[Andrew Simpson]

Hi David

many thanks for this – I suspected that there might be a conceptual gap with me on this one.

I take it from what you say that no matter what I do – there’s a ceiling on what a DVD player can physically read from a burned disk. Even if I could get my hands on an 18GB burnable DVD disk, then it would still look grainy and lacking definition – just as the 4.8GB version I have produced. This is not then about compressing the movie, this is about bit-rate, the amount of information that can be passed from the disk to the DVD player in time for it to make sense of it. If it is slow, the DVD player makes a worse job of displaying the results than if it is fast – is that what bit rate is?

I am assuming then that Apple’s software DVD player does not simulate accurately how a hardware DVD player will perform, hence why “Open DVD media” plays significantly better than my domestic (albeit good quality) DVD player.

As an aside (guilt) I have bought the “lucky” couple an external hard drive that they will be able to play the much better quality DV file from, so hopefully they won’t be suing me.

Perhaps I’ll be able to do more with this file with BlueRay or non-DVD media.

Many thanks for your help – the only solution is then to get better quality footage from the start!

[Andrew Simpson]

Hi

I have almost the opposite problem to this last poster in that I am trying to increase the file of the movie to be burned, in order to take advantage of the larger space on a Dual Layer DVD.

I have been editing a wedding video for around six weeks. We used four cameras or different format (2xHD, 2xSD – I know, never again)

Finally, having sorted out numerous field-shift issues and other downscale problems, I have a master QuickTime PAL DV Standard Definition 18GB file to format that I am moderately happy with.

I have very little experience of dual later DVDs, but since I have some grainy footage from one of the HD cameras (Canon XHA1) that was set to fine instead of superfine (…another story) – this appears almost acceptable in the full-quality master, but creates noise on a 4.8GB DVD compressed using the 90 minuite best quality DVD preset in compressor (with the .ac3 audio file)

I don’t know in this instance whether my client has a DVD player capable of playing dual format, but I’m willing to take the chance. However I have two issues that someone may have encountered before – I would be very grateful for any help with this:

1. The first main issue is how to increase the size of the movie I am burning to the DVD. Using compressor, I get a 3.62GB file – which of course fits nicely onto a single layer DVD. Is there a way to create a file that is closer to say 8GB, with (I assume) less compression?

2. Every time I have tried to burn a dual layer DVD using my MacBook Pro (with MATSHITADVD-R UJ-846 – which I believe should be able to burn DL DVDs); I get a drive error around half way through the formatting.

The movie duration is 1:17:00

Many thanks,
Andrew