Noisy blacks in DVD

[mainstreetprod]

Just put my unfinished feature on a DVD as a test. Watched on an LCD TV and noticed that the blacks were very noisy in many places, including the black background on titles. Went back to my Imac and watched both the original Prores file and the DVD on it. Virtually no noisy blacks there. Why do the blacks look so bad on the DVD?

 

[David Jimerson]

If the DVD doesn't show noise in blacks on your iMac, it's almost certainly a difference in calibration between your iMac and your TV. And it could be that neither is properly calibrated, never mind that a computer won't show you what something will look like on a TV.

Things like this are why you want to preview out to a properly-calibrated NTSC monitor and do your color correction and levels using it. That will tell you if it's good to go for DVD. Relying on anything else, you're flying blind.