get home made dvd content same quality to usb stick which format best ?

Merlin

Hi.
preparing a test dvd with footage that will test flat screen ability to portray the detail that is visible in this SD footage when its played on a Sony WEGA. Shops say best bring usb stick with it on., have no dvd players to play dvds on. Also wall mounted so cant plug leads in.

Its been selected as footage knowing how it shows detail that does exist in SD though most folk wont believe that and detail that is visible on my CRT Wega.

How do I get this as mpg onto a stick so that the flat screens will play it.

Just copy paste mpg to stick ?  or as one shop said turn it into mp4,  but will mp4 retain the quality of the mpg ?
The whole experiment/test is ruined if another format lessens the quality before even the flat screens get to play it ! If the detail is soft I wont know if its mp4 or flatty at fault.

Furthermore MediaInfo says SD footage I have is 704x576 yet H.264 MP4 apple iPhone etc codec says 640x480.

I am not even sure of what SD broadcast size is in UK, 640x480 or 720x586 (i think its 586???)  and what to choose when putting what was SD TV broadcast onto usb stick.

Merlin

rogs

I suspect your DVD mpg file will probably be interlaced, and that can open a can of worms when playing on a  modern flat screen TV.  CRT TVs were usually very good at displaying interlaced footage (that's how they fundamentally work! )  Modern flat screen TVs are usually OK - quite a lot of broadcast TV is still interlaced - but they can vary quite lot when playing back external video files.
They can also be pretty fussy with the type of external files they will replay......(my daughter's flat screen Sony will only recognise USB sticks formatted as FAT32 and not NTFS, for example).
My own Panasonic will only replay mp4 files wih AAC audio ... and so it goes on.

I suppose your first option would be to copy the mpg files to a USB stick an try it out.... but you may find some change in quality that could be improved if the file was converted to a high quality progressive mp4 format, for example.

Personally, I would convert the file to an intraframe intermediate format, de-interlace and frame double with a high quality de-interlacer like QTGMC, and then convert to an mp4 using the x.264 codec with a CRF factor of around 18....
But that's quite long winded and fiddly (even though the software is all free)

I think there is going to be an element of 'suck it and see' in the first instance here ....

JabbaNut

A modern high resolution TV has more dots per inch than a SD CRT display so your image gets scaled.

Either by TV or SD player. That's why SD looks so bad on 4K TV upscaled.

Really you should play your SD from the same device you would at your home, else you are just fooling yourself.

Not a deep technical explanation but easy read version. IMHO

Merlin

Hi, If I visit a shop to see how their flat screens handle SD broadcast SD TV, also my recordings , also my DVDs. They dont have dvd players, how should I test then as its about how its fed via broadcasters to the tv, not about how it plays my mpg on a stick. It may look awful but not be like that if fed via Virgin Media Tivo box ? If I have recorded it to the PC I would be playing it via user created DVD so again would running it on a stick be fair ?

Personally, I would convert the file to an intraframe intermediate format, de-interlace and frame double with a high quality de-interlacer like QTGMC, and then convert to an mp4 using the x.264 codec with a CRF factor of around 18....
But that's quite long winded and fiddly (even though the software is all free)

I think there is going to be an element of 'suck it and see' in the first instance here

Suck it and see isnt quite it though, if it sucks in more ways than one !...is that because that is how it would be or that is how it is due to wrong conversion ?

The only other test is buy it and try it, but some shops wont allow that, CurrysPCworld will.

Merlin

rogs

If you copy your DVD mpg files directly to a USB stick then there will of course be no quality loss at all. How well that actually looks on a modern TV will depend on how well the TV in question upscales the footage.   Most LCD/LED TVs don't seem to upscale SD footage very well.  Plasmas do better.  and some folk say OLEDs can display SD OK (not everyone agrees on that though)
The other option is to upscale your SD footage using external editing software, and create new files which should then allow display on a LED/LCD without relying on the TV internal upscaler.....Huge number of variables there of course (which resizer to use? - de-interlace or not? - which format to encode the new file as?.... etc....)

I have certainly found my Panasonic plasma upscales SD footage way better than any LED TV I've tried so far.....but plasmas are pretty much unobtainium these days ( which is sad, IMHO )

Whether OLEDS do actually upscale SD very well, I don't know ? (the sets currently available are too large and too expensive for me ...)

JabbaNut

That's why I have stayed with a LCD 1080p 46" Samsung. I watch DVD or SD, HD terrestrial broadcast by VOD mostly. Copper broadband near me is crap speeds 1.2mb if lucky!  VPN sometime helps boost boost speed slightly or changing DNS.  But its a changing settings often situation.