Am i rendering HD correctly?

Chienworks wrote on 11/23/2004, 11:03 AM
I'm trying to create some HD animation files and i'm not sure if i'm doing it correctly. I come up with an MPEG-2 file that looks like it may or may not contain what i want, but the problem is that i don't have enough screen real-estate or processor horsepower to play them back correctly. For that matter, Media Player 10 seems to draw a dark vertical line at about pixel 950 or so on my screen. I don't see the line when i open the file back up in Vegas though. *shrug*

If anyone out there is willing, would you take a look at some of these samples and tell me if they are what you would expect of HD files and if they play correctly? Thanks :)

http://www.rchv.com/hdtests/

They're all 5 second long MPEG-2 files. The .jpg files are still frames in case you want to see what they should look like before downloading the entire video file.

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Completely unreated: This forum keeps logging me out almost every time i move to a new screen today. If i post a message or just return to a menu, i find i'm logged out. I'm using Netscape 7.2 which has been working perfectly up until today. I tried MSIE 6, but that seems to end up with page retrieval errors on this site more often than showing the pages successfully. Anyone else having difficulties?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 11/23/2004, 11:17 AM
I suppose i should post my rendering parameters, shouldn't i?

for 1080p i use MainConcept MPEG-2, select the HD-1080-30p template, change rendering quality to best, Video quality to 31, Variable bit rate Two-pass, 19Mpbs max, 18Mbps average, 192Kbps minimum, no audio. Everything else is left the same, 1920x1080, 16:9, progressive, etc.

For 720p i used the HD-720-30p template with the same changes, except 11Mbps max, 10Mbps average.
Spot|DSE wrote on 11/23/2004, 11:39 AM
Kelly, the 1080/30p is looking ok to me, except that it's pretty artifacted on my system/blocky on my monitor. I'm on a 1600x monitor though, not 1900 as I should be. That might be it. It's really bad on my 768 monitor, as you'd expect it to be.
Chienworks wrote on 11/23/2004, 11:47 AM
Spot, thanks! Well, considering that the "psychadelic" animation is at about 110% color saturation i'm sure 4:2:2 MPEG encoding is going to cause some artifacts no matter what bitrate is used. One of the layers was also upsampled from DV The "planet" animation is much less saturated so it should behave a lot better.
BJ_M wrote on 11/23/2004, 12:13 PM
i downloaded planet-1080-30p-sample.mpeg -it looks a bit pixelated and has some banding (both on the right side). The jpg doesnt have this ..

couple of tips if it can help ...

Don't render from jpegs if you can help it..

Render CBR 19meg/s

BEST

motion search to best ...

your acual bit rate is only 12.7/meg sec on this clip .. peaks at 14.2.

(192 is to low for HD mpeg anyway, 9-15meg is normal if you wan to use VBR)

Use zig zag instead of the alternate you selected as scan type.

DCT precision: 10 (though for this content- 9 would be ok also as you used) .

For the banding - you may have to add some dithering ..

Chienworks wrote on 11/23/2004, 12:17 PM
Thanks BJ! Good info.

The source files were 1920x1080 uncompressed 4:4:4 24 bit Targa files. Oddly enough, the .JPG image you saw was taken from the rendered MPEG file, so it came after the encoding process, not before. I'll try your settings and see how it goes.
BJ_M wrote on 11/23/2004, 12:17 PM
also - you said 4:2:2 rendering .. your mpeg there I downloaded was Chroma format: 4:2:0 (correct for MP@HL)

Chienworks wrote on 11/23/2004, 12:19 PM
Ahhh. Chalk it up to newbie confusion. :)
BJ_M wrote on 11/23/2004, 12:20 PM
go to frame 137 , you will see the most banding and pixels there ... your jpg frame grab was before frame 27 i bet and it was ok there ..
Chienworks wrote on 11/23/2004, 12:27 PM
I just checked and the banding is in the original Targa frame as well, so it's not a problem with the encoding. It looks like for some odd reason the animation software decided to move the "sun" into the cloud layer on the right side of the planet instead of leaving it fixed off to the left. *sigh* Software can be so squirrly at times.
BJ_M wrote on 11/23/2004, 12:39 PM
yea -- thats a hard one to fix !