Why does my 7 min film look gross on DVD?

[bmxdarcy]

Because DVCProHD is anamorphic so 1280x720 becomes 960x720 (and 1920x1080 becomes 1280x1080).

So the DVCProHD timeline doesn't interpolate the footage it compresses it? (Sorry I'm still learning)

 

[PerroneFord]

So am I. So I am testing this as we speak...

[Edit]


Ok, so if the HVX is originating, it should be 960x720 source and the DVCProHD timeline should match it. If that's the case, then no recompression is necessary. This threw me because I had been thinking of a 1280x720 source file, but that won't be the case.

 

[seunosewa]

I get great DVDs from my Panasonic GS500. It's not even a HD cam.
They play fine on my laptop LCD and cheap WXGA Dell Projector.

But I always do two things -
1) Crush the grain with Neat Video or MVDegrain2. Nothing else comes close.
2) Compress with a high quality encoder at a constant bitrate of about 8mbps.

(I guess none of this advice is helpful on the Mac; I'm sorry about that)

 

[murraymile]

I'm having similar issues. Shooting 720/24p in HVX... editing in a DVCPro HD 720/24 timeline in FCP.... once the edit is finished, I export a QT master, then import that into an NTSC timeline... export MPEG2 for DVD. The image on a five minute short definitely gets funky, yet a two hour "Hollywood" film looks outstanding on DVD. Any tips or suggestions, as far as workflow goes?

Why on earth would you export a QT master file, then bring back into the editing timeline and then export to mpeg2? what? Just export the mpeg2 from the master timeline to begin with! That's not a good work flow. Just wanted to put that out there.

 

[JeganRX]

I get great DVDs from my Panasonic GS500. It's not even a HD cam.
They play fine on my laptop LCD and cheap WXGA Dell Projector.

But I always do two things -
1) Crush the grain with Neat Video or MVDegrain2. Nothing else comes close.
2) Compress with a high quality encoder at a constant bitrate of about 8mbps.

(I guess none of this advice is helpful on the Mac; I'm sorry about that)

MVDegrain2 is awesome (as is AVISynth in general... not sure why people don't realize how powerful it is for some of the worst video problems), but to be honest, this footage looks pretty clean.

How high is the OP's bitrate exactly? It's been a while since I've used any Sorenson product (not since Sorenson Video 3), so I can't help with that, and I didn't really like Sorenson Squeeze at all, so I never took more than a glance. If you can compress in something like ffmpegx, you should have more control over the encoder. Also, are you using one pass modes? A CQ mode or two-pass mode should be infinitely better.

Lastly, let's hope there's no interlacing crap turned on; ie, no 3:2 pulldown used on the completed project. I sure hope you have a progressive DVD for output and are not relying on the TV to deinterlace it on playback...