Burning 1080 (or SD?) footage in DVDSP (or iDVD?)

J

jordy2324

Well-known member
First off, I've read through the very infomative HD/SD piece on the Ken Stone site....
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/hd_dvds_on_sd_dvds_young.html
With that in mind, I have a question. So, the HD DVD format is dead. And very few people have blu-ray players.
So, what's the best way to get your HD video (1080/30p in my case) to clients? Won't anything I do in DVDSP essetially downscae all my HD footage to SD? And if that's the case, wouldn't I get the same results just by using iDVD?
My file was exported in FCP... ProRes 422.

Thanks!
 
In this instance you are treating the DVD as a data storage device and nothing else. Blurays are simply a larger version of a DVD and can store more information. So you can in fact burn bluray data to a DVD and it will playback on a mac, a PC (with, for example PowerDVD HD) and bluray players will playback a bluray encoded DVD.

Bluray is a popular format, especially if you include Playstation3 etc.

Use compressor to create the required h.264/mpeg stream setup for HD.
 
David S. said:
The initial question is what do your clients have to play high definition video?

The answer determines what you need to do.
Click to expand...

I guess what I'm asking is if the client has a standard DVD player but an HD TV. I think this is the norm now -- most people have regular (non-blu-ray) DVD players but an HD TV.

In this situation, what's the best case?
 
jordy2324 said:
I guess what I'm asking is if the client has a standard DVD player but an HD TV. I think this is the norm now -- most people have regular (non-blu-ray) DVD players but an HD TV.

In this situation, what's the best case?
Click to expand...

You've answered your own question. The client has a standard-def DVD player.

As for DVDSP vs. iDVD... if you have DVDSP, use DVDSP. iDVD is clunky, and its compression tends to do bad things to the video signal. With DVDSP, you take your full-rez video file first into Compressor and convert it for DVD (MPEG-2 video and AC3 audio files), then bring those assets into DVDSP and create your DVD from there.
 
HuckLBerry said:
In this instance you are treating the DVD as a data storage device and nothing else. Blurays are simply a larger version of a DVD and can store more information. So you can in fact burn bluray data to a DVD and it will playback on a mac, a PC (with, for example PowerDVD HD) and bluray players will playback a bluray encoded DVD.

Bluray is a popular format, especially if you include Playstation3 etc.

Use compressor to create the required h.264/mpeg stream setup for HD.
Click to expand...

I just thought of this a few months later..... but would you get similar results with the FCP option for quicktime compression (h.264) as you would with compressor?
And in any case...... is burning an h.264 file to a standard DVD always better than burning a Prores file to a standard DVD?
 
No it isn't.

h.264 is heavily compressed, and pro res is not.

Use the original footage to encode for SD DVD, and do not first encode to h.264.
 
I'm back to this again! Arrrggg....


I keep getting this wrong and my brain isn't working. (90 hours of editing in 6 days will do that)


Anyway... I followed the Ken Stone tutorial on exporting. (http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/hd_dvds_on_sd_dvds_young.html)

After I followed these procedures, I came to the realization that (I think) he's talking about HD DVDs (like blu-ray vs. hd dvd)

Sure enough when I burned the disc, it didn't play in a standard definition DVD player.

Here's my workflow so far:

Exported out of FCP at Prores 422
Converted in compressor to a H.264 10.3mbps .mov video file and a .ac3 audio file

Initially, I had the DVD Studio Pro settings on HD DVD (as per the Ken Stone article and my lack of sleep). Now, when I change it back to a standard DVD, DVD Studio Pro won't load the H.264 10.3mbps file. Hmmm?


So.... I'm guessing that I need to go back in compressor and get an mpeg-2 6.2mbps file? (since the SD DVD settings won't take the H.264) And then in DVD SP set up a SD 16:9 project and import the mpeg-2?

I'm just trying to get the best quality possible from 1080HD footage onto a standard DVD.

Any feedback/clarification/ways to get more hours out of the day would be appreciated!
 
jordy2324 said:
I'm just trying to get the best quality possible from 1080HD footage onto a standard DVD.

Any feedback/clarification/ways to get more hours out of the day would be appreciated!
Click to expand...

I thought I'd given you a really simple workflow:

C2V said:
With DVDSP, you take your full-rez video file first into Compressor and convert it for DVD (MPEG-2 video and AC3 audio files), then bring those assets into DVDSP and create your DVD from there.
Click to expand...

So why did you go back to doing what we'd advised you not to do? First, ditch the idea of going to h.264. It's a wasted step. Second, forget Ken's tutorial, which is for HD-DVD and not for what you're trying to do. So here you go (again):

1) In your FCP project, go to File>Export>QuickTime Movie.

2) Use current settings (should be the default), and make movie self-contained.

3) Once that file has been exported, quit FCP.

4) Launch Compressor.

5) Drop your exported movie file into Compressor, and use the presets for DVD Best Quality, and pick the least amount of time that can accommodate your project. (The higher the time setting, the heavier the compression.) You should have two files: an MPEG-2 video file (.m2v) and a Dolby AC3 audio file.

6) Import the newly-compressed video and audio files into a new DVDSP project. (If the video is 16:9, DVDSP will automatically notice this.)

7) Author your DVD and then burn to a blank disc.

Again, forget about h.264. Forget about Ken Stone's tutorial. And forget about HD-DVD, as you established earlier in this thread that your clients have a standard-def DVD player. Just follow the 7 steps above and you'll be fine.
 
Thanks, C2.

Lack of sleep got me all confused and forgetting most of everything.

In Compressor, I'm clicking "DVD Best Quality: 90 minutes" Is there an added quality bump by changing the quality in the inspector out of the default 6.2mbps to the max (7.7 average and 9.0 maximum) It bumps it to 67 minutes, but I only have a 4 minute project. Will there be a noticeable difference in quality burning that file in DVDSP compared to the 6.2mbps? (because the quality of that one was disappointing)
 
More is not better when encoding to DVD.

Do not exceed a maximum of 7.2 mbps; there will not be any noticeable quality improvement and the higher data rate will choke many DVD players.

And remember to use dolby2/ac3 audio, not uncompressed aiff

Finally, how is the DVD being viewed Uprezzing DVD set top out HDMI to a HDTV or some other way
 
Well, in case anyone is interested, there doesn't seem to be too much noticeable difference. (At least to my eye)
For my VERY unscientific test, I played all 3 files full screen in Quicktime 927 inch iMac) and took a screenshot of each one.

Left is 6.2mbps mpeg-2
Middle is the 9.0mbps max mpeg-2
Right is Prores422 .movScreen shot 2010-12-08 at 11.50.32 AM.jpg
 
My point is there is a maximum combined bit rate for video and audio when encoded for DVDs.

But that's the maximum, not the recommended, and the issue is even more acute when DVD recordables are concerned.

Can you tell us how you are viewing the SD DVD as I asked earlier?
 
8 should be the max. Consumer DVD players are designed that way. Any more and it can choke on the data. It may work some times but not at others, and on some sets but not on others.
 
David S. said:
My point is there is a maximum combined bit rate for video and audio when encoded for DVDs.

But that's the maximum, not the recommended, and the issue is even more acute when DVD recordables are concerned.

Can you tell us how you are viewing the SD DVD as I asked earlier?
Click to expand...

I'm trying on a variety of SD DVD players on both the old box TVs and an HDTV
 
Or just open your original edit sequence and click "share" under the file menu. Select DVD, follow the prompts and get some coffee. Or put it up on YouTube in HD and set the privacy settings for them to view only.
 
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