PAL qt to DVD quality issues

Im trying to burn a PAL DVD from a PAL QT, but Im getting iffy results (Color washed out, subtitles blocky and pixelated) I ran it through comprssor at 90 min DVD best quality PAL, and burned to a disk, but the quality is not good to say the least. Is there a better way to do this?

Hi
Just for fun - What kind of quality do You get if You
• Start an iDVD PAL project (don't change after movie is imported)
• Then import Your QT (PAL) movie
• Then select Pro Quality encoding
• Then Save as a DiskImage
Is this one crappy too ?
Just to still my curiosity.
Yours very interested Bengt W

Similar Messages

Dvd quality issues

My first time be gentle. I have been dabbling in FCE for several years, little home projects. Every time I burn iDVD copy, the overall quality of the images seems fuzzy when played back on TV. I am planning a more demanding project and will need much higher quality end product- have bought FCP am planning to buy G5 tower (have ibook and emac now) and upgrade from Cannon GL2 to HD cammera??
Questions.
1). does the G5 dual proc. tower come with sufficient capture card to produce broadcast quality stuff. (i know nothing about cards)
2). will taping in HD improve quality even if played back on standard TV?
3). Have i been doing something wrong for the past two years with my FCE and ibook to have created _not even close to broadcast quality shorts?
they look fine on computer screen- not on TV/DVD.
Thanks in advance,
David Ramsey
ibook-g4 Mac OS X (10.4.3) Final Cut

Welcome to the forum!
The quality issues you mention could be attributed to many individual things or a combination things. Hard to say without seeing the image quality first-hand. Some of the more common issues are; lighting during the shoot, video format, lens, camera settings during recording and ... unrealistic expectations on your part.
You seem to be comparing the image quality from your GL2 to "broadcast quality" but in reality the two are different things. Also, you're viewing the output of iDVD which isn't known for it's outstanding quality.
To address your questions directly:
1). Yes. If you have broadcast quality footage to feed it with the correct capture card and other needed system resources, a G5 or MacPro can handle several broadcast formats very well. But as with most things of this nature, video editing is a garbage-in, garbage-out proposition. You HAVE to have the quality on the front end.
2). The G5 and newer MacPros come with Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 ports. Those will work fine for all DV25 and HDV flavors - none of which are considered "broadcast quality." You'll need an optional card for other formats. Which card to use is dependent on the format you choose to work with. Of course, your G5 will also need additional hard drives capable of sustaining the data rate of your chosen format and as much RAM as you can afford - 2gbs minimum, 4gb+ recommended.
3). See above - 98% of it depends on the quality of your footage to begin with. The GL2 is a consumer DV camera which has a 4:1:1 color space (as do all DV25 formats). That is not broadcast quality and Canon didn't intend it to be. Many broadcasters won't accept DV footage at all.
-DH

DVD Quality issue

I have just completed the editting of a 2 hour stage production of Beauty & The Beast. I completed the work on my MacBook Pro, then copied the file to my PC, where I added menu markers and the DVD menu. When I burned it to the disk, the quality suffered terribly, to the point that it is unusable. Whether I view it on a blu-ray player and big screen TV or on the computer with a 21" monitor, the image is unacceptable. It is blurry and suffers from interlacing issues. I also tried burning to a folder and then copying that to a DVD. Again, when I play the disc, it is terrible. However, if I look at individual VOB files on the disc, there appears to be nothing wrong with the image. Any suggestions how to retain the quality?

