Why do all my DVD video's I create look like crap on an HDTV?

C

commercialguy

Member
So you go out there and you shoot stuff on a fancy HD camera at 1920x1080p 24 fps. Then you edit it and export it to a DVD. You then put that DVD in a DVD player to watch it on an LCD HDTV and it looks like crap. I realize if you want it to look good, you need to export it out on blu-ray, but what if it's for a client who needs a DVD?

I wish there was a way to get a DVD to look just as good as a blu-ray. I'm exporting out a 1 hour training video as MPEG and it's coming out around 30gb. I then import it into Nero to create a DVD with menus and it reads that it takes 2gb of space on the DVD. I wish I could get it to use the max DVD and see if it will improve the quality. Maybe even try a dual layer DVD in the future. I don't have Adobe Encore, or I'd try going that route. I've tried other DVD creating programs in the past like DVD Flick and it's all the same. The DVD looks like crap on an HDTV.

For some reason Hollywood DVDs look pretty damn good on an HDTV though in comparison. I wonder what their secret is.
 
A well-done DVD will NEVER look as good as a well-done Blu-ray. It just can't. There isn't anywhere near the resolution or color information. If a DVD could look as good as a Blu-ray, there wouldn't be any need for Blu-ray.

I'm exporting out a 1 hour training video as MPEG and it's coming out around 30gb. I then import it into Nero to create a DVD with menus and it reads that it takes 2gb of space on the DVD. I wish I could get it to use the max DVD and see if it will improve the quality. Maybe even try a dual layer DVD in the future. I don't have Adobe Encore, or I'd try going that route. I've tried other DVD creating programs in the past like DVD Flick and it's all the same. The DVD looks like crap on an HDTV.
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But the problem you're likely having is that you're ending up with a low bitrate for the DVD. You want an average of about 8000 Kbps, and you're probably closer to 5000.

Yes, if you want to do this properly, you're going to need to invest in dual-layer DVDs and better software. You'll also need to learn more about compressing for DVD, what bitrates are, how it affects your output quality, and the proper workflow for compressing to DVD. I don't mean to be harsh, but it sounds like you're being fairly haphazard about how you're choosing to compress, and leaving quite a bit of it up to cheap software. If you want the best results, you need to be far more in conscious control of the process and use pro-level software to do it.

From what I gather from the software that you're using, you're probably not making progressive DVDs, which you definitely should for 24p material, so you've got interlacing in the mix, and the deinterlace process to display it on an HDTV is going to degrade the image even further. This is (part of) why you need the software which will allow you to get the best results.

You should be editing your 1080/24p material on a 1080/24p timeline and exporting 24p for DVD. Ideally, you should be exporting a 24p DVD-compliant MPEG-2 stream so that the DVD authoring software doesn't recompress it at all, and just lays it straight to the DVD. You should be using a rock-solid, expressly-for-DVD render template, or know the DVD requirements so that you can control the render settings yourself for the best possible results.

For some reason Hollywood DVDs look pretty damn good on an HDTV though in comparison. I wonder what their secret is.
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Everything I just said above. Plus, they're using not just HIGH-end, but TOP-end software and hardware, as well as professional compressionists who really, really know what they're doing.

Not to mention that the player and the TV have a lot to do with it; many upconvert standard DVD to 1080p, and there's a lot of variance in quality to the upscaling from machine to machine, not to mention the quality of the underlying DVD. Garbage in/garbage out definitely applies.
 
Good advice and info, thanks David. I'm going to see what I can do to fix it based on your feedback. You've released a number of DVDs for sale. Would you mind sharing what you can about your DVD export settings/procedures? I'm assuming you shot them in HD as well to then be put on DVD.

What setting did you export out your final version before it was placed on DVD, mpeg, h264, avi, etc.?
What DVD software did you use to create the DVDs?
What settings did you use as far as bit rate, dual layer, etc.? If you used a 3rd party DVD creator company, do you know what settings they used?
 
Dave's comments are right on the money. Regarding dual-layer DVDs I would add that DL is helpful for longer programs, but since your video is only ONE hour there would be no benefit to a DL disc. At the highest allowed bitrate for DVD, one hour of material fits perfectly on a 4.7GB disc. A DL disc would simply be half-empty, at same quality.

