Compression of hd footage for sd - big problems

Ryan CBP

Ryan CBP

Member
Ok so I've done a wedding, it's my first one. I shot it on my xha1's and all of it has been put together to look awesome. So here are the steps I took to get it onto a regular SD DVD, after I've explained this I'll tell you what the result was like.

1) Exported the video as a quicktime file from final cut, no down conversion, still in HD.
2) Imported into compressor and set to BEST QUALITY MPEG 2 6.2MBPS 2-PASS with dolby digital professional 2.0
3) brought it into idvd and put it on an SD DVD project

What it came out like was weird. It's lost its HD edge and looks like it's been shot on some cheap 100 quid camera. Really annoyed me, actually it enraged me. It just looks like the footage has been sped up ever so slightly to make it loose its film quality.

I shot it originally in 1080 HD 30fps, the standard HD method on canon xha1.

Please will SOMEONE tell me what I'm doing wrong in the conversion. I heard I should bring in the HD Quicktime and put it onto an SD timeline? Then export again? Is this true?

HELP ME DVX USER FRIENDS! Before I go insane.
 
Can iDVD handle HD..? :S That could be your problem but i may be wrong.
DVD Studio Pro would be better in any case.
 
i some what have the same question. I filmed a wedding with a dvx100b and a xha1. i brought my setting down in fcp to dv ntsc. when i did this my dvx footage instantly looked hd quality. better than my xha1. the video size of the hd footage was at 56% i zoomed in on a couple of shots and hope when i compress it turns out alright. typically i have been using compressor DVD: Best Quality. My videos are also typically about 120 min or under 2 hours. is there anything in fcp or compressor to improve my video quality?
 
The method Hal2 posted works well, but as far as I know there isn't a workflow like that on OS X.

If you're still having problems getting acceptable results, you can always contact me if you want a professional to handle your footage.

Check the signature for details.
 
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