When you say the individual vob files from the DISK look Ok on your computer this seems to indicate there is something wrong (or incompatible) with your player.
Do the disk VOB files look the same as you computer VOB files when viewed on your computer? If so then your computer burner might be out of alignment to the alignment of your player or it might be capable of more sensitive reading than your TV player.
I find I cant use PE9 to reliably burn Blue ray projects on a 4x speed Blue Ray blank disk because my burner is 8x and PE9 has no adjustment to slow the burning process down. I get nothing on some BD players and a perfect picture on others! So I have to use another program to burn.
Have you tried viewing the disk on someone else's player and TV?
A possibility is you have only partially 'burnt" the disk and it had dropped a lot of data because you did it too fast.
Try burning at a slower speed from a folder using a different burner program like imgburn or Power. (try Verbatum disks)
The indentations made by the data in the layer on a burnt disk can be smaller if written too fast and your DVD player may not be sensitive enough to play some of them. Some cheap DVD players are notorious for this.
Unless you have a double layer burner and disks, if you put 2hrs in a 1 hour disk you will end up with up to half the quality anyway depending on the detail of your pics which if it a stage show, will be very detailed. Try splitting into 2 projects
I presume you are using a new widescreen TV and not an old 4x3?
When you "added" menu markers and titles did you import the edited file into PE on a PC and use this to make the DVD? If so you are rendering the project twice.
I would try making the final DVD and markers using Sony Architect on your PC from your mac file. (free trial download) and burn slower.
I always thought early versions of PE made fuzzy titles but PE9 makes nice sharp titles letters.

IMovie slideshow (Photo) to DVD quality issue

Hi Folks,
I'm hoping that someone out there can help me out with this one. So y brother recently had a 4 week tour across the US and he took a LOT of photos. I saw this as a good opportunity for me to have a good go at iMovie. So I offered to put together a DVD of some of his photos for him. After working my way through all these photos etc and putting a half decent (For a first attempt) slideshow I went to put it onto DVD. That was my first issue, I didn't realise that without iDVD that iMovie could not burn your slideshow to DVD. So to combat this I downloaded MiDVD from the app store and things seem to go well... right up until I played the DVD. The image quality of the photos has degraded on a huge scale! My brother used a rather nice expensive camera on his trip and when we looked at the images on my iMac (27 inch) the picture quality was amazing! and that goes for when we viewed them in the iMovie viewer. So what is with the poor image quality on the DVD?
I'm using the latest version of iMovie (10.0.4) on a 27" iMac running Mavericks.
If anyone is able to help me out with this one it would be greatly appreciated
Cheers,
Mark
@mvdarbs

There are many ways to produce slide shows using iPhoto (see this: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2423 ), iMovie or iDVD and some limit the number of photos you can use (iDVD has a 99 chapter (slide) limitation).
If what you want is what I want, namely to be able to use high resolution photos (even 300 dpi tiff files), to pan and zoom individual photos, use a variety of transitions, to add and edit music or commentary, place text exactly where you want it, and to end up with a DVD that looks good on both your Mac and a TV - in other words end up with and end result that does not look like an old fashioned slide show from a projector - you may be interested in how I do it. You don't have to do it my way, but the following may be food for thought!
Firstly you need proper software to assemble the photos, decide on the duration of each, the transitions you want to use, and how to pan and zoom individual photos where required, and add proper titles. For this I use Photo to Movie. You can read about what it can do on their website:
http://www.lqgraphics.com/software/phototomovie.php
(Other users here use the alternative FotoMagico: http://www.boinx.com/fotomagico/homevspro/ which you may prefer - I have no experience with it.)
Neither of these are freeware, but are worth the investment if you are going to do a lot of slide shows. Read about them in detail, then decide which one you feel is best suited to your needs.
Once you have timed and arranged and manipulated the photos to your liking in Photo to Movie, it exports the file to iMovie as a DV stream. You can add music in Photo to Movie, but I prefer doing this in iMovie where it is easier to edit. You can now further edit the slide show in iMovie just as you would a movie, including adding other video clips, then send it to iDVD 7, or Toast, for burning.
You will be pleasantly surprised at how professional the results can be!
To simply create a slide show in iDVD 7 onwards from images in iPhoto or stored in other places on your hard disk or a connected server, look here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1089
Preparing images for iDVD slideshows:
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5452

