Overall Video Quality Poor On Export, Deadline Approaching Fast!!!

[Roli Rivelino]

Was your footage shot on the Sony EX? If so export as a self contained QT and import that into DVDSP

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Scott Jacobs]

The footage was shot on the Sony HDR-FX5 or variation of that model. Not a Sony EX camera. I have also tried self contained and reference. Quality is still poor.

[Terry Mikkelsen]

Not sure about your video quality, as it seems to be a good workflow. However, text created in DVDSP will look terrible! Menus, buttons, text, backgrounds, etc….should be made in Photoshop for stills or Motion/AfterEffects for motion assets.

Content creation is not DVDSP strong point – as well it shouldn’t since it is an authoring environment. Why Apple even allows these options is beyond me. (In all their other ventures – if it doesn’t work in a nice, beautiful, easy way the feature isn’t even implemented.)

Tech-T Productions
http://www.technical-t.com

[Scott Jacobs]

The video quality is fine, not as pretty on my mac working with the footage, but that is the least of my concern.

I guess a main concern are the still images. The pixelation that occurs makes the images look as if they were tiny and then blown up. In actuality they are hd photos as the aspect ratio is posted earlier. I guess I will just have to make the menu in Photoshop…was trying to avoid that just for time.

[Michael Sacci]

If you convert the footage to “Apple ProRes422” why are you using an (HQ) sequence setting.

You can down-convert the footage in FCP by dropping it onto a SD timeline. Keep frame rate and compressor codec the same.

Or when you take the HD QT export into Compressor turn on Frame Control and set to best (will take a lot longer to encode) If your money is under 90 minutes change the Encoding mode to CBR and set it to 6.5 Mbps. (this will short the time to encode).

All in all you need to do short test and burn to a disc.

Building menus in DVDSP sucks, especially when you use the text for highlights, build them in Photoshop or Motion. There are a number of threads in the DVDSP forum on using the correct size for menus.

[Gary Askham]

You do realise that the DVD will never look as good as your Final Cut Pro edit, don’t you? DVD is a standard definition format – just over 500 lines of resolution. Your footage was shot HD – over 1000 lines of resolutiion. There is no way of getting around this (unless you make a BluRay).

Also if you are viewing the DVD on an HD television the quality can be made worse depending on the upscaling system in the television.

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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Scott Jacobs]

Yes, I am perfectly aware that it will never look as good, but the still images are going to be the main issue.

I will try the idea of putting the HD sequence into a SD sequence and maybe that will solve all the issues.

But why are the still images looking so bad when put onto DVD?

Do I have to go through the painstaking process of taking each photo into photoshop and scaling down the image to a SD size? Will that take care of the jagginess that is happening?

[Michael Gissing]

[Scott Jacobs] “I will try the idea of putting the HD sequence into a SD sequence and maybe that will solve all the issues.”

My experience is that down scaling in FCP is terrible. Makes everything soft. Best bet is to play with frame control settings in Compressor.

As Michael said, your sequence settings should be the same as the clip codec. Perhaps you should make a new sequence in ProRes 422 and copy you timeline in that. Make a self contained quicktime movie using current settings and take that in Compressor and tweak.