HD footage to a SD-DVD

D

Daniel Rigdon

Member
I need help yet again (the story of my life). I filmed an amazing short in 720p and it's sitting fully edited on my "17 MacBook Pro. Now I'm trying to enter the film in some festivals, and they need a DVD copy of the short. I’ve heard people here talk about the amazing quality DVDs they’ve gotten from the HVX HD footage, but I have had no luck. I can render great looking quick time files, but when I try to burn them, they look really bad. When I use compressor, I’m always getting “video bandwidth too high” errors when I go to burn the mpeg2 to a DVD in DVD Studio Pro. I’m just wondering the exact steps/settings people are going through to get their HD footage from FCP to a SD DVD. Because I can’t seem to do anything right. Thanks a ton everybody. Hopefully I can get this figured out by before friday when one of the festival deadlines is up.

-Daniel
 
Assuming this is under an hour, export current settings, no recompression just the video portion. Do the same for just the audio portion. Then take the files and encode in Compressor.

1. Keep your maximum bit rate under 7.4. If you can use CBR rather than VBR because Compressor spikes.

2. Use the Dolby 2 audio preset to encode to AC3.

3. Use good quality brand name blanks staying away from Memorex.

4. If you can build to a folder, and then use Toast Titanium to burn at the slowest speed you can.

Don't use paper labels.

I generally use innobits' BitVice instead of Compressor for video
 
David S. said:
Assuming this is under an hour, export current settings, no recompression just the video portion. Do the same for just the audio portion. Then take the files and encode in Compressor.

1. Keep your maximum bit rate under 7.4. If you can use CBR rather than VBR because Compressor spikes.

2. Use the Dolby 2 audio preset to encode to AC3.

3. Use good quality brand name blanks staying away from Memorex.

4. If you can build to a folder, and then use Toast Titanium to burn at the slowest speed you can.

Don't use paper labels.

I generally use innobits' BitVice instead of Compressor for video
Click to expand...


That is SO interesting, David S., because in all of my burn tests, I have ONLY been able to get wonderful looking DVDs by burning to DUAL LAYER MEMOREX DVD+Rs. Everytime I use Sonys, I get pixellation errors and weird ****. It's so strange! Secondly, why not use Dolby 5.1?
 
Here is what I do:

I export my movie in FCP to a QT .mov.
I then drop this .mov into Compressor, and encode using DVD Best Quality/90 min.
In the Inspector Window, I choose BEST settings for everything (motion, etc.)
I set my bit rate at 7.6.
I then choose Dolby 5.1 in Compressor.
My short is 30 mins, so this task takes ALL night to encode.
I then import both ASSETS into DVD STUDIO PRO, and author the DVD.
I use Dual Layer Memorex DVD+Rs.

This gives me no problems. Perhaps it's not technically "right" or technically "ideal," but it looks fantastic on my setups and at all my friends places, who have better TVs than me.

If someone has a more "ideal" process, please POST IT!!!! Good luck with your short, dude!

--Justin.
 
Justin,
The only problem with your settings is that at 7.6 mbps you're pushing what alot of DVD players can read. Now this is fine if the DVD player is a reputable DVD player that is relatively new.

The problem arises when you have an unknown DVD player, specially when talking about Film festivals you want your footage to be actually projetable first and foremost, and then worry about quality.

I still run into this problem even when using panasonic DVD recorders or less than 6.5mpbs in DVD-Rs with some clients who own older DVD players.

Memorex DVD+R DLs are a very different animal than the cheapo memorex DVD-R blanks that are known to cause some problems. I believe Verbatim DVD+R DLs or Memorex where the first ones to reliably burn on Macs, can't remember which one.

I think this is what David is reffering to the Single Layer Memorexes, alot of people have had trouble with those. Also for a film festival where you dont know what kind of equipment they will be using (yeah I know you think they'd be using a reputable DVD player capable of running good 720p ect, but the fact is you don't know if they blew their budget getting a nice projector and screening area and then went and borrowed grandma's 5 year old Sony DVD player)

Again the idea of burning at the slowest speed possible and avoiding the use of paper labels are practices aimed at making your DVD readable in as many situations as possible and are very sound pratices when compatibility is critical. (though you can get away with 8x burning fairly safely nowadays, i wouldnt go 16x all the time though)

Some of the process that I've heard to get a better DVD image is to export directly to compressor using FCP after trashing your project render files (though i've personally have not seen the improvement in quality this way) or exporting an uncompressed self contained MOV and dropping that directly into DVD studio pro and using its converting software.

Personally i'm still looking for an alternative to Compressor until I convince my boss to buy BitVice, we notice lots of jaggies and mosquito artifacts around the edges of hair when moving slowly with a solid background moving behind them. And this is after trying all sorts of compression settings. So i am not impressed with Compressor at all (I wish they'd just let us use Quicktime Conversion again!)
 
I've heard very little favorably about Memorex blanks.

Yes, you can use Dolby 5.1.

What you shouldn't use is uncompressed aiff.
 
Goonie said:
Can you let me know the settings you used in DVD SP? Display mode, etc?
Click to expand...

I used compressor with a 7.4 bit rate. And have tired to burn the DVD with 7.4 but it says the video bit rate is too high. So I've tired to lower it to about 5. It looks like crap at 5 though. But yeah... display mode= 16:9 letter box.
 
The are two other variables.

1. What is the length of your video in minutes?

2. Did you use ac3/Dolby audio or uncompressed aiff. The latter contributes seven times more over head.
 
These are the crucial factors:

1. Length of the video in total minutes

2. Maximum and target bit rate for video in mbps

3. Encode audio aiff to ac3/Dolby2 at -31 normalization at 192 kpbs

4. Brand of blank media

5. No paper labels.
 
David S. said:
The are two other variables.

1. What is the length of your video in minutes?

2. Did you use ac3/Dolby audio or uncompressed aiff. The latter contributes seven times more over head.
Click to expand...

1. 5:36
2. The video bitrate is too high... there's nothing wrong with the audio.
 
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