HD to SD - 2-Pop Forums

cward · 10-24-2009, 01:07 PM

Just completed a 50sec project with lots of text and moving stills over a moving background. Looks perfect on Blu-Ray, but when authored on DVD it looks worse than I have encountered before. The text loses its sharp edge...
and the moving stills (in a box over a moving bg) tear slightly during their moves. I created the project on a pro res timeline...720p 16x9...square pixels.
The QT movie export was pro-res HQ. I tried other compressions, but the DVD still is lackluster...
I used toast 9 for dvd creation. Also tried compressor with no better results.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Carl Ward
Twelve Palms Productions
Destin, FL

BenB · 10-24-2009, 05:01 PM

I go from DVCPRO-HD to SD via Compressor's presets to make my MPEG and AAC files, then author in DVD Studio Pro. I get great results. I can't vouch for Toast, never used it to "author" a DVD before, just to burn them from the Build I do in DVDSP.

cward · 10-25-2009, 05:57 AM

Thanks as always for the timely response..
A few things...

I needed to put the moving stills in a box over an animated bg, so I created each of the still sequences as a separate movie...then imported them into the project and resized them to fit over the animated bg. When the keyframe moves did not fit exactly, I changed the speed of the movies, one from 100% to 50%. I used a Live type font with a spotlight effect for the titles, but after importing them into the project, I also re-sized them. I also used several logos imported from photoshop, but did all the key frame moves and resizing in the main project.
As, I said, the final product in blu-ray is great, but I am wondering if all the above changes would have had an effect on the dvd sd ws version?

Carl Ward
Twelve Palms Productions
Destin, FL

chrihu · 04-26-2010, 06:37 AM

cward, you probably solved your problem in the meantime - sorry, but I only saw your post now.
I don't know if it helps, but I can tell you what I did for the best results:
After having finished the HD Project in FCP I played it back to the HD camcorder (I have an HDV Sony Camcorder). Then I turned the output conversion HDV to DV on and recorded a .mov file which I converted in compressor the usual way for DVD.
I got a much better result that trying to convert either in FCP or Compressor.

BenB · 04-28-2010, 07:03 AM

In some HD formats, I've seen that a size change needs to take place before the SD MPEG-2 encode. In fact one of my largest consulting clients had a similar problem with going directly from native AVC-Intra to NTSC for DVD authoring. Compressor can in fact take care of this issue quickly.

In FCP, "Send To" Compressor. Set up Compressor to simply make an NTSC version of a QT movie (in the presets window, type "NTSC" into the Search field). Then, with that NTSC encode job highlighted, go to the Job menu, select "New Job with Target output" This creates a new job that is "chained" from the first. The Source file icon will be a pair of chain links. It'll take the output from the first, and process it. Make that chained job your MPEG-2 encode. You'll get the same results as letting your camera do the down-conversion, you'll save time, and maintain image quality.

cward · 04-29-2010, 05:53 PM

Thanks Ben...
I'm not sure how this old post re-emerged but I appreciate the response. One mo thing.....
I get what you are telling about chaining in Compressor. But in going from HD 16x9 to SD DVD 4x3 I need to letterbox the video. I know I can do that directly from FCP, but is there a way to do it in compressor with the settings you prescribe? I know I can change the frame size in compressor, but obviously I want to keep all the video content in proper aspect ratio, thus the letterboxing.
Thanks again...

BenB · 04-29-2010, 08:11 PM

Yes, very easy in Compressor, and IMHO, WAY better quality results than letting FCP do it in Sequences. One of several ways to do this would be to take your HD video, apply the plain "DV NTSC" preset to it. In the Geometry pane you could set Source Cropping to 16x9 to keep the "source" as is.
Frame Size to 720x480.
Pixel Aspect to NTSC CCIR 601/DV
Set Output Padding to "Preserve source aspect ratio" (which should automatically give you the 60 pixel top, and 60 pixel bottom letterbox black area padding).

There are other ways to do this. This is sort of a manual way to do it.

If you're changing frame rates, too, make sure to set up Frame Control drop-downs for "Best", the rest should be self explanatory, mostly. Will take longer to encode, because those "Best" settings make Optical Flow kick in (like in Shake and Motion), but give you best quality.