7 Replies Latest reply: Oct 4, 2010 3:47 PM by tplowe56 RSS

    Combine 720 x 480 & 1280 x 720 on Blu Ray - best settings?

    tplowe56 Community Member

      What is the best way to combine mutliple formats on a Blu Ray disk. I need to dsplay SD & HD video (720 x 480 & 1280 x 720) clips on the same disk. I have both formats on separate sequences in Premiere Pro and Encore. The sequences are set up corresponding to there respective specs. When I burn a disk evrything goes fine but the playback of the SD is inferior to a standard DVD. If I just burn the SD sequence to a Blu Ray disk, without the HD sequence then the playback quality is better.

       

      I realize that displaying SD in HD shows all the flaws but this is definitly not good quality, lots of artifacts in flat tonal areas with motion.

       

      Anyone have any good ideas for tweaking the transcode settings for the SD sequence , etc?

       

      CS4

      Windows 7 64 bt

        • 1. Re: Combine 720 x 480 & 1280 x 720 on Blu Ray - best settings?
          tplowe56 Community Member

          Doing some more research. I'm wondering if it might be better to upconvert the

          SD to HD and then author the BD. I'm guessing the up conversion process being done in Encore/Premiere is where all the artifacts are being introduced.

          • 2. Re: Combine 720 x 480 & 1280 x 720 on Blu Ray - best settings?
            Bill Hunt CommunityMVP

            For up-rezzing SD to HD, many users recommend the Red Giant Magic Bullet InstantHD. It works well in PrPro. Neither Encore, nor PrPro alone, will give you good results.

             

            Good luck,

             

            Hunt

            • 3. Re: Combine 720 x 480 & 1280 x 720 on Blu Ray - best settings?
              Blue_Devil1 Community Member

              Why don't you scale down the 1280x720 to SD.  Hopefully, your SD footage is widescreen and you could make the 1280 widescreen as well (exporting from Ame) and burn a widescreen DVD in ENcore.

               

              Then play the disc in an up converting DVD player.

               

              John Rich

              • 4. Re: Combine 720 x 480 & 1280 x 720 on Blu Ray - best settings?
                Neil Wilkes CommunityMVP

                One way you can be certain that encodings of the SD material are up to snuff

                Blue_Devil1 wrote:

                 

                Why don't you scale down the 1280x720 to SD.  Hopefully, your SD footage is widescreen and you could make the 1280 widescreen as well (exporting from Ame) and burn a widescreen DVD in ENcore.

                 

                Then play the disc in an up converting DVD player.

                 

                John Rich

                Sorry John, but downscaling HD to SD to play in an upscaled SD player makes little if any sense to me.

                 

                @the OP - are your problems from a burned disc, and if so what is your player and firmware revision?

                BD should be able to handle mixed resolutions with no trouble at all, but you need to be careful.

                Not all players can handle the switch between HD & Sd very well - we had this issue on a commercial title recently where the extras were all 720 x 480 SD against the main title of 1920 x 1080/24 - certain players connected via HDMI had definite issues switching between resolutions.

                 

                One way you can be sure your SD footage is up to par would be to encode all these assets to MPEG-2 before importing them into Encore project.

                This way you can proof them all before importing - set the files to "Do not transcode" in Encore, and from then on all issues with quality are down to the player.

                • 5. Re: Combine 720 x 480 & 1280 x 720 on Blu Ray - best settings?
                  tplowe56 Community Member

                  I've decided to up-rezz the clips with Instant HD from Red Giant. From what I've been able to read on other forums this will probably yield the best results. Thanks for the advice. I'll report back when I get it completed.

                  • 6. Re: Combine 720 x 480 & 1280 x 720 on Blu Ray - best settings?
                    jager2222 Community Member

                    I'm curious how this worked for you. I'm in the same boat and am thinking about Magic Bullet to uprez my SD stuff.

                    • 7. Re: Combine 720 x 480 & 1280 x 720 on Blu Ray - best settings?
                      tplowe56 Community Member

                      I tried Instant HD & I also tried Boris UpRez (same price). I had problems with Instant HD & also had problems with support at Red Giant. They have since released a newer version, which would make 2 releases while I was attempting to get the product to work. They did refund my money and offered me a free product after my bad experience with support, so they came through in the end.

                       

                      But I actually ended up going with Boris UpRez. They have a fully functional 30 day trial. Both products do the job. Results are saticfactory but once you get used to looking at HD 720x480 looks pretty weak. You just don't have much resolution to start off with, with SD. If you are looking at the final product on a big screen like a 60" it's not to great, on anything with fast movement or not very sharp focus. Smaller sets and on PC's it looks pretty good.

                       

                      I experimented by using a test Menu in Encore and went right to burning BD's to see the final result. Both products only work on Progressive clips no Interlace, so that can add another step. Boris UpRez ships with a deinterlacer, or you can export out of PPro using PPro to do the deinterlace.

                       

                      Getting the best reults can take some experimentation. I deinterlaced with Boris and exported using a very high frame rate (50), which seemed to yield the best results. Leave Frame Blending off when deinterlacing (according to Boris). Then I did the UpRez after that. Not sure if you can stack the two effects on the same timeline & do it all at once.

                       

                      I'd try a trial first & see if it's worth it. You can always just burn to BD at 720x480 and let the player do the uprezzing. On some material the results are probably not a big difference. Professionally shot clips with high acuity are probably more worth uprezzing.