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Question Involving Rendering
Hi Everybody:
I still seem to experience quality issues when going from my rendered product to DVD Architect and then to DVD.
My initial product was shot HD-24p and was captured and rendered in Sony Vegas 8 that way. Playback in the HD version both on the monitor and when played through my HD TV via laptop are great. The problem comes in burning a DVD.
No matter what setting I render the DVD version product in (i.e. from the HD-24p product down to NTSC Widesreen DVD, it just loses a ton of quality. I’ve test by taking that product and making a single movie through DVD architect and then burning a DVD for test on the computer.
I’m using a rendered product, in HD 24P, to convert by re-rendering. Should I instead go back to the project file and render a DVD compatible product from there? Is there a best format to use in the drop down menu for a DVD compatible product that I should be using for best quality? If I master a good HD product, including special features, is there a recommendation on who could take the HD product and create a quality DVD for duplication?
I’m a little frustrated on this quality issue and hope to resolve it soon to get the DVD to market.
Thank you for ANY help or advice.
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3 Replies
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I’m not entirely sure I follow your workflow, but it sounds like you are (1) Rendering out an “HD-24p” (720p24? 1080p24?) intermediary and the (2) rendering your SD MPEG-2 file.
The first piece of advice (that I’m sure you already know) is that you should absolutely limit the number of renders to the minimum you can get away with. In this case, the least number is one, and you’d render your timeline straight to DVD-Video widescreen MPEG-2 and author your disc, making sure DVD Architect is not re-rendering that file (i.e., DVD Architect renders your menus and burns to disc and doesn’t take hours re-rendering).
Now that doesn’t mean you CAN’T render to an HD intermediary, in fact, I do this on pretty much every project, but you need to make sure you render to a high enough quality format. You could kick the data rate way up on an H.264 codec and my bet is the results would be very good, however, the best way is to render out to a lossless intermediary. For me, that’s always been QuickTime using the Animation codec. This will result in a humungous file, but disk space is cheap and I have a number of destinations (different Web resolutions, DVD, etc.), so this intermediary serves me well. Others here may suggest other lossless codecs: some will produce smaller files, some will be faster – as long as it’s lossless, I can endorse it!
As to specific DVD-Video MPEG-2 settings, other than 2-pass VBR with a fairly high data rate (say averaging ~7 Mbps)? My primary distribution is not DVD at this point, so others will have more to say about this I’m sure.
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“It’s a fact that more people watch television and
get their information that way than read books. I find
new technology and new ways of communication very exciting…”
– Stephen Covey
https://videopia.org -
> No matter what setting I render the DVD version product in (i.e. from the HD-24p product down to NTSC Widesreen DVD, it just loses a ton of quality.
Yes, 5x the quality to be exact! You can’t expect a 730×480 DVD to look like your 1920×1080 source. There is just 5x less resolution. (not 2x… not 3x… 5x!!!)
> Should I instead go back to the project file and render a DVD compatible product from there?
Yes absolutely. Every re-render looses quality. Rendering the DVD output directly from the timeline will always give the best qualoity.
> Is there a best format to use in the drop down menu for a DVD compatible product that I should be using for best quality?
For 24p there is only one choice: MPEG2: DVD Architect 24p NTSC Widescreen video stream. Then render the audio as a separate Digital Dolby AC3 file.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thank you very much, both of you, for your valuable help. I’m running a test as I write this using your advice. THANKS!
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