Help DVDSP is creating Horrible MPEG problems

Question

My client called me from the east coast with bad news. All 5,000 DVDs that he just had replicated are basically ruined. The menus are great(52 interactive chapter story points etc...) BUT, the video has pixelating problems almost throughout the whole DVD. It is like it is going in and out of focus, especially on teh transitions. It is a documentary with mostly high rez stills. I edited in FCP5 and exported a self contained QT file like I always do. The vid looks great but when DVDSP encodes it the result is unacceptable. I am authoring a DL DVD-9 for replication. There are many menus and many tracks. The main movie is 2hours and 16minutes long and I set the encoder to 2 pass VBR with Best motion estimation and a bit rate of 4.8/4.8
What am I doing wrong. Is there any solution to my problem. I am in great need as my client wants to replicate an additional 7,000 next week.
Thanks,
Alex

Answer 1

OK Guys I have been making DVD's now for over a year on DVDSP and never new I had to convert the audio to AC-3. I have never had clients come back and say the audio did not work. I always use the aiffs that QT makes when I bring into DVDSP from FCP5. I have a very high ratio of compatibility as a I generally duplicate over 1,000 DVDs a year.
It sounds like you got a bit lucky, a combination of maybe the projects the video, who knows. But usually at some point way before 1,000 DVDs problems come up (people get the aPac lesson earlier on due to the old school of hard knocks) We all have been there at one point or another for some issue in DVD SP.
Now you mention duplicate DVDs, do you mean you are duplicating 1,000s of titles or 1,000s of copies? Are you duplicating them or replicating them? If you are in fact duplicating them (though if there is a glass master, probably not) the chances of pixelation/blocking is higher
Why do I need to convert them to AC-3.
There is a limit on the bit rate that machines can handle (throughput) of audio and video. When burning DVDs from you computer the closer you approach that number, the chances can increase of playback problems, depedning on media and player. Your bit rate for the movie uses some and then PCM Audio uses alot. aPAc uses alot less and helps prevent choking.
On replicated discs (not duplicated discs) in theory even the Max rate should play on all DVD players, but there are borderline players that do choke out. And having the highest rtate does not necessarily mean the highest quality.
Also some players act buggy when getting to the edges of DVDs, so if a DVD 5 is fully packed to the gills, as it were, there could be playback problems at the edge. So if you can not pack it as much and have same quality effectively, it is something else that can help.
So bottom line, for those, and other reasons, aPac
Also I tried to use compressor 2 to make a m2v file, using mpeg2 woth GOP of 7 and one pass VBR of 4.4/5.2 and it took over two hours.
To get the best quality you need two pass VBR it would seem (at least for this movie where there is alot of motion in many scenes as you described)...do not play with GOP settings or anything else right now, what you should start with is just using the presets as a baseline and tweak from there.
How long is the movie again? Do not have that post up, but it was about 2 HRs 15 Minutes or so? Do not know how much extra material is there after that, but you may be able to get it on a DVD 5 when it is all said aand done.
When I went to load the result into DVDSP, it crashed the software.
There can be many reasons for that also, could be bad assets etc.
What am I doing wrong, I feel like I am an just floating aling with no paddle.
Once again, we have all been there at one time or another. The first thing I think that should be addressed is getting your material straight (good encoding and sounds) then we can step from there. You can alwayss export track descriptions from the original project and use those for marker placement later. So if the assets are encoded clean and well, the next ducks in the line can be tackled