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Export From FCP for DVD in highest quality?
Hi, I’ve had a problem for months now, where in trying to compress a 74 minute feature project (miniDV 24p) for a DVD, the quality always comes out siginificantly impaired.
I’ve played with every imaginable compression setting. The better compression settings have bit rates that won’t work in dvdsp, the lower settings suffer from considerable quality loss.
I’ve used H.264 to create .mov files, and these look awesome, but don’t play on all computers as a file. I’ve exported h.264 for dvd studio pro, but studio pro won’t import the asset.
Can anybody suggest a compression setting that will retain a great deal (or all) of the original quality and still fit on a dvd (75 min video + audio) or a way to take h.264 and pull into DVDSP?
Many thanks
Jake
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4 Replies
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Well, first off you DON’T want to use H.264 as you’ll be double-compressing your video. Once to H.264 and then again to MPEG II once you put it on the DVD.
You want to go directly from Final Cut to MPEG II. The best quality involves picking EXPORT -> COMPRESSOR right from Final Cut. That will tie up Final Cut while dragging a QT movie into Compressor doesn’t, but you’ll get slightly better results.
You should probably be aiming for a VBR MPEG II compression with an average of 6.0 and a max of 7.2. Also, make sure you compress your audio into a Dolby 2 file in Compressor too. You’ll then have an audio file and a video file that you can import into DVD SP.
That should look pretty good…once you get a disc made you can look at the size of it. If it’s less than 4 GB, raise your average from 6.0 to something higher and try again. Don’t put the max much higher than 7.2 or 7.3, however.
Also remember to judge the quality of your DVD on a TV and stand-alone DVD player…not your computer screen.
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I do ALOT of DVD encoding where I work, and I’ve found that using a CBR of around 6.5 actually looks the best. Apple calls this “One Pass”. I remember using their VBR several years ago, but in one of the many software updates along the line the quality of the “Highest Quality Encode” setting went way down. I believe some have even called it broken. Perhaps it has gotten better in recent updates, but that is what I have found in my experience.
Good luck!
-Todd Beabout
Vazda Studios -
There is still an issue with 2-pass VBR. As Todd says, stick to one pass CBR or VBR
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Guys, thanks soooo much,
one pass CBR around 6.5 quality came out a ton better than anything I had seen in two pass. great tip.
thank you thank you thank you
Jake
Southpaw Films
southpaw-nyc.com
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