Using 24p correctly

I have been using the Canon 7D and progressive footage this past year, I have had mixed emotions about it. I have not used 24p or any flavor of progressive footage (I am from the US, BTW, and have been using HDV 1080i60 for the past 6 years). I am still learning, and that's why I'm posting now.

My opinion of the footage from the 7D is that it looks awesome on the computer/internet, it looks awesome on a Blu-ray, it looks pretty good on a SD DVD on a LCD TV, and it doesn't look very good on a SD-DVD on a tube TV.

I now understand that most hollywood DVDs are 24p with players adding the pulldown and interlacing, which is good to know.

However, in my experience, my 7D with 24p on a DVD does not look nearly as good as a typical hollywood DVD. My footage on a tube TV looks like a cheap film effect...it has the strobe/flicker look to it, which the hollywood DVDs don't have.

Someone on another board said "Should I train myself to like strobing video and call it a film effect?", because that's how I feel too. I don't think it looks as good and I have to pretend that it does.

I don't think I'm doing anything wrong in the conversion process from h.264 to ProRes...I am using the same method and settings (even Final Cut Pro settings) that many respectable people on this board recommend. However, I have only seen samples of their work online, where my stuff looks just as good.

Is there something in the DVD compression/authoring process that needs to be done differently than I have been doing for years with my interlaced footage. I use Compressor's presets for DVD encoding (DVD Best Settings 90 minutes or 120 minutes), and I just drop those files into DVD Studio Pro without changing any settings or doing anything different. Is there somewhere where I need to tell Compressor or DVDSP that it is 24p and it would handle it correctly?

I watched the House finale that was shot on 5DMKII cameras, and watched it both on an HDTV and a tube TV, and they both looked fantastic...so what am I doing wrong? I assume that if this were a problem, everybody would be complaining about it, and since that's not happening, I think it's an issue of people like me who are not experienced with using progressive footage correctly.

Is it just as simple as converting the 7D footage to ProRes (24p) and editing on a 24p timeline, export to Compressor using the DVD presets, and simply importing into DVDSP the same way as I do with my 1080i60 footage, or am I missing some critical step here which makes my DVDs look like they have a cheap film effect applied? Is there something in the encoding/authoring process where it tells the video to keep it at 24p and let the DVD player add the pulldown and interlacing?

Any thoughts/help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Casey Petersen

Motion blur, correct application of dof, good blocking and good lighting scheme.



www.strypesinpost.com

I need to be applying motion blur?! Like in the Motion tab? Is that the secret?

I uploaded a short sample of a DVD that I made that shows my attempt at 24p. It looks like it's in slow motion, but it isn't.

It's 45mb and you can download a ZIP file of my VIDEO_TS folder here

I would appreciate it if someone would burn it to DVD, look at it on a tube TV and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks!
Casey

Do you honestly think that "typical hollywood dvd's" are made using FCP and compressor?


CaseyPetersen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> However, in my experience, my 7D with 24p on a DVD
> does not look nearly as good as a typical
> hollywood DVD. My footage on a tube TV looks like
> a cheap film effect...it has the strobe/flicker
> look to it, which the hollywood DVDs don't have.
>
> Thanks!
> Casey Petersen

Well no...but I would think that it would look better than a cheap film effect. Is that what's making the significant difference here?

I suppose if the problem is only when it's on standard def DVDs, then I suppose that would be the process in question. What are other people using to get better results? I suppose the price range is pretty steep for the stuff hollywood is using.

Maybe my expectations are too high...or maybe I like the video look too much!

Actually, what I would like is for some people to look at my example and say that this is exactly what it's supposed to look like, or that I'm doing something wrong (all signs are pointing to me doing it right, though).

Thanks!
Casey

>Do you honestly think that "typical hollywood dvd's" are made using FCP and
>compressor?

What's wrong with offlining on FCP? If you shot h.264, you dont have to finish on dpx.

Shoot it like film. Try to avoid having fast moving objects too close to the camera, watch your tilt downs and pans. You have a light glow on the floor! Don't go handheld on the 5D. If your 5D costs you a hundred bucks a minute to roll, would you plan those shots?



www.strypesinpost.com

Casey Petersen, if your results look good except on tube TV, then why worry? Who watches DVDs on tube TVs today?
But I share your curiosity: if Hollywood DVDs are 24p and your DVDs are 24p and each relies on the players to "telecine" them, then why does your 24p look worse in terms of "strobe/flicker" (which is probably telecine judder) than Hollywood's? Strypes' suggestion that Hollywood's slick cinematography affects perceptions even where it shouldn't may partly answer this, but telecine judder was originally observed on Hollywood films sent to television.
An interesting experiment is to bypass the player and produce your own 60i from the 24p. Compressor's "optical flow" algorithm is pretty feeble but try Motion's. Convert the frame rate from 24 to 60 using Motion and then use Compressor for the brainless 60p -> 60i conversion. The "strobe/flicker" should disappear, but there will be some slimy morphy artifacting in its place.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Strypes...what is dpx?

