Rendered DVD To Bright!

[Nick White]

Whether you can get as good an image is impossible to tell. DVDA limits bitrate to 9800KB/s, but that is still pretty good quality video. Going above that seems to have a law of diminishing returns.

However I just looked at the bit rate of an original file from my vidcam, and it’s _25_000KB/s.

So in answer to your question, if you have a source that is very high quality and was originally in high quality (rendering a low quality video to a higher quality will get you nowhere), then a DVD will _never_ give you the same resolution or clarity.

Still interested in the washed out bits though.

Nick

[Darrin Smith]

Hi Nick,

Yes, the data came from the DVD itself.

The AVI file was rendered from Vegas after I was finished editing my project and it’s a great looking file. I’ve heard that one can render an AVI file into an Mpeg2 codec in Vegas. Would you recommend that?

If your interested, I could take a screen shot of the 2 different formats showing the same subject matter so you can visually compare apples to apples and send it to your email. Or isn’t that type of thing permitted here? I’ve only been on this site a couple of times so I’m a newbe and don’t know the protocol.

Thanks again,

Darrin

[Darrin Smith]

Oh, listen, I screwed up! When I said AVI I meant WMV file!

Also, all these images are of stills. I’m doing a documentary taken from Jpgs. I’m a photographer and know when not to blow out the whites when I take the image in photoshop. That’s why I’m so anal about this project. I made sure that the white area’s weren’t washed out. So when they sometimes were in the final DVD, it ticked me off. Also what would the extention be with the file you told me to look at? Like I said before, my friend helped me out and I’m new at this DVD rendering process.

Thanks again!

Darrin

[Nick White]

OK. Whether it’s a wmv or an avi is immaterial.

Incidentally I am a togger myself, and I know how careful you have to be and how important it is. I also understand the transition from still editing ti video making, and all the new problems that occur. There are FAR more layers in this process and each one can stuff you right up.

Because I have only JUST been doing this long enough the TRY to help.I can also be very patient when you don;t”get it right”. Been there done that and it’s daunting when you get hammered for it.

I cannot promise that you will not lose quality. IN fact I can promise you will.

So. You had a heap of jpgs to get to a slideshow.There was no source video file.You made your own.
(1) Does it have to be in DVD -player compatible format?
(2) What programme did you use to get the jogs together as a slide show?
-What file type did that put out? (wmv?) I assume that was the good one with no white saturation?
– we need a MediaInfo of that file.
(3) Then did your mate use the DVD Architect method WITHIN VEGAS to produce the interim file?
– THAT will put out a file with extension .mpg. WHERE it has put it I have no idea. What its NAME is I of course have no idea 🙂
– we need a mediainfo of that.
-you also need to view that file. In that way you can see if it was the mpg output from Vegas that caused the quality loss.
****Sadly, what it MAY come to is that you will have to post up small snippets of each video (no more than 5 seconds that show the problem) to ensure that PLAYERS are not causing trouble….welcome to the cowboy circus of video 🙁
(4) We already have the mediainfo for the actual DVD file. That looks pretty normal to my only moderately trained eye.

All I can do at the moment is to try to ID the source of the difference between your wmv that you were happy with and the DVD that you were not. Then we (or somebody) can start to diagnose.

In the end, I have to say that as a togger, you may have to accept that you take any shots that cause trouble and “blandify” them:lower saturation, back off here and there. You may simply be overdriving the DVD quality envelope. You know how compression works in jpgs etc. Well with video it’s pushed even further.

Nick

[Nick White]

Talking of players.

What player do you use to play thew wmv? The DVD file? If you find the interim pg file,what plays that?

Nick

[Bob Peterson]

As noted elsewhere, you still have not said what bit rate was used in Vegas to render the video. If it looks like a VHS, the bit rate was too low. How long is the video? If it is less than 90 minutes, I use a constant bit rate of 8,000,000 bits per second or more. In Vegas Pro, you have to customize the template to set this number. Mine are usually less than an hour, so I use 8.5mbps.

[Nick White]

Hoping to clarify, Darrin.

Bitrate is like jpg quality in stills: the better the quality the higher the bitrate and the larger the output file. So for a given frame size, say 720*480 for an NTSC DVD, the idea is to set the bit rate as high as possible (best quality) without having too much data and overflowing the DVD. The chances of over-reaching a DVD with an actual slide show of still is so unlikely that it is not considered, so quality is the main consideration.

Nick

[Tyson Onaga]

This sounds a lot like data outside the 16-235 space. You may want to read these threads:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/939445#939446
Take note of John’s screenshot of Original, Clipped, and Scaled.

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/957225#957228
Take note of John’s reply about 1/3 of the way down.

You may have data > 235 and < 16 which is fine for playback on a computer monitor, but not fine on other devices.

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But I could be wrong.

[Darrin Smith]

I’ve played the DVD on my TV that’s not a flat screen.

I also played it on my computer. They both show that some of the high lights are blown out.

The Windows Media Audio/Video file looks fantastic that I rendered to put on a flash drive.

That interm file, I’m going to have to have my friend help me with that.

Thanks.

[Nick White]

You could well be right! This was why I was suggesting that maybe the source material will have to be backed off a bit in the shots that give trouble.

Unfortunately for me (and I don’t know about Darrin)Vegas Studio does not have the quantifiable Levels adjustment that Pro does, and nor the visual representation of levels, so Studio users can’t set that accurately.

Nick