Continued tech issues...well, it ain't field dominance.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

If you're a vidder and plan to work with the Due South DVDs, or you work on a Mac and have questions about DVDxDV's more arcane settings, the following may be of interest. Otherwise, feel free to move on.



I made a test DVD including six versions of the action-packed climax of "A Cop, a Mountie, and a Baby" which I had clipped using DVDxDV, changing the settings each time. Here's what I found out:

Lower field dominant - this is the default setting for most DVDs. As before, playback was jerky, especially during motion (not even particularly fast or hectic motion)

Upper field dominant - this was my second test the other day. On direct comparison, I find playback even more jerky at this setting. This suggests to me that lower field dominance is the correct setting for these DVDs (as with most others), and that there's something else to do with the way these DVDs were encoded which is the problem.

Original field order - The same as lower field dominant.

Deinterlaced, upper field dominant; deinterlaced, lower field dominant; deinterlaced, original field order - all three of these were identical. No more jerkiness. Instead, blockiness. Pixelization occurred in big ugly chunks at any point where there was fast or energetic movement. On balance, these were more watchable than any of the other settings, but still not an acceptable situation.

At this point, I seem to have two options:

1) Download MPEG StreamClip and poke away blindly at its settings, or
2) Accept a generation of quality loss and use my capture device to pull clips in through the DVD player.

I'm leaning heavily towards #2, on account of I am *tired* of this.

Any further suggestions will be gratefully appreciated.

Comments

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

I finished my test burn this evening.

Using DVDxDV I was able to recreate Laura's problem - and Laura it didn't matter whether I used the std FPC or the DVDxDV Expert settings. Or whether I pulled the clip into Final Cut or had it burned direct onto DVD. Stuttering frames and green pixels. Plus audio out of synch (on one file).

I achieved much better results (no stuttering /no green pixels/audio in synch) using MPEG StreamClip. I got slightly better results (only a vidder could tell) exporting to DV rather than a Quicktime movie + DV codec. (Final Cut Pro/Express can handle DV and QT mov).

Here were my settings within MPEG Streamclip:

Export to DV
Select NTSC, Full size (720x480)
Codec DVCPro50, 29.97 fps
Deinterlace box checked.

Best. News. Ever.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Outstanding. I'll download MPEG Streamclip this week.

Thanks so much for sharing your results! I'm glad your remastering process will be smoother than mine. (:

But one question...

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Do you know if you have to change any settings in Final Cut when you're working with deinterlaced video? Does it change the timebase?

Re: But one question...

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

no, I just deinterlaced upfront using MPEG Streamclip. No changes needed (in FCE). After exporting it a a DV file using the MPEG Streamclip settings, I dragged it into the FCE bin and started editing. Do a few tests before you start using MPEG Streamclip wholesale.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Well, thanks to the codec I was able to get MPEG Streamclip to work, and I exported according to the settings you have listed above.

Unfortunately, my test DVD still looked jerky to me. It wasn't anything like as bad as it had been before -- most of the sequence looked fine. But when very fast motion started up, it looked like there was a slight hesitation, as though every other frame might be slightly frozen. Paul noticed it, too, so it's not just a vidder's eyes. Would having the deinterlace box checked account for this?

Anyway, I'm now resigned to capturing, assuming my box plays nice. Oh well.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

You could try it without deinterlaced? I had my Due South samples checked by a vidder (as well as a non-vidder) and we didn't notice any jerkiness. There was a little bit of wavering on certain objects - ex. logo on the side of the plane (very bright orange) and at one spot when the evil bald headed guy is leering at the baby.

Your jerkiness may have to do with other factors: what software you use to encode for the DVD or your ripping software. How much hard drive space/fragmented your drive is (I had one series of vids encode poorly over a 2 fire wire drive distance. Moved the file I was encoding to the internal hard drive and then defragged and the problem went away.

I used: DVD Backup 1.2 to rip
IDVD 2 to encode to MPEG-2 and then burn.

The "loss" of capturing externally is hardly noticeable so if you have a capture device, that might be the way to go. Rather than looking at the endless series of digital possibilities.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

The "loss" of capturing externally is hardly noticeable so if you have a capture device, that might be the way to go. Rather than looking at the endless series of digital possibilities.

This right here? ::points up:: This is exactly where I am right now. (:

FWIW: 29GB free space, MacTheRipper to rip, iDVD 4 to burn. I didn't encode to MPEG-2 first, I just used the clipped DV file straight from MPEG Streamclip.

Off to set up my capture box...

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

smart move. I am testing how to download bittorent TV/movie files, convert them into playable DVDs. Easy to do with DVD Studio Pro (use QT Pro and export to MPEG-2 and DVD Pro will burn). A nightmare with IDVD which will only accept DV or mov files (no MPEG-2). And IDVD cannot handle 16:9 (widescreen) footage. The work-arounds I have come up with.....insane.

re: MPEG-2 encoding. that is is what IDVD does. You grab you edited vid DV/mov file from FCP (or in the case of our test, the pure DV file exported from MPEG Streamclip) and pull it into IDVD. It then encodes it for you to MPEG-2 and burns. Its encoding is supposed to be less rigorous than DVD Studio Pro - which I still cannot get to work on my computer (we can chat about *this* problem offline)

So, yes, capturing good.....