dcouzin...I am playing devil's advocate for the lowest common denominator...I don't know what all of our customers have, but yes, tube TVs are on the way out. Interesting theory with Motion...I'll have to try that tomorrow, perhaps. I have had issues with Compressor in the past with going from HDV to DVD...the quality is better if I master to HDV tape and roll the footage into a standalone DVD recorder, than using Compressor to take my HDV and downconvert to standard def. MPEG-2. I did several tests along with a local Apple dealer and we concluded that the problem is in the downconvert to 720x480. I can tweak Compressor's settings and double/triple the encoding time to get similar results with my standalone DVD recorder method.

Anyway, I wonder if this is a similar issue with downconverting the 1920x1080 footage to 720x480.

Again, the footage looks excellent everywhere but DVD.

Am I one of the few remaining people who are still authoring to DVD? Is everyone else just doing Blu-ray, broadcast or internet?

Thanks!
Casey

You need to really set up your system properly for video monitoring.

I played your DVD, but I turned off the music, and it didn't look well shot and you could tell a lot of it was hand held. Like I said, 24p is not a run and gun format.



www.strypesinpost.com

>I did several tests along with a local Apple dealer and we concluded that the
>problem is in the downconvert to 720x480.

What Apple dealer? If you're talking about those kids that sell macs at the apple store, you're barking up the wrong tree. Upload a 5 sec source clip. Then compress it in your DVD player, demux it and upload the mpeg2.



www.strypesinpost.com

Nope, this wasn't an Apple store...this is a pro video support company that is also an Apple dealer.

I saved a sample DVD I made a few months ago. I'm kind of busy with actual work stuff now, but I can try to get an image file of that sometime. It was a side by side comparison with different workflows with Compressor and also with my DVD recorder.

This existing DVD was not intended to be 24p...it happened to be left on that setting from the last project I had recently done a video test that was not run and gun, it was all setup shots outdoors with tripod and little or no movement, that was the other 24p project I did (so I have 2 under my belt). I saw the same issues with that on DVD as well...I don't think the fact that this one was handheld is the defining factor in this problem, whether it's a real technical problem or just me being unaccustomed to this look.

Thanks!
Casey

Just curious, what is your shutter speed set to?



www.strypesinpost.com

CaseyPetersen: SD DVD is still a viable medium here in Europe (PAL being nicer than NTSC). I have frequently to convert 1920x1080 to 720x576, and the scaling software (or hardware) makes a big difference. Compressor, regardless of its Frame Control settings and long run times, is a mediocre rescaler. Innobits Video Purifier does it better. I have serious issues with Video Purifier, but it's still a boon to making a good looking DVD. Denoising with Video Purifier before feeding to Compressor to make the mpeg-2, reduces mpeg-2 artifacts.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Strypes - the shutter is 1/50
dcouzin - very interesting...I will look into that.

Hopefully sometime today I can post my sample DVD of the HDV test using different encoding methods.

Thanks!
Casey

Here is the link to download my HDV DVD test I made last year. I actually had to trim the clips down to be a reasonable size for uploading, so there may be a little glitch where I made my edit, and there is no audio, either.

The first one is Compressor Top, which when you look at the clip's inspector under Native Field Dominance, it says Top (which it is supposed to be, since it is 1080i60 -- Sony Z1U). If you look at the fine details on the graphic, as well as on the diagonal parts of the video (for instance, the model's shoulders), you will see jaggies.

The second one is Compressor Prog, which is the same as Compressor Top, except I changed the Native Field Dominance to be Progressive. You can see that the jaggies are gone and that the graphic looks good, but the video obviously has the progressive look (whether or not that is desirable or not seems to be personal choice)

The third on is edited in FCP in HDV 1080i60 with top field dominant...which is the default for the clip. The clip is edited and put back to tape using Firewire. The tape is then put to a Panasonic DVD recorder through Firewire, and switching the FW output on the camera from HDV to DV (letting the camera do the scaling). The DVD is demuxed into MPEG-2 and authored in DVD Studio Pro. There are no major jaggies in this example either.

The Compressor ones were encoded using the DVD Best Quality 90 minutes setting with no changes to the settings. I have since done experiments with the frame controls, and the differences are there, but the graphics are never as clean as when I switch the field dominance to progressive, or using my DVD recorder.

So I'm wondering if the scaling is an issue with this 24p project as well.

Thanks!
Casey

>but the graphics are never as clean as when I switch the field dominance to progressive

Graphics are usually progressive and are easier to down scale than interlaced material.



www.strypesinpost.com