Why can't i make my DVD the same quality as a professional studio DVD?

M

Mark Van Noord

New member
I'm so disappointed in the quality of the video that comes out when i make a DVD. I use a Canon 5D Mk II and FCP to Compressor to DVDSP. I've watched tonnes of YouTube vids and read tonnes of forums, so i'm doing everything i'm supposed to.
I realize that SD won't look like HD.

But my question is why can I film with my Canon 5D, the same camera they use for some scenes on say, "Black Swan", play it on the same TV using the same DVD player as I did with the feature film, and yet have such different results. There must be something that the studios are doing in between? Is there any way for me to do that as well?
 
sorry. i just found the answer. i looks really bad on my iMac, even though its a 27', 4 processor and only a year old. but when i play it on my colleagues PC it looks great. not really sure why that is, but i'm happy:)
 
cus your 27 inch monitor is bigger and has more resolution then SD.
Here's a tip ... export a part of your edit to a mpg2 file then play it back before you burn it. If you dont like the compression ..cus that is what your looking add more Mbs... The best looking dvds are at 5-6 Mbs . If its over 30 mins you will most likey need to do a Variable compression.
 
Mark Van Noord said:
But my question is why can I film with my Canon 5D, the same camera they use for some scenes on say, "Black Swan", play it on the same TV using the same DVD player as I did with the feature film, and yet have such different results. There must be something that the studios are doing in between? Is there any way for me to do that as well?
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There is a dedicated job in Hollywood called a "compressionist". This person's job is to engineer the compression for DVD or other such distribution. Under the hands of the compressionist, the film is compressed often frame-by-frame. This is a pretty intensive process that takes long hours to complete. This is done because each frame of video is different and can be compressed more or less depending on how much data is there to begin with, and this ensures that every frame of video is at its absolute best upon output.

Using something like Compressor or MPEG StreamClip, on the other hand, applies a single compression setup across all frames. It'll vary a little over the course of the film, but it's still using a blanket algorithm. Simply, the results will never match what you see from a major studio release.
 
joot said:
Are they using hardware or software for their compression ?
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Doesn't matter. Compression is all software- I think you are referring to hardware acceleration, perhaps. Which just accelerates the... wait for it... software.
 
Mark Van Noord said:
...why can I film with my Canon 5D, the same camera they use for some scenes on say, "Black Swan", play it on the same TV using the same DVD player as I did with the feature film, and yet have such different results. There must be something that the studios are doing in between? Is there any way for me to do that as well?
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Well, the difference between what you (or I) as an individual can do with a 5D and the final result of Black Swan is called a production company. In no particular order, we're talking about things like art direction, lighting, sound, people to build sound stages, a host of grips, etc. all the way through to editing, effects, color grading, etc. Oh, and story/scripts, first class actors, directors, DPs / cinematographers, etc. The "Hollywood look" is far more than a camera. Just sayin'.
 
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No reason for the snark. I'm under the impression that the OP wasn't complaining about the quality of the video from his NLE, but rather how it looked once compressed to DVD. Which Alex above already nailed an answer to, by pointing out that consumer-grade compression algorithms just aren't the same as having someone with a dedicated job to manually tweak that for optimum results.

In other words, if you have a blue ray copy of Black Swan, and want to rip and recompress into a DVD-R, it very likely won't look quite as good as a store bought DVD when played back.
 
In my experience, Adobe Media Encoder (CS5 and above) does a stellar job in compressing for DVD, where Compressor is usually poor in quality.
 
I realize we consumers don't own or have enough money to rent a production company like the Hollywood producers do when trying to "make" a movie. The question really is how does a compressionist or whatever you call them do the compressing ? What equipment , what software do they used ? Are they using compressor ? Are they using Adobe media encoder ? What exactly are they using ? And that is the question.
 
Bruce Watson said:
Well, the difference between what you (or I) as an individual can do with a 5D and the final result of Black Swan is called a production company. In no particular order, we're talking about things like art direction, lighting, sound, people to build sound stages, a host of grips, etc. all the way through to editing, effects, color grading, etc. Oh, and story/scripts, first class actors, directors, DPs / cinematographers, etc. The "Hollywood look" is far more than a camera. Just sayin'.
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nothing said:
^^^ This ^^^

Great answer. :thumbsup:
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Blah. Sorry to be disagreeable, but this is not really a great answer, or even a good answer. And it certainly isn't a helpful answer.

