Help! DVD copies looking awful!!

Hi,
The DVDs I'm burning look awful. I am exporting a project from FCP to a QT movie. The QT looks fine on the computer when I play it back full screen but when I burn it to a DVD it looks horrible both on the computer and from a DVD player. This is a weird turn of events since I have downloaded and made files from the same project many times and did not have this problem. The resolution is so jagged and the titles look horrible.
I am not using any compression when making the QT. I have used current settings - which are HDV 1280 x 720p and, when that looked bad, I tried using pro res 422 720p. I have changed the settings in idvd 6 to Best Performance and have also tried the Best Quality Setting.
I've been searching this forum for hours for answers about my problem. I have tried every fix I can find to no avail. I'm desperate now since I need to get a dvd in the mail today in order to make a festival deadline.
Please help!
cathy c.

#42 - Quick and dirty way to author a DVD
Shane's Stock Answer #42 - David Roth Weiss' Secret Quick and Dirty Way to Author a DVD:
The absolute simplest way to make a DVD using FCP and DVDSP is as follows:
1. Export a QT movie, either a reference file or self contained using current settings.
2. Open DVDSP, select the "graphical" tab and you will see two little monitors, one blue, one green.
3. Select the left blue one and hit delete.
4. Now, select the green one, right click on it amd select the top option "first play".
5. Now drag your QT from the broswer and drop it on top of the green monitor.
6. Now, for a DVD from an HD source, look to the right side and select the "general tab" in the track editor, and see the Display Mode, and select "16:9 pan-scan."
7. Hit the little black and yellow burn icon at the top of the page and put a a DVD in when prompted. DVDSP will encode and burn your new DVD.
THATS ALL!!!
NOW...if you want a GOOD LOOKING DVD, instead of taking your REF movie into DVD SP, instead take it into Compressor and choose the BEST QUALITY ENCODE (2 pass VBR) that matches your show timing. Then take THAT result into DVD SP and follow the rest of the steps. Except you can choose "16:9 LETTERBOX" instead of PAN & SCAN if you want to see the entire image.
Shane

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bubsy wrote:
Thank I'll give that a try when I get home tonight. Quick note, I played the same DVD on an SD television set and the picture looked fine, decent anyway. But on my HD TV it looked terrible.
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bogiesan
Message was edited by: David Bogie Chq-1

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[Bit Rate Too High|http://dvdstepbystep.com/faqs_3.php]
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I will try to answer both request in one post. First the video did not really look like the tracking was off generally this makes lines in the video. I was more like an old time movie only not that bad where it may have been missing some frames but the picture looked good just choppy.
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Text looks awful?

Hi all,
Using FCP 10.0.6 and when importing a video that has text on it, it looks awful. The text 'shakes' and doesn't look right at all. I use avidemux to change the look of a video, and FCP to put it in HD and sharpen it. However, whenever I put the video into FCP it always has problems with the video imported that aren't on the actual file. An example of what this looks like would be:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHJeWBmVR90&list=UUkxHI9k2Ir3epaJLdcttlbg&index=5
Can be seen at 1:45 in the video. Any way to remove this, or stop it from happening? My avidemux output settings are:
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Any help greatly appreciated,
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dam2040 wrote:
… when importing a video … The text 'shakes' . I use avidemux to change the look of a video, and FCP to put it in HD and sharpen it. …
wotwotwot?
you have a low-quality, highly compressed source file and scales it to 'HDef'?
that just blows-up pixel-mud, doesn't 'create quality'.
by contrary: so-called scaling-effects could degrade quality, in your example, the font creates 'sub pixel'.
probably, you're using the wrong codecs to swap btw. the two tools.
use FCPX only to add your titles and 'changing the look'.
... and be nice to ©opyrights …

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Hello John,
I've a couple of different workflows depending on what I want and which version you're running (and on what machine) but generally this is the process. It is recommended that you export your timeline as QT movie even if you use Compressor (and not send to Compressor from within FCE/FCP) because it has the nasty habit of re-rendering your timeline,which adds to the already long encoding times of Compressor 2 and later. If your mac is not very powerful, you can let DVDSP do the encoding - the encoder is based on Compressor, but seems to be a bit faster.
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Read Bill Hunt on a file type as WRAPPER http://forums.adobe.com/thread/440037?tstart=0
What is a CODEC... a Primer http://forums.adobe.com/thread/546811?tstart=0
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Read Bill Hunt on editing a VOB/MPG file http://forums.adobe.com/thread/464549?tstart=0
Tools to Convert to DV-AVI http://forums.adobe.com/thread/415317?tstart=0
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Convert your files to DV-AVI Type II with 48KHz 16-bit Audio
I have NOT used the products below, I only forward due to other mentions
$99 http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1175714228541#tabview=tab0
$99 http://www.womble.com/products/mvw.html
$90 http://www.magix.com/us/movie-edit-pro/ plus $5 Ship
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$75 http://www.videoredo.com/en/index.htm
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Motion import to FCP looks awful

