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DVD looks great on computer, terrible on TV
I recently burned a seventy-five minute long project to DVD and have found that the quality looks perfect when played back on any computer. But on televisions it’s a different story. We tried several different sets and players (ranging from pretty old to brand new) and the results were always the same… significantly lower quality. The most noticeable problem is that everything is way too bright. And it seems to be more than just the way brightness and contrast is set on a particular television bc it happened on all of them. There are also artifacts all over the place and in a couple of shots of a city skyline, certain lines are moving the way a patterned shirt sometimes goes crazy on film.
I exported the project from Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0 as an MPEG-2 with the following settings…
NTSC, 4:3
The quality was all the way up to 5.
29.97 fps drop frame.
Interlaced. Lower field first.The encoding is a high quality, low-bandwith 4mb VBR 2 pass with a target bit-rate of 4, max of 7, and minimum 1.5.
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what the M Frames setting does exactly but the default was 3.
Audio was exported separately as a .wav file. The MPEG-2 and wav file were brought into Encore.
I’m pretty new to Encore and I couldn’t find any way to customize the way it burned the DVD other than the options that come up on the “build DVD disc” menu. And all that really allowed me to select was the write speed and disc size (which is 4.7 gb).
Am I transcoding this file twice? Once when I export the MPGEG from Premiere and again when Encore burns the DVD? I also thought Encore knew how to select the highest quality without running out of room on whichever DVD you were burning to but there always looks to be quite a bit of space left on the disc. I’ve also heard the quality of the brand of DVDs I’m using might have something to do with it. But would any of these things explain why the same disc looks fine on the computer but not on TV? I know there are obviously big differences in a computer monitor and a television set but everything I’ve come across usually has the opposite problem… something looking fine on TV and not on a computer.
I know DVD encoding is a tricky thing and a lot of trial and error so if anyone has experienced anything like this before or can offer some suggestions that would be amazing.
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6 Replies
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[Christopher Schrader] “The most noticeable problem is that everything is way too bright. And it seems to be more than just the way brightness and contrast is set on a particular television bc it happened on all of them”
Is the computer monitor that you used for the comparison the same monitor that you used to edit the video and author the DVD, as well as view the finished disc? Is it properly calibrated?
[Christopher Schrader] “Am I transcoding this file twice? Once when I export the MPGEG from Premiere and again when Encore burns the DVD? I also thought Encore knew how to select the highest quality without running out of room on whichever DVD you were burning to but there always looks to be quite a bit of space left on the disc.”
Encore’s Automatic Transcoding only works on non-transcoded footage like .avi or .mov files. Once you transcode a DVD-legal MPEG file in Premiere, Encore leaves it alone and trusts your judgment on file size and bit rate. Better to export from Pr as an .avi file and let Encore handle the transcoding to MPEG2.
The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0
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Thanks for your suggestions Jeff. When I say it looks better on the computer monitor, it’s not just one. I’ve watched the same DVD on at least four different computers and on all of them it looks exceptionally better.
I tried using avi files instead of mpeg and let Encore handle the encoding. It definitely used more disc space but the results were only marginally better. The whole film still looks too bright. There are artifacts all over the place. And one sequence in particular was color corrected quite a bit and looks amazing through the DVD-Rom drive on a computer but incredibly flat and dull on the TV.
I’ve got a Radeon 8500 series video card on the computer it was edited on. Not sure if there’s some sort of difference in the settings or what.
This is so incredibly frustrating. Even if I went in and adjusted the brightness levels it wouldn’t change the fact that the color corrected scene looks terrible. And then it would look too dark on a computer monitor.
If it were just my computer I’d say something was way off with the settings. But it’s every computer it’s played on that seems to improve the quality.
Someone told me DVD players automatically downgrade quality but this is ridiculous.
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Then the answer is that the TV (or TVs) need to be properly calibrated. TVs ship from the manufacturer too blue and too bright. The reason they do that is to attract attention in the bright showrooms of big electronics stores.
Fix your TV and you will fix your problem. Unfortunately, you have no control over how your audience will have their TVs set up.
Hollywood directors have had to deal with this forever. THX and ISF exist as a partial solution to this problem.
-Jeff
The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0
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I have the same problem. How did you finally find a solution ??
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Why does a commercial DVD look fine on a computer and TV when the Encore DVD looks fine on computers and way too blown out on TVs? Played DVD on several of both with same results. Called Adobe –that was useless. Played with the brightness on a brand new Sony HD–still not right. It seems like the information of light and dark isn’t available to the DVD player-also a brand new Sony.
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Unfortunately I never completely solved this issue. I was told that some computers can upgrade the quality of the DVD depending on what type of graphics card they have, etc.
I do know that having a properly calibrated monitor is paramount if you want consistency between what you see on your computer and what winds up on your TV screen. Back when I originally started this thread I was using a brand new monitor that displayed everything just a little too dark. It has since been re-calibrated.
I’ve been using an HD camcorder and CS4 lately and haven’t had as much of an issue with it. I apologize for not providing a decent answer. Like I said, I really never found one. Best of luck. I know how frustrated you must feel.
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