DVD Video Quality

[rckowal]

I know that making a movie DVD using Share > Create Disc > DVD, will not give high definition since a video DVD is standard definition. However, is there a way to improve the video playback quality of a movie DVD when it's played on a HDTV using a stand alone DVD player?

I don't have a Blue-Ray burner or stand alone player - just a standard definition Sony stand alone. The Sony may have progressive, but I don't understand if this can help to improve playback quality. My editor is VideoStudio 11.

[skier-hughes]

Only the same as making a std def video looking better on a std def tv. Start with high quality video and Use as high a bitrate as you can.
Getting a new dvd player may help, as some are far better at sending the right signal to a hdtv than others.

[mitchell65]

If you play a standard DVD in a Blu-Ray player then it will enhance the picture quality, not to HD standards but considerably better than a standard player. If you are looking to buy a Blu-Ray player make sure it has this "enhanvement" facility.

[rckowal]

Only the same as making a std def video looking better on a std def tv. Start with high quality video and Use as high a bitrate as you can.
Getting a new dvd player may help, as some are far better at sending the right signal to a hdtv than others.

Thanks for replying Skier.

Do I understand correctly that you are saying that a progressive scan player will not improve the quality of the video at all?

[skier-hughes]

No, I'm saying some stand alone std def dvd players do a better job at sending the right signal to your hd tv.
Is the quality that bad you don't like it?
How does it compare to a bought std def dvd?

[philip_l]

Hi

If you play a standard DVD in a Blu-Ray player then it will enhance the picture quality, not to HD standards but considerably better than a standard player.

I wish this were true in my experience it isn't. All HD ready TVs have a built in upscaler, so buying a DVD player with an upscaler or using Blu-Ray to upscale is introducing two scalers into the mix. You can never put in detail that isn't there in the first place, it is impossible and a lot of people end up watching a worse picture.

Scenario I've found typical with several friends:

1) DVD with a total pixel count of 414,720 (720x576)
2) Upscale to 2,073,600 pixels (1920x1080), that means the DVD player/Blu-Ray player has had to invent and guess at 1,658,880 pixels, the best upscaler in the world can do nothing more than guess at what these pixels should be, there is no way on this earth one upscaler can make a significantly better job than any other at this.
3) Play into an HD ready TV that only supports 720p, so the TV now has to throw away 1,152,000 pixels (assuming 1280x720 LCD panel). The TV has no idea which pixels were real from the original 414,720 pixels, so ends up throwing away real picture detail, that can't be good can it? It then averages out all the surrounding pixels to smooth the gaps over, again not good.

What you end up with is an approximation of what was there before, simple plain maths.

The same applies to a full HD TV, as the TV will still be scaling the picture for overscan and or de-interlacing, you get two scalers messing around with original detail, not good.

For the best quality, the rule is simple, get the source played back at it's native resolution, so for DVD, set the player to 576, and let the TV scale the picture just the once.

Give it a go, you might be surprised The rest is just marketing.

Regards

Phil

[mitchell65]

Perhaps then I had a particularly bad original standard DVD player because playing the same DVD through my new Blu-Ray player showed a considerable improvement. (Or perhaps I am just kidding myself to justify the expense of the new player)

[rckowal]

No, I'm saying some stand alone std def dvd players do a better job at sending the right signal to your hd tv.
Is the quality that bad you don't like it?
How does it compare to a bought std def dvd?

Skier,

No, I wouldn't say that the video quality on the stand alone player is bad. But it's a bit less than commercially made DVD movies or even standard definition (digital) cable TV.

What I'm trying to do is get the very best video quality possible out of my home made DVD movies (made with VideoStudio 11 - no Blue Ray burner/player). I'm starting with tape of our European vacation that was originally shot 10 years ago with a VHS camcorder. It was later passed through and recorded on Mini DVD tape. As a result, I've probably lost some video quality in the process.

[Ron P.]

What I'm trying to do is get the very best video quality possible out of my home made DVD movies (made with VideoStudio 11 - no Blue Ray burner/player). I'm starting with tape of our European vacation that was originally shot 10 years ago with a VHS camcorder. It was later passed through and recorded on Mini DVD tape. As a result, I've probably lost some video quality in the process.

VHS is the absolute best quality you're going to get. That is the original source. A low bitrate of around 4500-6000 for original DV provides about the same quality. Aside from cleaning up, adjusting color, brightness, contrast, you simply are not going to get any better quality than what you see on the VHS tape.

[Ken Berry]

I endorse what Ron had to say. In addition, transferring it to DV tape was probably the best way of ensuring that what quality there was in the original was maintained. It was better than, say, having saved it in mpeg-2 format.