I have a Motion2 project I created that looks perfect in Motion. When I import into FCP 5, first I have to render it (is this normal?), and it looks awful afterward - the text looks very jagged and aliased, and the layered "background" animation is completely lost, leaving only black (see below).
The project settings on both are NTSC/DV at 720x480 and 29.97.
I'm using the animated curves layers from one of the templates in Motion2 as my background layer, but I wanted them darker, so I doubled them up and played with the blend modes. This is the animated "background" that's not showing up in FCP.
Man, I was riding high after creating a lower third for the same project in Motion that turned out beautiful (thanks to some helpful advice on this forum . When I did the import for the lower third piece into the very same FCP project it looks excellent! The only difference I can think of is that it had the video clip brought in from FCP that I animated over, whereas this project is a bumper that is all created in Motion.
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All the best,
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OK, I'm closer to figuring it out and just hoping someone can help me take it to the finish line
The only difference between the two Motion files is the lower third was created over video sent from FCP. Since this Motion project (the one I'm having a problem with) is a bumper on its own in the FCP Timeline, I thought maybe there's a problem with the "black" FCP creates in any spaces in the timeline, and this is perhaps adding black to the background of the Motion file import...
Sure enough, I built an NTSC black b.g. still in Photoshop and imported it into Motion. Putting this black NTSC b.g. on the bottom layer recreated the EXACT problem I'm having in FCP! On this NTSC b.g. layer, I can take down the opacity all the way, or choose "stencil alpha" from the blend modes to get the right look, but either way, when I import it back into FCP I still get the same problem.
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Progressive dvcprohd footage to dvd export - looks like youtube !

this is gonna need a compressor / dvd studio pro guru to
I have been searching the internet / forums etc etc for hours - have tried heaps of suggested settings but just cant get a good result - I am on a brand new mac pro quad core - the latest Final cut studio with all latest software updates.
my fcp timelines look beautiful - cinema desktop preview looks great.
sending to compressor from my dvcprohd ntsc progressive fc timeline - using settings under the dvd tab - mpg 2 and ac3.
but after running through compressor:
i am getting hideous stair stepping. Any small line on the screen that crosses the horizontal at an angle (ie not flat) looks awful.
The video looks like youtube. washed out - no macro blocking - but stair stepping / herringbone is off the scale-after reviewing the dvd and raw mpg 2 files both on the monitor and on a tv.
As far as i can tell -There shouldnt be any interlacing issues because interlacing shouldnt happen - i shoot and work progressive all the way through my work flow - and all my sequences are set up as progressive at the correct frame rates.
is this a downscaling issue?
the format is set up correctly with frame rate and progressive settings matching my source
after trying the standard best quality settings and getting youtube results:
i tried: cbr 7 mbs , (its only 42 mins of video) - from my limited research on the forums it appears that cbr at a high bit rate works better for top quality dvds than vbr 2 pass - which seems counter intuitive. please correct me if i am wrong. 2 pass vbr at similar bit rates gives me no noticeable improvement in quality.
frame controls on -resize filter better
output fields same as source
deinterlace fast (i really dont know why this option is there as i am working prog all the way through
but i suspect compressor may be trying to deinterlace my prog footage?)
adaptive details on and off have bene tried
100% duration relative to source.
I have been trying for 3 days to get a good result and am literally pulling my hair out. I have 8 test dvds - nothing looks right.
i suspect a bug in compressor - i have read a few posts about similar items - have tried a few suggested settings - and they havent worked. Am considering looking at another product (bit vice / sorenson) if i cant get this resolved - but maybe i am missing something simple.
i am even reading about people getting better results through IDVD... which would indicate a compressor bug- perhaps..

Try exporting from FCP timeline to selfcontained QuickTime file first, and processing this file with Compressor. Report if there is any difference, please. I am asking because I just found similar bug considering HDV 1080i50 format.

DVD MOVIE LOOKS LIKE CRAP ON HD TV

Help!
My DVD movies look horrible on my 46" Samsung 1080p LCD television. I have made DVD movies featuring still images directly in iDVD as well as from iPhoto to iMovie to iDVD.
Many thanks.
Kristina

Thanks for replying! I am making these movies with
high resolution still images. These same images look
amazing on the screen shown through iPhoto. Can I not
maintain this quality in a DVD movie with the same
images?????
No.
NTSC DVD images are 640x480 pixels AT BEST - this is only 0.3 megapixels. There is absolutely no way such DVD images will match the quality of multi-megapixel digital cameras.
See Preparing images for DVD slideshows at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iDVD/6.0/en/17.html for more information about using still images in iDVD slideshows.

All fonts look awful

New Mac Mini. Mac OS X Leopardo di Snowio latest update.
Using 1080p, on a 1080p monitor.
*All fonts look awful*
System font (top bar, finder, everywhere) Safari as well. Everything.
Fonts look pixelated.
Didn't do any font change myself (removed nothing).
Is it due to the install of Final cut xpress / Aperture ?
Could it be the install of a Brother Laser printer?
Thanks for your help.
NB All graphics at the bottom / everywhere look perfect. Only fonts is the problem.

I think your font smoothing may be messed up a bit. That happened to some people when when upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard. From the picture you posted, it appears the fonts are a bit more jagged than they should be. Here are the instructions I copied from another Mac Web site a long time ago. They aren't mine but I have used them successfully.
If you’ve got an LCD panel that you think looks worse than it did before upgrading to 10.6, you can try this fix to see if it makes things better. How? Just open Terminal (in Applications -> Utilities) and paste this command, then press Return:
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2
The 2 at the end is equivalent to the old “Medium - Best for flat panel” setting in 10.5. You can also use 1 for light smoothing, and 3 for strong smoothing. This change will only affect newly-opened applications—anything already running will have to be restarted to see the affect of the changes. As such, you may want to experiment with a document in Text Edit, trying the three alternatives, and then after you find the one you like best, rebooting your Mac (so that it will take effect system wide).
Note that if you go back into the Appearance panel and toggle the font smoothing setting, you will override your manually-set value—so don’t do that if you value your newly-smoothed fonts.

Help! DVD copies looking awful!!

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