Downloaded Vimeo video…question

[Aleksey Tarasov]

Additional rendering using a lossy codec (such as MPEG2) ALWAYS degrades the quality.

[Russ Froze]

Yes it will degrade the quality. Lets count the number of times the file has been encoded so far.
1) Was the original file captured via tape, if so it needed to be ingested.
2) The file was edited and rendered.
3) Uploaded to Vimeo where it was rendered again
4) DVD makers added and rendered to MP2

In short the DVD will be 2 – 3 heavy compression sessions from the original. Most certainly it will be squashed.
Do try to get the original
Russ Froze

[Steve Rhoden]

Yes, it will degrade the quality Ron, but putting it to standard DVD
will be ok, you will still get bit of a decent result.
However when doing this, try not to add too much effects/filters to it,
cause then it will really show obvious signs of degradation.

Steve Rhoden (Cow Leader)
Film Maker & VFX Artist.
Owner of Filmex Creative Media.
Samples of my Work and Company can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia

[Ron Whitaker]

When you say “original,” do you mean the original footage, before ANY rendering has taken place?

Someone else edited it, and I’m sure it wasn’t in Vegas, so an edited version saved out as DNxHD. Would that work?

Or is there a better workflow?

[John Rofrano]

[Ron Whitaker] “Someone else edited it, and I’m sure it wasn’t in Vegas, so an edited version saved out as DNxHD. Would that work?”

Yes, I would tell the customer that re-encoding a Vimeo file that has already been encoded 2 – 3 times is not going to yield the best quality. If you could get the originals that were uploaded to Vimeo, that would be 1 generation better.

In the mean time, I would encode one of the MP4 files to MPEG2 and author a DVD and see if the quality is acceptable to the client. They might be fine with it and you’re doing all this extra work for nothing.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com