Best settings: HDV to SD DVD

[moonlitnite]

Hi all,

I have a videographer buddy looking for some guidance to improve the quality of his event DVD productions. He uses a Sony FX1000 and FX7, encoding in HDV with the final output in SD DVD format.

He would greatly appreciate your advice and counsel. FYI - being a frugal Danish guy, I doubt he'd go for go for something like Sorensen Squeeze but would probably invest a few hundred for something to supplement his FCP.

Many thanks, Michael

 

[hendosan]

I don't understand the question. What is it about his existing footage that is a problem right now?

 

[moonlitnite]

I don't understand the question. What is it about his existing footage that is a problem right now?

Sorry I don't have a lot of details other than his feeling that the image quality was a bit soft. If no one has any workflow settings to share, I suppose I could ask him for his step by step settings...

Michael

 

[Alex H.]

Sorry I don't have a lot of details other than his feeling that the image quality was a bit soft. If no one has any workflow settings to share, I suppose I could ask him for his step by step settings...

Michael

It would be helpful to know what he's doing right now. And, which version of FCS he's using. That said...

The best thing to do is to export a QuickTime movie, self-contained, using current settings. Once that's done, quit FCP and launch Compressor (comes bundled with FCS) and use it to convert the exported movie for DVD. There are factory presets in Compressor for DVD, and they result in two files: a video (.m4v) file and an audio (.ac3) file. Choose the preset with "best quality" and with the shortest amount of time that will fit the video's run time.

Once those files are ready, bring them into DVD Studio Pro and author the DVD there.

 

[Moseph]

There are factory presets in Compressor for DVD, and they result in two files: a video (.m4v) file and an audio (.ac3) file.

Pretty sure it's .m2v, isn't it?
Does compressor deal with the aliasing that can occur from the improper down conversion of HD to SD?

 

[Alex H.]

Pretty sure it's .m2v, isn't it?
Does compressor deal with the aliasing that can occur from the improper down conversion of HD to SD?

Sorry, that was a typo. (Not a morning person.)

Not sure about how it handles aliasing, except that I've never had a problem.

 

[FroylanMedia]

I always just sent it to compressor straight from fcp. Then chose the DVD setting that fits what you have like 90 minutes best quality . After that I change a few parameters depending what I use it for.

I used to get a softer image when I would burn it without transcoding it because th program would transcode it for me and I didn't have control of the parameters.

 

[moonlitnite]

It would be helpful to know what he's doing right now. And, which version of FCS he's using. That said...

The best thing to do is to export a QuickTime movie, self-contained, using current settings. Once that's done, quit FCP and launch Compressor (comes bundled with FCS) and use it to convert the exported movie for DVD. There are factory presets in Compressor for DVD, and they result in two files: a video (.m4v) file and an audio (.ac3) file. Choose the preset with "best quality" and with the shortest amount of time that will fit the video's run time.

Once those files are ready, bring them into DVD Studio Pro and author the DVD there.

Many thanks C2V,

I'll pass this along. He is using FCP7 (the latest version), importing and editing in HDV, making it into a QuickTime movie, then into into DV Studio Pro to generate the SD DVD. Apparently he's finding the quality is a bit soft compared to his prior workflow using his Sony SD cameras.

Someone local suggested that he take the HDV timeline, duplicating it into the ProRes HQ format, making a self-contained QuickTime move, then into DV Studio Pro - he was wondering if others are using this option. Otherwise, he was pondering using a BlackMagic card to directly ingest the HDMI video directly into FCP ProRes so he could avoid the extra transcode step associated with the HDV conversion.

At any rate, I suspect he's off getting his own solution - thanks for the help,

Michael