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AppleTv quality on DVD
Hi, I posted here about a week ago asking opinions on how to optimize miniDV footage for HDTV viewing.
After watching our files in m4v format playing off iTunes through an AppleTV onto our HDTV, I noticed the quality was MUCH better. There was a lot less grain and just a better picture all around.
I am wondering if there was a way to get this exact quality onto DVD. I naively tried to drag an m4v into the Compressor batch window and export as a 90min best quality 4:3 mpeg-2. After burning to DVD, the grainy-ness was gone, just like watching through AppleTV, but there was a noticeable pixellation and blurriness all around.
Basically, I’m very curious to know if there is a way I can compress my mpeg2 to get the quality I am getting viewing m4v files through AppleTV, onto a DVD…
Thanks,
-Mike
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8 Replies
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Why would you want to compress an already very compressed MPEG2?
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Director-At-Large
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group -
I’m glad to hear that the AppleTV worked for you.
To answer your question, we need to know how you ended up making you videos for the AppleTV. Did you scale the video to 720P or just export from your DV timeline? Didn’t we also suggest changing the codec of your timeline to DV50 or using a 4:1:1 color smoother? Just let us know exactly how you did it.
As for DVD compression vs. AppleTV compression, DVD uses MPEG2 and AppleTV uses H264. The H264 is a much better compressor, so I’m not that suprised that it looked better. As I said before, DVD compression is an art and Compressor isn’t really the easiest way to control and perfect compression settings. If you really need the best DVD settings, take it to a company that really knows DVD compression.
-Russ
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What I had done was I exported it straight from final cut as a QT conversion for AppleTV, just for a way to quickly get it ready to compress to mpeg2.
I now just tried what you said and opened a new DV50 timeline and slapped a 4:1:1 Color smoother onto each clip. I suppose I should try exporting as a DVD best quality 90min? Are there any GOP or Bitrate settings that I should customize? Is there a way to get H.264 onto an SDDVD? Why does a DV50 codec matter if the actual picture is going to be the same aspect ratio? (i changed the aspect ratio of each clip to ‘0’).
-mike
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DV50 was something that was talked about to adjust your titles and graphics to a 4:2:2 color space instead of a 4:1:1. It might look a little better.
From there I would use the best settings in compressor just on a little test segment and seeing how it looks from a DVD player.
-Russ
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Thanks for your responses Russell.
So would you say the only way to get this true AppleTV resolution, would be to get our footage transferred to an HDDVD?
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HDDVD and AppleTV both use types of H264, but to my knowledge, there are no HDDVD burners.
Welcome to the wonderful world of compression. I hate compression because it talks so much time to try to get something to look better.
-Russ
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I think what we may do is just market it as optimized for 4:3 SD-TVs, whoever buys it can watch on SDTV or their computer. But then they also get free AppleTV/iPod downloads. I feel like any less quality would be cheating the product.
Also,… what do you think of something like this…
https://www.videoconversionexperts.com/
-mike
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[tyshpix] “What I had done was I exported it straight from final cut as a QT conversion for AppleTV, just for a way to quickly get it ready to compress to mpeg2.”
Wait… you exported your file as .m4v for AppleTV, then ran that through another conversion process to Mpeg2 and then burned it on a DVD and you’re wondering why the DVD didn’t look as good as the .m4v? Maybe because it was a generation down and using a lesser compression codec? Hopefully I misunderstood, but the proper way to create your mpg2 would be to export a quicktime movie (no conversion or recompression) and then open that in compressor to create the mpeg2.
Or just drag the quicktime right into DVD SP and let it create the QT. It does a great job, but only supports aiff audio so you don’t get the audio compression. No biggie, just eats up space on the disk.
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