Highest Quality Settings

wrxguy

wrxguy

Member
I am a film student working on exporting alot of my movies to DVD to hand out as promo's and things. What would settings would you recomend I export at so that i can get the HIGHEST QUALITY BEST LOOKING image/sound. It is going to be 4x3 not 16x9. Any help would be appreciated because I can get a really good image but I want to make sure I am getting the best looking i can get.

Thanks!
 
What have you primarily shot all your footage on? Are you looking to do a 4x3 letterboxed (is your footage currently anamorphic)? Are you going to make a 29.97 or a 24P DVD to send out? What kind of duration are you trying to fit onto each disc (each short its own disc, or perhaps like a series of shorts adding up to 2 hours onto 1 disc)? Do you have access to Compressor and DVD Studio Pro?

If there is anyway you can swing it, the "best" image would come from going to a professional authoring house and having them use hardware encoders to go from tape to MPEG-2 for the DVD(s). But for most that is not an affordable option.

Otherwise, what you'll want to do is mess around with Compressor (or an equivalent like BitVice or Flip4Mac Episode) and the various quality settings. If you're going to use Compressor you might want to invest the $20 in the Apple Pro Training Series Compressor Quick Reference book. Pick one of your pieces that has a lot of fast action in it and experiment using that. If you can get that to your satisfaction the rest should fall in line (talking heads are easier to compressor than people running around). Remember to do your QC using an external monitor (or at least TV set), not the computer monitor.

For the Audio, again if using Compressor, stick with the AC3 option. Don't bother with the AIFF. It doesn't give better audio and takes up needless amounts of extra space.

And unless you're applying for a motion graphics or DVD authoring gig, I'd keep the menu setup simple. That can waste a bunch of valuable disc space as well. It should look nice and polished, but no need for a 2 minute "rad" animation for the menu background if your priority is to preserve the quality of the reel or films on the DVD.

Also, if you have access to dual layer burners, DVD Studio Pro can support dual layer disc authoring. So that can double your available space if you're doing a longer piece (or have a lot of smaller pieces that add up to a lot). Just remember to do your research and set the break points and such up properly, otherwise the disc won't format correctly for you (there is an Apple Pro Training Series book for DVD Studio Pro as well).

cheers.
 
If you are using FCP, then export via Compressor and use the 60min High Quality setting and dump that into DVDSP.
 
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