HVX 24p DVD Production Workflow - IDEAS

[Alex Fuchs]

Can we start this topic to collect BEST PRACTICES on pushing HVX DVCPRO HD 24p footage 720p and 1080 for DVD (Feature Film) production for BEST QUALITY.

Few suggested topics

1) FCP exporting to current settings vs. uncompressed 8-bit vs. DV/DVD downrez

2) follow up conversion in Compressor
- Settings
- Best results
- One pass vs. two-pass encoding

3) DVD Studio Pro
- best to prepare/encode the file assets before DVDSP (in compressor) or in DVDSP?
- settings


4) Can iDVD ever be used for quick and dirty rough cut outputs (best settings, not that there are that many of them)

Ideally let's collect our best practices for showcasing the footage trying to optimize:
- image quality
- pixelization
- motion blur/skip
- time to produce

[David Saraceno]

I'm been doing this since March.

I capture 720/24pn, edit, titled, etc. Export current settings, audio and video, no compression, self contained.

That goes into a custom droplet in BitVice 1.7 for two pass VBR with scaling and the stock QT scaling alogrythm because it is already progressive.

AIFF is then compressed to AC3/Dolby2 in Compressor two channel with -31 normalization.

Do not encode inside of DVD SP, because you have no control over audio and there are some issues with spiking of maximum bit rates with Compressor. Less so in v.2 and even less so in BitVice.

I keep combined audio and video bitrate way under 10.08 mbps. For 60 minutes or less on a DVD5, that means Dolby2 audio and aboyt 7.2 mbps maximum bit rate in BitVice.