Workflow from 720/24pn to DVD final_kicking my ***

S

Sneakle

Well-known member
I swear I've read everything I can find and burned a dozen dvds trying out different codecs to get a decent looking dvd. The images I'm getting on my hpx170 look spectacular in quicktime but I can't make a dvd that doesn't look really ragged, like bad compression, most apparent durring movements. is it because I'm viewing dvd results on my HD home tv?

Shot it at 720 24pn. Brought that into Final Cut Pro from the camera to the computer via firewire. Dropped it into the timeline and said yes to let the timeline comform as needed. resulting in settings: frame size: 960x720 (16:9). Pixel aspect ratio 960x720.

Tried these variations of making the quicktime movie:
1. Save as quicktime, current settings, trying both ref. and self contained.
2. save as quicktime conversion with various settings.
3. tried various codecs, current, h264, photojpg,dvcprohd, none
I could try compressor, but I'm not looking for tweaked improvements but a wholesale improvement over what I'm getting.
I'm viewing results on computer monitors and my home hd television where it fills out the full screen. Both computer LCD and Home TV look bad.

I'm taking the movie into IDVD. The high quality setting is marked.
Is IDVD capable enough for these tests?
If I'm making a little feature shooting 720 24pn what am I missing if I want to go the dvd?

The problem solver will have a contribution made to the charity of their choice.
Mike
 
Hi Mike,
Sounds like IDVD is doing a poor job of encoding and muxing the video. Could be that it is trying to make a 15 frame based long GOP instead of 12 (for the 24pn footage). I don't use iDVD and therefor cannot comment on your workflow.

I would suggest a better choice might be (if you have access to FCS) to use compressor to encode to .m2v and .ac3. Then mux in DVDSP.

I have tweaked a bunch but found the best option in compressor to be the 90min preset.

Hopefully others have a better idea of what is going wrong.


Jason
 
Yes, as Awakenedfilms said. What is happening is you are letting idvd do your compressing from what may be an already compressed file. It is also doing its own conversion ie: h.264 to mpeg2 or DvcProHD to mpeg2. This with a long GOP is very often bad for high quality results.

What you should do is export your timeline to compressor. Then set your settings to dvd best 90 min. Then tweak your GOP from 15 to 7, change your resize setting to best, and make a 2 pass vbr with a bit rate between 6 and 8.

Then use DVD studio to burn the disc. This program will not recompress anything since it is already in compliance with the ntsc standard of DVDs. The results should resemble those on a professional DVD.

Hope this helps,

JP
 
Compressor settings

Compressor settings

Thanks for the feedback. Do these settings look reasonable? Hopefully attached.
 

Attachments

  • compset.jpg
    compset.jpg
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Sorry, thought that thumbnail would enlarge. Video format: NTSC, 29.97, 16:9, progressive.
Quality: avg bit rate: 6.9, max bitrate: 8.1, motion: best.
GOP: MPEG-2, stream usage: SD DVD, Gop structure: IBBP, Closed, GOP size: 7, Pattern IBBPBBP
Extras: add DVD studio Pro metadata.

I'll play with this and take the results into DVD Studio Pro.
 
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