Sd dvd quality issue

Hi
I am outputing hd footage to sd on dvd. The issue I have is the sd footage is not great quality. I have using dell I7 4 g ram . The footage is from a sony Z5. I am burning to dual layer dvd. The project is 3.5 hours long. What can I do to increase the quality of sd dvd output ? The blue ray output is excellent.
thanks
michael

There are a number of reasons you may be having issues, Michael.
1)Your camcorder is a professional HDV camcorder which may not be fully compatible with Premiere Elements. Were you able to use Premiere Elements to capture the video over a FireWire connection?
2) When you started your Premiere Elements project, did you select the project preset for HDV video? This is vital to a quality, successful project. If your project is properly set up, when you add clips to your timeline, there will NOT be a red line above the clips until you add effects to them. Is this the case in your project?
3) A DVD is, by definition, standard definition video, which uses less than one-fourth the number of pixels as HDV. So a DVD is never going to look as clean or as detailed as hi-def video.
4) A dual-layer DVD has a capacity of about 140 minutes at full quality. You are trying to fit over 200 minutes of video onto the disc, which means that the program must greatly reduce the quality level to fit your entire movie on an overloaded disc.

Quality issues with slideshows

Hi,
I'm a long term user of PE v9 (basic editing & burning of home vids & slideshows), but I've just bought a new computer & upgraded to Photoshop & PE v11.
The first slideshow I created (created in Photoshop & exported to PE for adding music, titles etc) had a lot of issues:
Some of the photos were rotated 90 degrees & stretched (which I noticed & cut out prior to burning), but more importantly,
The end product once burned to DVD is of terrible quality.
I seem to recall that when I first set up PE 9 I set a project quality standard that all future projects would follow unless I changed it. I've looked everywhere in PE 11 & I can't find where this is set. I'm not overly technical and I'm out of ideas re: where to look to fix these quality issues.
Can anyone help?
Thanks,
Cozzie.

Hi Apple Miga,
I've spent literally hours on this trying all sorts of combinations of settings and ways & means of initiating a slideshow. To my surprise & absolute elation, I finally had a partial win late last night. I finally got the quality of the slides to be as good as I've been getting for years with PrE v7. I haven't been able to work out the rotation & stretching of some photos yet, but I'm at least I've got good quality on the photos that didn't rotate (which is the bulk of them).
Here's what I did, triggered by a comment above by VDOSurfer (thankyou VDOSurfer). I had actually already tried setting the project settings to DV-PAL (instead of AVCHD-PAL which I'd been using successfully with PrE v7) a couple of times with the same poor results, but I tried it again in a different order as follows:
Open PrE11.
Select 'New Project' (ie not existing project)
Once the new project opens up, select File, New Project (from the file menu at the top of the screen)
Click on 'Change Settings' at the bottom of the dialog box. I noticed here that my settings were always defaulting to NTSC/AVCHD 1080p60. So I changed this to PAL/DV Widescreen 48kHz (I live in Australia, so if you're in the US, I guess you'd select NTSC/DV Widescreen 48kHz).
Click on the checkbox 'Force selected project settings on this project'.
Click on Add Media
I added my slideshow from Photoshop because I'd already prepared it in that product, but you should be able to add it from wherever your photos live.
Click on Publish+Share, select DVD & Disk, ensure PAL_DOLBY_Widescreen DVD is selected. (If you're in the US, this would be NTSC).
Burn as normal.
This worked very well for me. Hope it helps. Please let me know how you go.
If anyone has any thoughts on how to stop the random rotation & stretching, I'd love to hear. Note that photos that are rotated & stretched start off in the correct rotation in Photoshop Elements v11 prior to exporting to PrE 11.
Thanks,
Cozzie.

