[Evan Darnley-pentes]

A couple of years later and I know the answer. Well there are many ways to skin a cat some a quicker and neater than others.

Where I got to was a simple answer for most video production workflows.

1. The DVDs at the Rental shops are encoded down from HD/2k+ projects so they are able to get sharper and better quality SD DVDs than I ever will with an SD workflow.

2. Know what format you are starting in and what your finished format and medium will be.
understand a Package/CODEC/Bitrate(VBR or CBR)/Resolution
e.g .VOB/MPEG2/7600kbps CBR/720x576anamorphic

3. Shift the format of your video as little as possible in any workflow .

4. always scale down resolution from step to step, never scale up e.g dont start with a 400×300 pixel video and scale it up to 800×600, thats stupid.

5. choose the best quality 2 or more pass encoding setting. who cares if it takes longer to encode, your left with a much better quality video, at a much lower file size and all the motion will look smoother.

6. Adobe Premier has finally overtaken FCP as best editing tool. will recognise AVCHD videos out of Sony HD cameras without having to log and transfer them into Apple Pro Res 422 first. the finished youtube or DVD videos look much better because of step 3.

[Evan Darnley-pentes]

I’ve read this whole thread. Thanks for the insights, btw.
I still have questions though…
-I get the bit rate issue. between 6-8 MbitsS is fine for most dvd players.

But

I’ve got heaps of time to render, and
I still want to know how to get the best motion and colour in my DVD exports. Preferably a multi-pass hi f*#king quality look. I’m working with an fcp project. sequence is set as a 1024×576 and I’m using a mixture of 1024×576 .mov adds and cross promotional segment for SD Cable TV and SD Movies that I’ve ticked display anamorphic so they too display as wide screen in my sequence. The project is complete, and now I’m exporting it to make a DVD.

I’ve tried a number of different export settings from
Export using Quicktime conversion
Send to Compressor
Just saving a quick time movie at current settings and burning w Toast (6-8 MbitS Variable bitrate).

I’m still not happy with the results. I mean I see DVDs from the video shop that are awsome quality motion and no pixilation anywhere.

My question is, what does it take to get those kind of results?
If money is no object and rendering time is not an issue.

Just a high quality f*#ing DVD as a result.

Evan