You asked what format to export to, and the simple answer is "MPEG-2 for DVD". That is the best option, from original source (edit timeline) direct to what will be put on the DVD. Skip the "in between" format. Sounds like you're letting the disc authoring software take control and do what it wants. You may find quality presets there - seems it is encoding your ONE hour of footage using a TWO hour preset, since the disc is only half full. That's half the preferred bitrate (half quality). At a minimum, look to change the preset so at least it renders at a higher quality. And as Dave stated, check if you can set to 24p, so it is not changed to 480i (29.97 frame rate).

What NLE software do you use? Perhaps it can export to MPEG-2 that the authoring software can accept? I use Premiere CS6 and can export using Adobe Media Encoder.

Besides authoring the DVD at the best possible quality, another big factor is HOW the footage is viewed. If you use an old DVD player that only has the yellow composite output and run that to an HDTV, the image is simply expanded (blown up) by the TV to fill the screen and will typically look nasty (varies between TVs). What you want to do is use either a Blu-ray player, or newer DVD player that offers upconverted HDMI output. The special hardware in the player will do a nice job of converting SD to HD and then delivering the HD digitally into the HDTV so the TV is not scaling the image. My DVDs are hard to tell from an HD source when viewed this way! Of course, the encoding is high-quality as well; if the DVD has poor encoding, then it will not look good in any event.

If your workflow dictates that you must encode to an intermediate codec prior to MPEG-2, use something lossless like Lagarith or UT (they are free .avi codecs).

Regards,

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers
 
commercialguy said:
Good advice and info, thanks David. I'm going to see what I can do to fix it based on your feedback. You've released a number of DVDs for sale. Would you mind sharing what you can about your DVD export settings/procedures? I'm assuming you shot them in HD as well to then be put on DVD.
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Yes, much of the material was HD, and all the editing done in the native format/frame rate. Exported as DVD-compliant MPEG-2.

What setting did you export out your final version before it was placed on DVD, mpeg, h264, avi, etc.?
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DVD-compliant MPEG-2, because that is what is on every DVD. You never, ever want to export as anything else, because anything else will have to be re-encoded and recompressed, and if you're exporting as a highly-compressed format like MP4 or AVC or H.264 (all variations of the same thing, BTW), you're recompressing something that's already compressed within a millimeter of its life. Not the best result.

The only other thing you should export as, if you have good DVD authoring software which will do a very good DVD encode, is uncompressed, or as uncompressed as possible. But I'd pretty much always rather do the render to DVD MPEG-2 myself and not let any DVD authoring software compress the video.

The other possibility is when you have well-integrated software like Premiere/Encore, where Encore will take your Premiere project and do the compression from your original video files, the same as if you were exporting out of Premiere. I have only done this once on a small, one-off project, so I can't vouch for how well it works on large projects or complex DVDs.

(Also, compressing it to DVD spec yourself, instead of having the DVD authoring software do the encode, will save you time if you need or want to change something on the DVD, like a misspelled menu item or somesuch. No re-encoding = much less time in DVD authoring.)

What DVD software did you use to create the DVDs?
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Sony DVD Architect.

What settings did you use as far as bit rate, dual layer, etc.?
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I used the templates in Sony Vegas to render as DVD-compliant MPEG-2. 24p most of the time, but standard NTSC DVD when I had 60i BTS material that I didn't want to convert to 24p, or when the footage was 30p.

If you used a 3rd party DVD creator company, do you know what settings they used?
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We used a commercial replicator, but they don't do any of the DVD authoring. They make exact copies of the fully-authored DVDs I send them.
 
commercialguy said:
So you go out there and you shoot stuff on a fancy HD camera at 1920x1080p 24 fps. Then you edit it and export it to a DVD. You then put that DVD in a DVD player to watch it on an LCD HDTV and it looks like crap.
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While as mentioned by David there are some set of issues about when to compress to MPEG-2 and what tool...

I have found that in many cases, selecting the 1/2 zoom factor for DVD material makes it 'look' much better... because DVD is about 2/3 the HD resolution in each X and Y dimension.

There are of course some DVD transfers that seem to be ok uprezed to 'HD' size... but more often than not, 1/2 zoom gives a better appearance.

This is for 'close' as in 'living room' viewing.

When DVD is projected in a larger lecture hall/theater... there's not much that can be done, if the basics mentioned in other posts have been performed.

Another issue is 'sharpening' for output... Just as with 'stills' some slight, and dependent on the anticipated viewing environment, sharpening may give a better 'look' to material.

The problem with sharpening is that often it is excessive for the viewing situation, and leads to noticeable artifacts.
 