DVD Quality - Jumpy

Hi,
In the last 6 months the DVD quality has become jumpy when burning MPEGs to DVD using Premier Elements. Before this it was fine. I purchased a new camcorder but it hasn't improved. When I view the Mpegs on the computer they are fine, however after burning them to DVD and playing it in the DVD player (and a second one to test it), the quality is jumpy like it can't catch up when moving the camcorder. Do you think this is a problem with the computer's DVD burner, the software when compressing it to DVD or something else? I have always saved the movies as MPEG PAL Widescreen then combined several to make the DVD, is this what you'd recommend?

Hi
I haven't changed any of the setting in Premier Elements.
The camcorder is a Sony Handycam DCR-SR78E. Previously I had the DCR-SR52E which used to be fine for creating DVDs until earlier this year when I noticed the jumpiness. That camcorder's LCD lost part of its colour so replacecd it with the 78. I haven't changed Premier elements settings throughout this process.
The files are mpegs which I copy to the laptop using a cable from the camcorder and Windows Explorer to move them around.
Project settings are Editing Mode DV PAL, Timebase 25.00 frames/second. Frame size 720*576 16:9
Playback settings are DV25i (720*576), 24p Conversion method is Interlaced Frame, Desktop Display mode is Standard.
Capture format: DV Capture
Video rendering: Maximum bit depth (unticked), Optimize stills (ticked)
Default timeline: Video 3 tracks, stereo 3 tracks
I've noticed discussion http://forums.adobe.com/message/1753696#1753696 which also uses a Sony camcorder. Could it be the same issue?
Please let me know if you would like any further info.

Final DVD quality poor - video deterioration on moving areas of screen

Hi
Can anyone help? - having problems with iDVD finished IMG quality.
Have an iMovie project, shared with iDVD, prepared menus, etc. Video looks find in iMovie, in Quicktime (using iMovie IMG file) and in iDVD previews.
Then saved in iDVD as img file (no superdrive) and opened in DVD Player - picture quality is poor - any moving images get wiggly edges - see the picture below (taken with a digicam as I can't get a DVD screen shot) This continues throughout.
http://www.mcclellandmedia.com/images/S7000744.JPG
As you can see, background reasonable, moving areas are poor.
A history of the project... Started as an iMovie NTSC project whilst living in Canada on an older version of iMovie on a G3 iMac. Material was imported via DV Camera Analog in, then DV tape to iMac. iMovie project was in NTSC.
Moved to UK and updated to MacBook - exported old iMovie to PAL.mov file, opened in iMovie as a PAL project. Updated menus/titles, etc, then exported to iDVD.
Tried both settings in iDVD, Quality & Performance, and both have the same poor quality issues.
I could try importing all the original source material again but that would be a HUGE job as material is scattered on many sources. As everything plays fine in iMovie, in Quicktime with the MOV file and in the iDVD preview, I'm not certain that would help anyway.
I'm an actor and this is my Showreel DVD intended to impress directors - I need it to look right
All advice appreciated.
Dave
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.10) 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM

A history of the project... Started as an iMovie NTSC project whilst living in Canada on an older version of iMovie on a G3 iMac. Material was imported via DV Camera Analog in, then DV tape to iMac. iMovie project was in NTSC.
Moved to UK and updated to MacBook - exported old iMovie to PAL.mov file, opened in iMovie as a PAL project. Updated menus/titles, etc, then exported to iDVD.
Ugh. Video standards conversion (NTSC<->PAL) is tricky and may produce quite good or very bad results. Per definition the quality always suffers because different resolution and fps must be converted!
Most PAL gear can play NTSC stuff so you don't necessarily need to convert NTSC to PAL. But for PAL to NTSC you need software.
JES Deinterlacer is a very good quality app for video standards conversion.
For more info, see:
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/SVCDon_a_Macintosh.html#PALNTSC

Did Apple fix the video quality issue in iMovie '09?

