely to be higher 'compatibility' with using upper field first?

[jagabo]

I expect there is likely to be higher 'compatibility' with using upper field first?

There should be no difference in compatibility.

Interlaced frames contain two half pictures, called fields. They are intended to be viewed separately and sequentially. The field order determines which half picture you see first. With truly interlaced frames flagged with the wrong field order you will get fast-jerky motion because the fields will be seen in the wrong sequence. Instead of 1,2,3,4,5,6... you will see 2,1,4,3,6,5... a "two steps forward one step backward" motion.

When you encode progressive frames as if they are interlaced it doesn't matter which field you see first since both come from the same point in time.

[pandy]

once again my two cents

progressive is good for spatial resolution (full vertical resolution), interlace is good for temporal resolution (much smoother animation at a cost of half vertical resolution) - now it is more what You expect to have or higher resolution or smoother animation - interlace seems to be better from human vision system (for moving objects especially those fast moving our eyes and brain reduce resolution). So i like to use interlace however nowadays interlace is less compatible with modern TV, most of them is not capable to display interlace video due of progressive nature of TV itself - all plasmas(PDP's), LCD's, DLP's etc are progressive displays and to display interlace they must perform deinterlace - quality of deinterlacing is vary (sometimes poor, sometimes good but never perfect).

So if the animation is more like blob type (ie no fine textures, no details, only some colors moving on screen) and motion is a key - go for interlace and render 720x576p50 (if You use as renderer POV Ray there is option to render for interlace - each second line is rendered and next frame it is switched to opposite line to follow fields domination pattern - i don't know is this generally supported in world of renderer's or not), for NTSC it will be 59.94 (precisely 60000/1001) - then interlace such content (AVISynth? not clue about Sony software - it is flexible enough?) and encode as normal interlace, TFF for PAL and BFF for NTSC.

Also what is quite smart - use some blur in vertical for interlace (to be precise blur progressive source that will be converted to interlaced before conversion) - this prevent line flickering at a cost of vertical resolution, i also for CGI prefer to oversample ie i'm rendering higher resolution than target - for example 2x or sometimes even 4 times more ie for 720x576 this will be 1440x1152 or for 16:9 (yes im rendering with square pixels then resize down to anamorphic) it will be 2048x1152 - once again, yes - this is slower but anyway this improve overall quality of video itself - more "analog" less "digital".

[edDV]

To get the smoother 50 fps motion, he would have to render frames 50p.

Vegas does a good job downsizing and encoding 50p/60p to interlace DVD.

[pandy]

Nope, to have smoother motion video on DVD, he need to render 50p and then re-interlace to produce 25i, for NTSC he need to render "59.94p" then reinterlace and encode "29.97i" thats all.

[jagabo]

Nope, to have smoother motion video on DVD, he need to render 50p and then re-interlace to produce 25i,

What do you mean "Nope"? That's exactly what edDV said.

[pandy]

i mean that edTV said - render this as p50 and encode this as a p50 - without explicit conversion from progressive to interlaced it means that video software can take half frames and produce from this p25 coded as interlace.

if i understand wrongly then i apologize

[jagabo]

edDV said "Vegas does a good job downsizing and encoding 50p/60p to interlace DVD." So he said exactly the same thing you are saying.

[pandy]

jagabo - thus my apologies - it was not clear for me that Vegas is "smart" enough to do this correctly or not - nowadays im watching each day, in serious public broadcasters channels very frequently video with wrong field order - mostly advertisements but not only - knowledge about interlace fading - people use automatic tools but seems that those tools are not "smart" enough thus i never rely on "magic" software and thus my nope.

[edDV]

I'll copy the test here:

Source was a PBS 1280x720/60p MPeg2 broadcast captured direct as mts.

I decoded the MPeg2 to Sony YUV 4:2:2 codec (720 60p uncompressed project).

Then I exported a clip to 480i DVD at 9500 kbps CBR ("render as" 720x480, 29.97, upper field first)

The upper picture is a frame capture of the 720x480i render. After 60p->60i conversion, both fields are distinct as they should be.

I then played the 480i file in my Sony BVP player and stepped through frame by frame at 60p (post deinterlace) and could see all fields converted back to frames. The lower picture was recorded off the BVP composite output as a sample of the deinterlace.


[Attachment 8347 - Click to enlarge]
click on picture to see full size

What this shows is Vegas Pro 10e can properly convert 60p to DVD 480 60i. It also shows a good progressive DVD/Blu-Ray player or HDTV can convert the resulting 480 60i back to 60p.


PS: Here is the other field from the Blu-Ray player.


[Attachment 8348 - Click to enlarge]

[pandy]

edTV please accept my apologies - ads forBlackOps, Battlefield III and few other examples - US (NTSC) software produce PAL with BFF but broadcast equipment is TFF - i saw this so many times - US software ignore (or to be more preciously it is NTSC/US centric point of view) so frequently Europe (settings, profiles etc) that i rather prefer made everything step by step than relaying on... automatic functions.

[jagabo]

The upper picture is a frame capture of the 720x480i render. After 60p->60i conversion, both fields are distinct as they should be.

I then played the 480i file in my Sony BVP player and stepped through frame by frame at 60p (post deinterlace) and could see all fields converted back to frames. The lower picture was recorded off the BVP composite output as a sample of the deinterlace.


[Attachment 8347 - Click to enlarge]
click on picture to see full size

Too bad VLC has screwed up the chroma channels in the interlaced shot! It's interpreting interlaced chroma as progressive chroma. But that's a VLC problem, not a problem with the encoding.

[edDV]

Chroma wasn't controlled for this test. The point was progressive to interlace back to progressive worked.

In the process, chroma was converted several times.

ATSC 4:2:0 decoded to 4:2:2
then encoded back to 4:2:0 DVD MPeg2

Then the Blu-Ray player out was composite NTSC just for capture convenience.