DVD burning quality issues

[David Roth weiss]

[Lauren Marsolier] “Is this avoidable?”

Of course!

[Lauren Marsolier] “Is it because of the way the film gets compressed in DVD studio Pro?”

No, it’s because you’re computer monitor is not calibrated correctly. In other words, the DVD is showing you reality, the canvas is showing you something that only looks good on the canvas.

You need to setup your monitor to color bars. The best way to do that would be to burn a DVD of color bars and then set your monitor so the bars in the canvas look exactly like they do on your TV. Remember, this is because the TV and the DVD are correct, it’s your computer monitor that’s set incorrectly.

And, the encoding you’re doing in DVDSP is vastly inferior to what you would create with Compressor. So, if you truly do want “the best possible DVD quality,” as you stated, then figure out what the heck is wrong with your copy of Compressor. There is no reason that Compressor will not work on an Intel Mac.

Does this make sense?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Lauren Marsolier]

Thanks for your help David. I have just fixed my problem with compressor and it’s working now. So what compressor settings should I select to get the best DVD quality knowing that the DVD will always play in the same player (as it will be part of an art piece) and the film is only 20 minutes, video only (no audio). The sequence setting in FCP is currently NTSC DV 3:2, but the DVD will be played on a 4:3 LCD TV…
Lauren.

[David Roth weiss]

Use the Best 90-min. DVD preset.

However, if you have text and graphics in your project, and most do, then DV compression is eating away at them, and it will only get worse when you encode to MPEG-2. So, in FCP, go into Sequence>>Settings and change the compressor to DV50. Then re-render the sequence. Then export a self contained Quicktime from that to use in Compressor.

What that does is render everything in 4:2:2 color space rather than the 4:1:1 color space of DV. This will preserve the quality of text and graphics in a very substantial way.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Lauren Marsolier]

Actually my film does not have any text or graphic. It is just video. I have just tried the Best 90 min DVD preset. But I am still loosing quality: lack of sharpness, lower contrast and saturation. I can see that my film is only taking up 880MB on the DVD. Is there anyway I can compress it less so that it retains more quality?
Thanks,
Lauren.

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Lauren,

Best quality 90 minute usually should default to the ‘best’ settings for the DVD encoding. You can manually go through the settings to check, Two pass VBR Best, you can bump your Average Bit Rate up to 6.7Mbps, Max Bit rate can’t be higher than 7.9Mbps and Best Motion Estimation.

That’s about all the control you need to make a good looking DVD. (aside from listening to David’s suggestions about exporting).

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Andrew Treglia]

DV 50 and not Apple Pro Res?

[David Roth weiss]

Both DV50 and ProRes operate in 4:2:2 color space. Both will avoid the horrible DV compression on text and graphics that arises from DV’s 4:1:1 color space. ProRes certainly can’t hurt, because it’s a 10-bit codec as compared to DV50’s 8-bits, but you probably won’t notice a difference.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.