DVD question

ToddWayne_AZ

ToddWayne_AZ

Active member
Hi all,

The family and I are in South Carolina for Thanksgiving. Yesterday I shot some video of the family (720/24PN), did a quick edit with no color correction or any other "fixing" in post, and burned it to a dvd. We watched the dvd after dinner.

Now, my brother-in-law has a theater room with a high-end projector and one of those big 72" screens. I was excited to see the results of my days worth of shooting, even if it was just rushed effort on the editing end. I was kinda disappointed.

It looked very poor next to the movie we watched after my dvd. I chalk most of the problems up to hurry I was in. But what I couldn't figure out was why the resolution looked so poor. I figured even with my slap & dash job the resolution would at least shine; but it looked to me no better than some video I'd shoot with my old handy cam.

Then I got to thinking... since I was in a hurry I didn't use "DVD Studio Pro" to burn the dvd, I used "iDVD". Is there a difference in software that would effect quality of end product? Obviously one is a pro app, the other is bundled with the standard mac software package, but I just assumed that once I'd exported the file from FCP (DVCPRO HD 720p24) it would retain THAT quality regardless of which software I used to get it onto a dvd.

Anyway, I'm off to spend the rest of the day on the lake (and get more SC footage), maybe you guys'll have some thoughts.

Todd
 
Not really. iDVD uses the same engine as DVD SP.

We occasionally visit a neighbor that has a projection HD theater.

Our 50 inch plasma looks tons better.
 
The last time I looked, the encoding in iDVD was done internally in the app, and may not provide as high a quality as encoding in Compressor. However, if your DVD was SD, it would not be expected in any event to have the same resolution as your HD source footage--it would only have SD resolution.
 
The DVD will have SD resolution, but the HD footage should still look "better" than footage produced by an SD camera. You still go through compression to encode DVD's, and compressing HD is preferable to compressing SD footage even though it will all be SD in the end. Perhaps the apparent lack of resolution is the result of focusing issues.
 
kwoff said:
The last time I looked, the encoding in iDVD was done internally in the app, and may not provide as high a quality as encoding in Compressor. However, if your DVD was SD, it would not be expected in any event to have the same resolution as your HD source footage--it would only have SD resolution.
Click to expand...

Yes, the encoding is done internal, but with the same encoder as DVD SP uses.

You don't have control over aiff audio, or a true two pass VBR as you do in Compressor and DVD SP.

But it is still the same encoder, but with less controls.
 
Thanks much for the great info, but it's spawned more questions...

Woodcarver, are you saying that when I burn a dvd that it will always be SD? Is there a way to put HD onto a dvd using DVD Studio Pro? I guess I just assumed you could.

Also, we went back and adjusted the color and contrast on his projection system and that seemed to help quite a bit. And I think you're probably right some of the lack of resolution is attributable to poor focus on my part (again the rush rush nature of what we doing).

Again, thanks for the information.
 
You can author HD-DVDs in DVDSP, but you'll be hard pressed to find many DVD players to run it on. But normally, you're doing SD on a DVD.

The thought is that mastering in HD, the SD distribution will carry some of that extra image quality with it.
 
Ben,

Yeah, I guess if I had put two and two together, I'd have realized that's what the whole Blu-Ray thing is about. Just checked and it looks like you can get a Blu-Ray player now in the $750 to $1,200 range.

Thanks again for the info.
 
DVD Studio Pro can author HD-DVD's but don't you need a special optical drive capable of writing HD-DVD's?
 
If you are talking about creating a true HD-DVD, yes.

But you can also record a HD-DVD disk structure on red laser DVD disks, just like you can record a DVD disk structure on a CD. Obviously the capacity isn't the same as for the actual HD-DVD or DVD media when you do this, and compatibility can be iffy due to the lower data density and the need to spin the disk faster in order to feed the same amount of data to the pickup laser, but for someone who wants to record a short or demo reel, it's an attractive option.
 
That's the trick with it all. There's no really "accessable" HD-DVD or Blu-Ray burners/players out there. There's one or two, but they're not really priced or packaged for wide spread use, yet...

And there's that third brand of Hi-Def DVD that's supposed to support itself and the other two.

Don't you just love "industry standards"?
 
The price of internal BluRay burners has dropped to below US$ 800.00, and media (including rewriteable media which makes experimenting painless) is also available. The drive below is just one of the options, and external drives are also out.

Sony BWU-100A
 
Your footage wasn't lit, shot , color corrected, and compressed and authored by the same level of professional as the theatrically released movie you just watched on DVD.
 
If you want to find out if it is the way you are authoring the DVD that is causing a drop in quality then plug the component out of the camera straight to the projector and compare a clip from that with one you have burned to DVD.
 
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