Quite a few of us here also use VS over various versions to capture our VHS or analogue 8mm or Hi8 tapes, and we use either specialised capture devices which capture direct to DV format; or else we use mini DV cameras which can be used as a passthrough device to capture the analogue video as DV. Ron and I use a variant of that: we have Sony Digital 8 camcorders which will actually play analogue 8mm or Hi8 tapes and thus can be connected via Firewire and transmit the signal direct as DV.

When I do that, I tend to overreact and output, after editing the DV, to a DVD-compatible mpeg-2 using a high quality bitrate of 7500 kbps or even 7000 kbps. But as Ron says, that is probably overkill, and a max bitrate of 6000 kbps is probably all that is required to get the video to reflect its original quality. I am always pleased with the results of my own conversions. But I am afraid the old saying "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" applies here...

[rckowal]

Ron & Ken,

Thanks for the replies.

Ron and I use a variant of that: we have Sony Digital 8 camcorders which will actually play analogue 8mm or Hi8 tapes and thus can be connected via Firewire and transmit the signal direct as DV.

What a coincidence. As best as I can recall, this is similar to what I did as well. The original analogue was shot with a Sharp VHS camcorder. I believe I also used a Sony Digital 8 camcorder & transmitted the signal over to a Sharp DV camcorder (5 years ago) with a Firewire cable to record the signal onto Mini DV tape - which is what I'm working with now.

[skier-hughes]

No, I wouldn't say that the video quality on the stand alone player is bad. But it's a bit less than commercially made DVD movies or even standard definition (digital) cable TV.

As commercial dvds are made with encoders costing £100,000's you are doing well to get a bit less quality using VS.

You may be thinking too much and not enjoying watching the vacations again and reliving those good memories

[philip_l]

Hi

As commercial dvds are made with encoders costing £100,000's you are doing well to get a bit less quality using VS.

Very true and we all forget this sometimes, plus each scene maybe encoded with different settings depending on the type of footage.

However, where HD is concerned and down converting to SD, I find VideoStudio (and most other encoders) do a very bad job. The result is often worse than if it had been an SD source to start with (for example DV video). I felt this was odd considering the consensus generally is HD converted to DVD generally looks better having been from an HD source originally. Just watching DVDs that have come from an HD source or even on TV when watching material shot in HD but showing in SD, the quality is better than normal SD material.

After a lot of experimentation and googling the cause I find is the resizing of HD footage to SD that introduces a lot of nasties, especially around areas of detail. Encoders often do a very crude job of down sizing and this causes jagged edges and artefacts around detail, which you have a lot of in HD.

Often an improvement can be had by adding a small amount of blur (Gaussian filter) to the HD footage as it is encoded to SD, this helps reduce some detail making the resize down cleaner and helps the encoder out.

The best method I have found is to use Virtual Dub to resize down to 720x576 and outputting to a lossless codec using its resizing filter selecting Lanczos3 mode. Then encoding that to DVD MPEG, so the encoder doesn't need to resize, and the results are exceptional and come very close to commercial DVDs, it really makes a big difference. I don't take the credit for this as it was found out on the internet as a solution.

Of course this isn't for the faint hearted, you may have to remux in the audio for example and VirtualDub can be a bit technical.

If you find results are poor from VideoStudio when going HD to SD add a blur filter and set it to the lowest setting and try again and see if that helps.

Regards

Phil

[Black Lab]

If your cam can do the down convert that will most likely do a better job than editing software will.

[sjj1805]

........
However, where HD is concerned and down converting to SD, I find VideoStudio (and most other encoders) do a very bad job. The result is often worse than if it had been an SD source to start with (for example DV video). ......

Which brings me to mention my youngest sons "HD Camcorder"
Christmas before last I thought I would treat 1 of my sons to a camcorder. Using my knowledge of Video Editing I opted to get him a Mini DV Camcorder - bit like my own Digital 8 camcorder. This was of course Standard Definition.

My son, thinking he could turn himself into a replacement for Steven Spielberg put the camcorder up for sale on Ebay and with the proceeds bought himself a High Definition Camcorder. I must admit when I saw it I almost fell about in laughter, it resembles a hand gun and records onto a SDHC card.

Needless to say, later in the year when he volunteered to film and photograph a wedding (Actually he did do a good job of it ) have a guess which camcorder he used. Yes you guessed wrong he didn't use that far*y little HD camcorder he borrowed my Digital 8 Camcorder instead.

While it might qualify as HD in terms of screen size, the fact it was recording in a compressed format (I think it was MPEG4 - might be wrong but it was one in that range of compression) the quality was not as good as my Standard Definition DV recordings.

The file sizes involved say it all.
1 hours worth of Standard definition DV = 13 Gigabytes
1 hours worth of his High Definition but highly compressed Video that fits onto a 4GB SDHC card - well.... I am sure you can work it out.