David Jimerson said:
A well-done DVD will NEVER look as good as a well-done Blu-ray. It just can't. There isn't anywhere near the resolution or color information. If a DVD could look as good as a Blu-ray, there wouldn't be any need for Blu-ray.
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You're right that a DVD won't look as good as a BluRay simply because of the resolution difference, but a properly encoded DVD played back over HDMI from a decent upscaling player can look really really close. I've had a client ask why they should even bother with the BluRay after seeing the playback of their DVD. I could tell the difference, but he had a hard time and he shot the movie!
I think that DVD gets a bad rap because there's just too many bad encodes out there, and then ironically BluRay gets a bad rap when people see the good DVDs that are upscaled well.
 
A well-encoded DVD put through a good upscaler can look pretty darn good, for sure, but if you took the DVD release of a movie and the Blu-ray release of a movie and look at them side-by-side, there really is no comparison even under the best of circumstances. The Indiana Jones trilogy special editions, for example, look great upscaled, but the Blu-rays really do smoke them.

Kinda depends on the movie, too -- an older movie with a lot of inherent grain (say, Vertigo) will look even grainier on the upscale.

The upscaled DVDs definitely look good enough that I have no great need to replace my DVD library with Blu-rays as a general matter, though (The Empire Strikes Back looks fantastic in particular, for some reason). Some older DVDs, like the very early release of Batman, needed to be upgraded, for sure.
 
Andrius Simutis said:
I think that DVD gets a bad rap because there's just too many bad encodes out there, and then ironically BluRay gets a bad rap when people see the good DVDs that are upscaled well.
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Yeah, a properly done DVD should not look distractingly bad when watched on an HDTV.
 
What you play the DVD on is also important together what type of DVD player and what connection.

A quality up rezzing blu ray player with a HDMI connection to a quality plasma HDTV will produce much better results than a s video, DVI, or component feed from a standard set top player to a bargain priced TV.
 
I'm extremely picky about DVD quality and recently made a DVD that even I'm happy with. Fortunately I wrote down the steps (I used this process after hours of online research on making a good DVD with Final Cut):

1) Make double sure the TV you are judging the DVD on is newer, HD and hooked to a quality DVD player with an HDMI cable.

2) Export your timeline as a Prores 422 HQ (huge uncompressed) file.

3) Convert the file to an 864 x 486 SD Prores HQ file in Compressor. Important- open Inspector and turn frame details on, Resize filter to "better" , an uncheck "adaptive details".

4) Take this file and make an MPEG 2 file in Compressor, using the DVD 60 minute setting if your program is shorter than an hour, if not, use 90 minute.

Open DVDSP Pro and use the MPEG 2 file to make your DVD. You'll be impressed with the end result.
 
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864 x 486 is the proper aspect ratio for Widescreen DV video with square pixels. Of course it ends up as 720 x 480 on a DVD, so it gets converted sooner or later. All I know is the final product is excellent.
 
mainstreetprod said:
864 x 486 is the proper aspect ratio for Widescreen DV video with square pixels. Of course it ends up as 720 x 480 on a DVD, so it gets converted sooner or later. All I know is the final product is excellent.
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NTSC DVD isn't square pixel and it's not 864x486. The reason you're getting a result you like is because you're doing a better scaling between your source and intermediate size, then there's less scaling happening after that to get to 720x480 DVD. The problem though is that you're scaling twice. Once from source to intermediate (864x486 or 853x486?) and then from that to 720x480.
You're getting good results despite that size setting, not because of it. Where a lot of people blow the picture is on the scaling of HD down to the squeezed aspect SD that a DVD is. If you take a 1920x1080 HD video and just drop it into DVDSP or Compressor with Apple's DVD preset, the scaling will default to fast instead of Best. To compound the problem Apple has stuck with an older implementation of MPEG2 that isn't the best, so you now add compression issues to scaling issues.
To get around these limitations, you can pre scale the HD to get a good clean uncompressed SD image (at the correct 720x480!) and compress that to MPEG2, or you can compress the HD to DVD with the scaler set to a better (best) setting (this can greatly increase the compression time). I haven't had to use the Apple MPEG2 compressor in a long time, so I can't say for certain which approach will work best with your content, but I'd try both and compare if I were you.
Or you can invest in a better compression tool, like a Cinemacraft encoder.
 
everything above..

one thing that's helped me a lot is what others are saying: it's important to put the file into your DVD software as an SD video file. Whenever I drop in an HD file and let the DVD software size it down it looks like crap. But when I export it all set for SD and move it into DVD software it looks MUCH better on an HDTV.

But umm, yeah I try not to EVER deliver DVDs anymore if I can.
 
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