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A DVD as good as the original footage?
I was wondering if anyone has ever achieved results with skillful rendering of a project and excellent quality DVD’s to produce a result that is identical to the original film. For example: Is there ever a case where the end product – (a rendered DVD in your DVD player) looks identical to the same footage if you were to hook up your mini DV cam using RCA cables to the television set and play the same footage?
If so how long did it take for you to perfect your rendering set up?
Thanks!
Don
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2 Replies
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Don, due to the (sometimes extensive) compression involved, it’s virtually impossible to get a DVD looking as good as the source footage.
One hour of standard def video is approx. 13 GB.
A single layer DVD can hold 4.3GB of video.
This works out to about a 3:1 compression ratio which means something has to suffer and that something is picture colour and quality.
I’m not saying that it can’t look good because it can.
The term GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) applies to the video world just as it does elsewhere in life so starting with good source footage is more than half the battle.
Pay attention to your video and audio levels during the editing process ensuring that you end up with a good quality video.
Encoding (i.e. rendering) is the final step.
If the video is under 70 min. long, I’ll do a CBR of 8,000,000.
Anything longer and I use a bitrate calculator to determine optimum settings.
I’m not sure if this was the answer you were looking for but I’m a firm believer in getting the best source footage I can.
After that, the rest will fall into place and your DVDs will be admired by one and all 🙂 -
Excellent feedback Mike and exactly what I needed to learn. I wonder if anyone is working on a super DVD media format that somehow can ingeniously hold 8 gigs or so of material that allows the quality of footage to be as good as the original. And one that eventually results in one DVD that can play in the standard family DVD machine.
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