Making the best quality dvd possible

[Dave Haynie]

[James Reeve] “So may I just clarify something? One can store anything on a DVD, even HD footage at very high resolution (eg. 1920×1080). The problem is that standard DVD players can’t play it, right?
“

That is correct. A DVD is always a data disc. There are a few formats — specific collections of directories and files, which go on a DVD in such a way that appliance-type devices understand them. These including things like DVD-Video and DVD-Audio. Most Blu-ray players understand one additional format, the AVCHD DVD, which is “HD Video shot on camcorder”, at least originally (of course, it’s also used on memory cards today).

So as I mentioned, the video and audio formats for DVD players are fixed in stone. If you want to make a DVD that plays on a regular DVD player, that’s what you create: MPEG-2 at 720×480 or 352×480, or MPEG-1 352×240, 60i or 24p, or 720×576 or 352 x 576 in MPEG-2, 352×288 in MPEG-1, 50i. Those are representations of standard definition, and the only thing conventional DVD players will ever play as a standard. Period. Anything even slightly higher resolution is not a DVD standard.

This is exactly why the Blu-ray standard was created — we needed a disc format for HD. DVD is and always will be SD. No loopholes, period.

-Dave

[Rob Robertson]

Could someone please explain to me why I put a store bought Standard (Not Blu-Ray) DVD in my computer, the image is crisp and clear and perfect full screen. Looks like HD to me. When I burn my own standard DVD from a video file that looks just as sharp and just as high resolution as the store-bought DVD and then play it back, it looks like absolute crap! If NO standard DVD can record at anything above 720X480 NSTC, then how do Store Bought DVDs have such great quality on a 1920 X1080 screen while a DVD I burn (No matter what software I use or what settings I use has only a fraction of the original quality of the source file and looks about as good as an old worn VHS tape when viewed full screen on the same monitor. Makes me believe that there is one set of DVD authoring software for commercial applications, and another for the general public. Can anyone explain the disparity to me?

I have spent hours searching the web for the secret of burning a DVD that looks as good as a store-bought DVD (assuming I have High Quality, HD footage to start with…which I do) and can’t even find people asking this obvious question.

[Morten Kristiansen]

I am having the same experience. Great quality on DVDs I rent/buy and crap DVD quality of the ones I burn myself. Aliasing and pixelated.

[Steve Curtis]

So explain to me how Hollywood continually puts their very high quality film products onto a regular DVD, they are more often than not OVER 2 hours in length, and they look fantastic? How does that work? I want to make that same kind of product. I have a feeling it’s a special disk, and not a DL either. What is it?

[Jeff Pulera]

First off, the Hollywood source video is cleaner and higher resolution than most of us can accomplish with consumer/prosumer gear. Most camcorders today are recording using AVCHD at 24mbps (very highly compressed) with 4:2:0 8-bit color (low fidelity), so the source is weak to begin with.

Hollywood uses a $30K+ encoding system like Scenarist with a professional Compressionist operating the system and tweaking the compression levels on a scene by scene basis to do the MPEG-2 encoding.

The Hollywood DVDs are Dual-Layer discs with double the capacity of the standard 4.7GB DVD-R discs, so they have room to increase the data rate for better quality. So, many factors are involved.

I’ve never had good luck converting 1080i HD to DVD using standard Adobe encoding tools. I use third-party apps that are free to get really nice DVDs that look great on an HDTV. Using Virtual Dub, HD2SD plugin, HC Encoder for MPEG-2 creation, then authoring with Adobe Encore CS6.

I’ve heard good things about the Tsunami MPEG Encoder (TMPGEnc) but have not tried it – https://www.tmpgenc.net/en/index.html

Thanks

Jeff