Quality loss after rendering to master dvd

Hi,

I have an action camera 1080 50 P
When I look at the film directly from the micro sd on my full HD tv I have a very good quality.
Then I make a movie of it in FC Pro 10.0.4 and after rendering it to master file I do not have the sharpness anymore.

What is going wrong. What are the best settings? Do you need more info?

Thanks,

Arjan
Netherlands so not native speaker forgive me.

Hi Arjan, welcome to the forum.

Two questions:

1. When you say 10.0.4 do you mean FCP X 10.1.4?
2. Are you exporting to a master file (ProRes 422) or to a DVD?

Groeten uit België

- Ronny

Keep in mind that DVD resolution is less than 1/4 of HD. So yeah you'll be losing some sharpness for sure.

Redifer wrote: Keep in mind that DVD resolution is less than 1/4 of HD. So yeah you'll be losing some sharpness for sure.

In terms of pixels, DVD at 720x480 is about 1/6th the resolution of 1080 HD. So making a DVD from 1080 HD is throwing away 5/6ths of the pixels.

Despite the transition to 4k acquisition being underway, I'm sure there will be 4k material mastered to DVD, which throws away 96% of the pixels.

This can be further worsened if the wrong interlacing settings are used, since DVD is generally interlaced. You also have to test on multiple DVD hardware and software playback devices, since they handle deinterlacing and aspect ratio (ie anamorphic DVD) differently.

I'm curious... who makes interlaced DVDs unless the source material is interlaced? I've ALWAYS done progressive. Granted, I think in DVD Studio Pro if you just drag a file in there and let it covert it itself it will end up interlaced. That's why you gotta use Compressor to do it yourself and import the result into DVD Studio Pro. Most DVDs I've ever seen are progressive. 480p DVDs play back fine on interlaced televisions. The DVD player will interlace the signal automatically.

Redifer wrote: ...who makes interlaced DVDs unless the source material is interlaced? ...

I believe the content on all NTSC DVDs is stored as interlaced fields, regardless of the source material. If the original material is progressive I think the encoder can optionally set a progressive flag which is a hint to the decoder to treat each group of two interlaced fields as a single progressive frame. However the DVD itself is interlaced and the progressive content must be first interlaced upon encoding then de-interlaced upon playback.

There are various playback methods -- software players, old hardware players, new hardware players, etc. They don't handle this consistently, as they likewise don't handle anamorphic DVD content consistently.

These problems exist even if 100% of the original content is progressive. It is very common to have mixed content, which further complicates things.

I agree if you know exactly how to process the imagery it can be encoded on a DVD so it plays back very well. However it's obviously not that easy or we wouldn't see so many amateur videos with combing artifacts. That was my main point -- that moving from DVD to streaming or file-based distribution for HD content automatically eliminates (1) Interlacing issues (2) Aspect ratio issues, and (3) Reduces requirements to test on legacy playback devices.

Nope, DVDs can in fact carry physically progressive media. The DVD Standards allowed for that from the beginning.

DVD FAQ, sect. 1.40:
www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html

"There's enormous confusion about whether DVD video is progressive or interlaced. Here's the one true answer: Progressive-source video (such as from film) is usually encoded on DVD as interlaced field pairs that can be reinterleaved by a progressive player to recreate the original progressive video."

Usually, not always, and it doesn't "have to be".

Regardless of how it's stored on the disc, if you start out with a progressive source and encode into a progressive stream, you don't have to worry about "interlace settings".

Hi Ronny,

Yes! it is 10.1.4
And I meant to say render to Master file.

I see all these vimeo movies with such good quality. It must be the settings!

Groeten uit Nederland

Hi Arjan,

Thank you for the extra information, that's what I thought.

When you export the Master File, do you use ProRes 422 as your destination format? And how do you watch that master file? Is your editing system connected to your TV or are you viewing the master on your computer screen?

- Ronny

Hi Ronny,

I watch the movie on my iMac.
I am not sure about the prress 422.
Now I took out 30 seconds and renderd it with Proress 422 to a quicktime movie.
It is very large (1.2 gb)
I cannot play it with the apple tv for some reason.
When I use Handbreak to convert it to mp4 only 59 mb remains. Quality rather good.
When I put it on you tube. Not bad!

Is this the answer?

Yes, it is.

You will never get the same sharpness when you view your master file on your iMac compared to playing the original footage directly from the cam onto your tv, those are two completely different things.

What you are doing is correct: export a Master File as ProRes422, which will indeed lead to a rather large file. But this master is also the best file to start from when you want to create versions for Apple TV or Youtube. These versions will be much smaller in size because they are very compressed, that's the downside of it. But you still should be able to get a very decent quality.

I am no expert in compressing for the web or for Apple TV as I mainly do broadcast work. But maybe someone else will chime in to give you some hints on how to achieve the best possible quality when converting the master file to these formats.

- Ronny

For Youtube and Vimeo, I'd recommend exporting as Master File, Format: Computer, Video Codec: H.264 Faster Encode, Resolution: either 1920x1080 or 1280x720.

For all iMacs and MacBooks (not Mac Pro) with Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs and later (e.g > 2011 iMac) this uses Intel's Quick Sync which greatly expedites export performance.

There is a Youtube export preset which does this (I think) plus uploads it but I prefer exporting to an output file, inspecting it then uploading.

You can also select H.264 Better Quality which uses multi-pass encoding but this will be much slower and I personally can't see any visible quality difference after Youtube/Vimeo upload.

Re 1080p vs 720p, of course 1080 is better resolution but the file size is considerably larger and I doubt you can see any significant difference on tablets or small laptops. On larger screens you can see a difference. Everything broadcast by ABC, Fox, ESPN, ESPN2, Disney, A&E and MLB Network is exclusively in 720p/60.

We show stuff via Apple TV almost daily, and the Apple TV presets work great for that. Joema is doing pretty much what we do for web stuff, and we're very happy with the results. And we almost exclusively to web as 720, Apple TV as 1080, both progressive.