Bill Stephan
Forum Replies Created
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Panasonic DMR-ES10.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Forget playing 50i in North America. Only a small fraction of the players and HD displays can handle it.
The least objectionable compromise for a music project where you cannot alter the tempo of the music is to do a 1080/50i to 1080/23.976PsF conversion in Alchemist Platinum HD. There will be frame blending in the image once each second, but this is not very noticeable unless the camera is panning or tilting.
I’ve done several major projects using this method, including some for film recording.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Because the project is already in SD and the venues can use it, I vote for good old-fashioned DVD. Don’t screw around with the project any more than is necessary.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Your bit rate is OK. No problem there. Did you play through your MPEG-2 encode to see whether the file looks good? If it is, that eliminates the encoding as the source of the problem. The quality you see in the MPEG file should be what you see when the DVD disc is played. Then you want to look later in the chain for burning issues or DVDSP problems.
You can export from FCP to Compressor using Uncompressed 8/10 bit or ProRes/ProRes HQ codecs for best results when downconverting to SD.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Your bit rate is OK. No problem there. Did you play through your MPEG-2 encode to see whether the file looks good? If it is, that eliminates the encoding as the source of the problem. The quality you see in the MPEG file should be what you see when the DVD disc is played. Then you want to look later in the chain for burning issues or DVDSP problems.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Kyle,
Encoding at best quality in Compressor can produce bitrates that are quite high, causing playback issues when the project is burned onto DVD-R. I like to keep the bitrate for the MPEG-2 around 6-7 Mb/s. If the DVD player shows bitrates around 9-10 Mb/s, you will have playback problems on all but the most robust DVD players. You can get away with high bitrates only on a replicated discs, as those are much easier to read in the DVD player.
The other sources of your issue might be the DVD-R stock or a DVD burner or player with a weak laser or dirty optics.
Many people on this forum have commented that they get better encodes by exporting an SD Quicktime from their HD FCP project, and encoding that in Compressor.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
You need to encode DVD Spec-compliant elementary streams: MPEG-2, .ac3 or .wav. For Blu-ray, the program accepts HD MPEG-2, VC-1 and h.264 plus .ac3 or .wav for audio. This is not software that you can just throw any kind of media file at.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Those who live by DVD must learn to worship the number 99. By DVD Spec, you can have a limit of 99 Title Sets, 99 Titles, 99 Chapters, etc. You need to figure how to author your project so it fits within DVD Spec.
It’s almost impossible to advise you how to refine a project with hundreds of clips without looking at the authoring.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
USA Studios still authors HD-DVD discs on DVD-R stock, which gives roughly 30 minutes of HD playback. You must play these discs in an HD-DVD player or on a Mac.
Please respond with particulars of the project if you wish to pursue this further.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Put another chapter point just before the end of video 1. When the viewer jumps to that chapter, playback will proceed for a second or so and then the jump to video 2 will execute.
By DVD Spec, you can’t redefine the function of the next chapter button.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City