Take a clip shot on the OP's Canon 5D and give it to a professional compressionist, and it'll look a LOT better than running it through the normal compression tools that most of us use. The difference is the time and care that goes in to doing frame by frame and scene by scene compression. More time = Better quality.\

This book might be helpful ($15 on Kindle):
http://www.amazon.com/Real-World-Video-Compression-Beach/dp/0321514696

Also available online here (subscription required): http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/video/9780321550019
 
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That depends on what you mean by "better". How much better can you get than having a encode that is hard to diferentiate from the master? I can get there with Media Encoder, both for DVD and Blu-ray.

Doesn't quite look like the big Hollywood movies, but then the source didn't either.
 
Is there a general consensus that Adobe Media Encoder is a very good way (I know that's a relative term) to burn DVDs/Blu-Rays? As in...better than Compressor/DVD Studio Pro?
 
Dave © said:
Is there a general consensus that Adobe Media Encoder is a very good way (I know that's a relative term) to burn DVDs/Blu-Rays? As in...better than Compressor/DVD Studio Pro?
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I can't speak for DVD studio pro, but I've heard that AME does a better job than Compressor does. Heck, I've found a lot of encoders that do a better job than compressor, but I suppose its all relative.
 
Let's just say that I'm often asked to make DVD sources from Final Cut Pro exports using Media Encoder because of the poor quality that Compressor pumps out. It may be entirely possible to get a good export with Compressor, but I haven't bothered to dig in and play with the settings.
 
I don't have experience with Compressor but keep the MPEG-2 compressor in Adobe Media Encoder is quite
average compared to other options that one has on the Windows platform. The mainconcept consumer mpeg-2
codec in A.M.E. is fast and it is somewhat better than the worst codecs I've found.

You do not need a compressionist to do somewhat better than A.M.E./Mainconcept for DVD
at 6mbps. Better software like a Cinemacraft encoder or hcenc will suffice. It is hard to buy cce basic now
but the hcenc is free and is nearly as good as long as you are not pushing it ultra-ultra hard like 4/5mbps.
These higher performance compressors are not user-friendly though.

If you are compressing to H264 Bluray and you want visual performance, the x264 codec is simply incredible
at the higher quality settings. Not a user friendly workflow at all though.

You can do better if you hire a compressionist with $20 grand kit from sony (blucode)
or Cinemacraft (HDe) but you are likely to be able to do better than your are currently by taking advantage
of available tools.

None of this can fix your master if it looks crummy. If your color correction is sub-par and your production
values aren't there, the compression step is just going to make it worse.
 
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IMO most people would be better off grading and checking the final quality of their work using a consumer DVD/Blu-ray deck and a decent major brand consumer TV properly calibrated. Sharp, LG, Panasonic all make TV's that are better displays for HD or SD video than just about any computer monitor.
 
You can get close with a lot of messing around but it will be near impossible to get the compression of a "hollywood" DVD. Like others said someone does it frame by frame or at least in chunks based on the light levels, sound, etc. I've heard that some studios even have their own proprietary compression software to do some of that work. There just isn't a simple way to do it "at home".

Also it's worth noting that all the snark aside it is somewhat true about production values. Sure you will see differences in detail no matter what the content, but certain kinds of crazy- well exposed scenes with so many staged lights/ scene highlights to show the most trivial subject just makes things pop and sharpen up (on 35mm film or dig cinema footage) in a way that will look so much sharper and more dynamic no matter what your compression is like. This is very true. Very well exposed detailed scenes can work so much better in compression especially when you compress each section based on what is in the picture.

If you ever made video's for the internet before everything was HD there were unspoken rules you could follow for shooting knowing that it would be compressed badly for youtube like always shooting on a tripod, using solid background colors for interviews, and keep subjects from moving a whole lot. That sounds weird but what is in each shot and it's coloration makes a big difference in how compressed it will need to be. If there are large sections of a movie that are black or white screen of have only a few motionless details in the frame they need much simpler compression, so you save lots of space for the places with lots of motion and complex multi-track music. at "home" we choose a setting and hit "go" and it's all the same, so lots of valuable space is wasted.

now, HOW to actually compress each frame or 3 seconds worth of video so you can get the same yourself? I really don't know. Sorenson squeeze used to be the badass compression software that I knew of, but I'm not sure anymore, I only have an old one. Good luck with it, it's a constant battle for me too. I do documentary mostly, not very compression friendly in the handheld stuff.
 
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