scaling
Jon Geddes Oct 13, 2010 12:24 AMI just wrote an article that goes in depth on the downscaling quality of Adobe Media Encoder CS5:
http://www.precomposed.com/blog/2010/10/hd-to-sd-dvd-cs5-revisited/
I originally wrote an article that demonstrated the poor quality downscaling algorithms that Adobe was using in CS4, and provided a tutorial for using a free open source alternative that achieves studio quality results. The original article can be found here:
http://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/07/hd-to-sd-dvd-best-methods/
The algorithms don't appear to have changed with CS5, as I show many comparisons. The original article shows what happens to interlaced footage when downscaled with AME, and the results are awful when Maximum Render Quality is not enabled. Unfortunately the maximum render quality makes it take FOREVER to render, and the results are still sub-par with the open source alternative looking much better and taking far less time to process.
Believe it or not, all the other major NLE competitors, such as Final Cut Studio, Vegas, Avid, etc., are also using poor quality algorithms for downscaling. So if Adobe could just fix this serious fundamental issue, they would really have the upper hand on all the other NLE's.
Most video production companies are shooting HD now. Most of them are still delivering SD versions to their clients. With so many people needing to provide professional quality down-conversions of their videos, it would seem that Adobe would have made sure this was working well when HD started becoming standard 5 years ago.
Thankfully Adobe added the "Maximum Render Quality" in CS4 as a small attempt to address these issues. Unfortunately the quality is not nearly as good as it could easily be, and it takes horribly long to process.
I'm looking forward to the day when this issue is finally resolved, as I still love Adobe software. It is still the best... and with a few minor fixes could be so much better.



