Converting 1080 50 p to SD DVD

[pilsburypie]

Been looking at a whole range of upgrades to my GS500 such as pro level older SD cameras and have come back round to the Panasonic TM700, TM900 models or maybe even the soon to be released HC X900.

I have been messing with some test footage on my pc and have had mixed results. I'm fairly happy with editing and rendering 1080 50p footage for watching via ps3 but I'm having issues getting a decent conversion to SD 16:9 25p for DVD (I'd settle for any decent DVD format). The footage looks juddery especially on pans and moving subjects. I have tried a variety of settings but a decent solution escapes me

Any ideas from the brains?!

[Guy Bruner]

I recommend you convert to 50i for the SD DVD.  Motion will be smoother and I doubt you'll notice a difference in image quality.

[pilsburypie]

I'll give that a try Guy. I'll report back. Cheers

[pilsburypie]

Guy, Guy, Guy! The amount of times you have shone the light into my dark little world!

The interlacing is clearly the solution. I have not burned a disk, but just copied the SD 50i file onto a flash stick and played via ps3. All the stuttering and horrid background is all but gone. Just one thing, I selected lower field first - this must be OK as there was no issue. Lower first is right? Or will upper be better still? Rendering the SD footage from the 1080p takes just as long as the 1080 50p render...... about 10 times as long as my mini dv footage!

While you are on a roll Guy, can you think of any reason why the 1080 50p footage may seem a little stuttery? Not bad like my original SD effort, but noticable. I'd have thought it would be silky smooth.

I thought I'd try and see if I could render the 1080 50p footage as a blu ray template 1920x1080 50i 25mbps with the audio stream included to see if that made any difference, but my computer said it didn't have enough memory after a few minutes of rendering! That's the first time it seems to of had a problem of being overstreched!

[Guy Bruner]

pils, I'm glad I could help.  I think you need to reverse your field order.  HD is upper field first and DV is lower field first.  Whether you'll have an issue depends on the player.  And it could contribute to the stuttering you are seeing at 50p although I suspect not.  Some people see juddery video at 50-60p.  Also, the display may contribute.  With the old CRT TVs, the persistence of the phosphors smoothed out much of that and the interlacing.  With LCD, the change is almost instantaneous.  Plasma might actually look better than LCD in this regard.

[pilsburypie]

Cheers for that guy. I hear what your saying about upper and lower fields first but don't see how that could affect the 50p stutter as that is progressive and I wouldn't think lower or upper fields play any part. When I render as progressive I change the field order to none progressive.

I have also discovered how to get SD 25p without stuttering. When I just rendered the 1080 50p as SD 25p it blended 2 frames giving the blurred juddery look. I now select under sampling as 0.5 which I believe just discards frames. This seems to do the trick.

FYI my tvs are plasmas

[Chris Harding]

Because my clients might have different TV's and they could be anything from a 14" CRT up to a 60" Plasma I have no option but to render progressive to interlaced SD ...I normally just render the clips out to MPEG2 with lower field first  (A slightly modified DVD PAL preset if you happen to use Vegas)   
If you are only watching on one TV then it really doesn't matter!!
Chris
 

[Guy Bruner]

I'm glad you've got it working, pils!  Enjoy!!

[pilsburypie]

You are correct in that I have it working. But this only is downloaded test footage and my only camera is the trusty GS500. I think I am closer than ever on pulling the trigger on a new camera which is very likely to be one of the pannys HD offerings. Need to balance price with features. The slightly wider 29mm lens on the new HC X900 appeals to me over the TM900 as I have had the Raynox 0.66 lens permanently on the GS500