DVD's

[spotlightpro]

What is the best way to keep the quality of your footage when burning to DVD. I am editing w/ Avid, compress and encode w/ Sorenson and burn the DVD w/ sonic. The picture never looks as good from the DVD as it does from the camera. I know you lose some quality from the original miniDV footage, but I want to know who has got the best results in keeping the clarity when transeferring to DVD.

[Damon_C]

Generally, the scheme you are using now will render pretty decent results.
There is a lot of compression that happens when your raw footage is converted to mpeg2 and then encoded for DVD, so it will never look as good as it does on the mini-dv tape.

Aside from using the highest possible quality software mpeg encoder, the only thing you can do to get it better than that is use a hardware mpeg encoder. These usually cost a LOT of money, but if you are doing DVDs for clients, it may be worth it. That's why the Hollywood DVD movies look so good- they use amazingly expensive hardware encoders to convert the footage to mpeg2.

[Soliton]

I have the same problem as spotlightpro. So if we can not afford the hardware encoder, what is the highest possible quality software mpeg encoder, and where can we read minimum system requirements for using it?
Thanks.

[Bischofftep]

Final Cut Pro users can make use of Apple's Compressor software, which I believe makes good quality MPEG files. I don't think it sells as standalone, though.