Quality on Commercial DVD vs Encore made DVD

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Carlos,

Hollywood DVDs are starting off with a very high quality source to start with, usually film. Next, the MPEG-2 encoding solution can cost upwards of $40k, and is operated by a skilled Compressionist that will manually tweak the encode settings of each individual scene to maximize quality.

If you can tell use more about your workflow, myself and others can make suggestions to help improve your results.

What is the source video – DV, HDV, AVHCD? 1080i, 1080p, 720p?
Sequence settings?
MPEG-2 encode settings?

There are many variables and adjustments that can be made to get the best results.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Carlos Angeli]

Hi Jeff,

the client usually sends me a movie trailer (NTSC/ usually 1080p but also 1080i or even PAL). I put some still images for the background along with the movie theater logo, on a Photoshop file and send it to Premiere. I then put together, both background image(psd) and movie trailer in a Premiere sequence.

–Sequence settings: NTSC/ 720×480/ Fields: Progressive. *This varies according to source file.

As I have to scale down the original video to fit the sequence, I use flicker removal after some bad experiences with flickering subtitles.

Then, I export using a preset: MPEG2-DVD Match Source Highest quality. After that, I import video and audio files to Encore, set the timeline and menu and save as an ISO file. Finally I burn the DVD.

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Carlos,

I would recommend editing in a sequence to match the source footage, like 1080p for instance. This keeps the quality as good as can be while adding titles, graphics, etc. , rather than scaling it all down to SD immediately.

When edit is completed, then you can export to DVD. Rather than “Match Source”, choose “NTSC Wide screen high quality” preset, or add “progressive” to that choice if suitable.

Under the VIDEO tab, manually configure the encode rate as CBR 8 (7 if you want to feel safer about playback compatibility).

Last thing – at bottom of AME window, check the box for “Maximum Render Quality” – this improves the downscaling quality.

This should yield better results for you

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Carlos Angeli]

Thanks Jeff. So, you are suggesting to keep the settings at 1080p and scale down the video on the AME settings?

[Jeff Pulera]

Correct, you have 1080p source footage? Edit at 1080p. When finished, you can then export to HD or SD destinations. Vimeo or YouTube HD, Blu-ray, DVD, etc.

You should get better downscaling when using MAX RENDER in AME than when dropping HD clips into an SD sequence

Jeff

[Michael Brassert]

I had been agonizing for a long time on how to do a perfect hd to sd. I finally came up with a perfect simple solution that works better an anything short of a Snell Alchemist. I playback the HD movie on my monitor and shoot it with my SD camera. It comes out perfect.

[Carlos Angeli]

Hi,

Jeff, Your advice helped me improve the final SD video, so thanks a lot.
Michael, I don’t have an SD camera, but thanks for the tip. I’d have never thought of that.

[Eric Pautsch]

Im pretty sure Micheal is joking….at least I hope he is!!

Here’s a really good tutorial which yields the absolute best results using AVISnyth and Virtual dub– not for newbies though

https://www.bellunevideo.com/tutdetail.php?tutid=12

and more

https://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/07/hd-to-sd-dvd-best-methods/

and more

https://www.precomposed.com/blog/2010/10/hd-to-sd-dvd-cs5-revisited/

and

https://www.lafcpug.org/Tutorials/basic_hdvideo_to_dvd.html

[Carlos Angeli]

Thanks Eric, I’ll look in to them and make a comparison against my current workflow. I’ll comment on the results.

[Michael Brassert]

Extremis malis extrema remedia. 🙂

Shooting a monitor works better than you might think and I have gotten better results than many other methods and much faster. I have done this in the past when I was desperate.

I also recently achieved acceptable results downscaling in After Effects and compressing in Episode with some smoothing.

I just ordered a Cuda card as I have heard that downscaling with Cuda uses the much better Lanczos algorithm.

Often I wonder what they were thinking when they came up with HD, not to mention 160+ video formats. I just shot a show in DvcPro 50 SD 16:9 and it looks great. Most people think it is HD. It was shot with a Panny SDX 900. The images blow away my XDCam HD camera. This show looked better on a SD DVD than any hd material downscaled.