Creating a quality DVD – Hekp needed

[Gary Milligan]

[Kim Gwydir] “I have HD video that was shot with a great camera and since it is sports its fast action.”

A great camera doesn’t necessarily mean anything… but I guess if the footage looks good going in, then it should look good coming out… as long as you follow the right workflow. What are the specs of the original footage? Codec (HDV, P2)? FPS (24, 30)?

[Kim Gwydir] “I edited using final cut pro and exported using the quicktime conversion option. The length is about an hour and size of file is 13 GB at this point.”

How did you import the footage? What are your sequence settings? Exporting using QuickTime conversion is not the best way to go – you should export a QuickTime Movie, de-select ‘Recompress All Frames’, and select ‘Make Movie Self-Contained’. The resulting file should then be used to compress for DVD. Your 1 hour video/13 GB file leads me to believe you have compressed it when coming from FCP and then compressed it again using Squeeze (which I’m not familiar with so I can’t suggest anything there).

[Kim Gwydir] “Until I burn to a DVD and result is grainy, words are fuzzy, faces and stuff blurry on my 32 in Sony Bravia.

I have tried creating DVD using iDVD, Burn and some other DVD create and nothing helps – please help need this for convention sat!”

Is iDVD the only DVD authoring tool you’ve tried? What file did you use in iDVD… the QuickTime export from FCP? Keep in mind that DVDs are SD not HD, so any HD files also have to be downscaled when they are compressed for DVD authoring and your Squeeze settings may have to be adjusted for this. HD footage is always going to take a hit in quality after downscaling… and some tools are better than others. Maybe someone else with experience can help with settings in Squeeze… or try Compressor. I use BitVice for making .m2v files from HD footage.

HTH

Gary

This is me – this is what I do – https://web.mac.com/garymmw

[Russ Haskell]

When you use Quick Time Conversion as the export, then compress in Squeeze, you have added at least one unnecessary layer of compression. Instead export as QuickTime movie current settings. Try bringing directly into iDVD and let it do the down scaling. Alternatively, take your master into Squeeze and bring that into iDVD. Compare the two and choose.

Good luck.

Russ