[Jeff Rippe]

My source material is an SD project in Vegas created from SD camcorder footage (MPEG2).

My question is if it’s possible to highlight the project in such a way that when rendered and opened in DVDA it looks more like what I see in the Vegas window. Is it possible to pre-compensate for the re-encoding losses?

In the “old days” of audio cassette recorders it was possible to compensate for generation loss by boosting the highs, applying noise reduction, etc. Do the same techniques apply to video?

[Jeff Rippe]

OK, here is more info:

Input files are MPEG2 (720×480, 29.97, 9MBPS) and AC3 (48KHz stereo) from a Canon FS20. When I view these files directly on TV or PC the video quality is GREAT – very clear with good color tones/saturation.

The videos also look good in Vegas Movie Studio – until I render them and export to DVDA. The quality at that point (in DVDA) looks like “cellphone”. Even my Text overlays are fuzzy/not sharp.

I have the Vegas project set to match the video/audio files and I am rendering using the “Make DVD” function using “best setting”, “Blend” interlace. I have also tried rendering using other templates with no improvement.

Apparently the decoding/edit/encoding of the MPEG file is really taking a toll on quality. Would 3rd party MPEG codecs help here or is MPEG2 just not edit-friendly no matter what?