I am a casual video editor and iMovie 08 had the perfect user experience / functionality for what I want to do.
However, the known video quality issue (throwing away interlaced scan lines) made the result unacceptable since I archive our family video on DVDs. I have been forced to use iMovie HD for that reason. I have tried tricks such as converting the original DV files to AIF and deinterlace prior to import into iMovie08 but that did not seem to work either.
So does anyone know if Apple fixed the video quality issue in iMovie '09.
MESSAGE TO APPLE IF YOU ARE LISTENING:
Please fix the video quality in iMovie09 if not already. Yes, the quality is ok for YouTube or Internet video but for those of us who want simple editing to archive our family video we cannot accept poor video quality. Dropping an interlace field effectively halves the vertical resolution. Thank you.

Please explain this in more detail when you say Adaptive Deinterlacer. Are you talking about another program? If so, what program and what are the specific steps.
Also, sounds like you are recommending imovie09. By saying to do the above, are you saying imovie09 still causes you too loose significant quality like imovie08? Are you saying you can use imovie08 or imovie09 with these steps to get high quality video or just imovie09? I guess I just need more specifics on how you do what you are describing and how imovie09 fits into this versus imovie08. I joined this whole discussion trying to figure out if upgrading imovie09 made a difference regarding the whole quality issue. I know it has more features, but I am more concerned about he quality of the video right now. Thanks.

One Step DVD quality

I have been reading the posts about using IMOVIE09 and then using IDVD. I understand the quality is not great because of IMOVIE09 and the way it does the import.
IS the quality better if I skip IMOVIE and use the One Step DVD option in IDVD directly? I am importing Mini-DV tapes.
Thanks

Hi
IS the quality better if I skip IMOVIE and use the One Step DVD option in IDVD directly? I am importing Mini-DV tapes.
YES !
else on Quality and iDVD - my notes
DVD quality
1. iDVD 08, 09 & 11 has three levels of qualities. (version 7.0.1, 7,0.4 & 7.1.1) and iDVD 6 has the two last ones
• Professional Quality
(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - BEST (but not always for short movies e.g. up to 45 minutes in total)
• Best Performances
(movies + menus less than 60 min.) - High quality on final DVD (Can be best for short movies)
• High Quality (in iDVD08 or 09) / Best Quality (in iDVD6)
(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - slightly lower quality than above
Menu can take 15 minutes or even more - I use a very simple one with no audio or animation like ”Brushed Metal” in old Themes.
About double on DL DVDs.
2. Video from
• FCE/P - Export out as full quality QuickTime.mov (not self-containing, no conversion)
• iMovie x-6 - Don't use ”Share/Export to iDVD” = destructive even to movie project and especially so
when the movie includes photos and the Ken Burns effect NOT is used. Instead just drop or import the iMovie movie project icon (with a Star on it) into iDVD theme window.
• iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not meant to go to iDVD. Go via Media Browser or rather use iMovie HD 6 from start.
3. I use Roxio Toast™ to make an as slow burn as possibly e.g. x4 or x1 (in iDVD’08 or 09 this can also be set)
This can also be done with Apple’s Disk Utilities application when burning from a DiskImage.
4. There has to be about or more than 25Gb free space on internal (start-up) hard disk. iDVD can't
use an external one as scratch disk (if it is not start-up disc). For SD-Video - if HD-material is used I guess that 4 to 5 times more would do.
5. I use Verbatim ( also recommended by many - Taiyo Yuden DVDs - I can’t get hold of it to test )
6. I use DVD-R (no +R or +/-RW) - DVD-R play’s on more and older DVD-Players
7. Keep NTSC to NTSC - or - PAL to PAL when going from iMovie to iDVD
(I use JES_Deinterlacer to keep frame per sec. same from editing to the Video-DVD result.)
8. Don’t burn more than three DVDs at a time - but let the laser cool off for a while before next batch.
iDVD quality also depends on.
• DVD is a standard in it self. It is Standard Definition Quality = Same as on old CRT-TV sets and can not
deliver anything better that this.
HD-DVD was a short-lived standard and it was only a few Toshiba DVD-players that could playback.
These DVDs could be made in DVD-Studio Pro. But they don’t playback on any other standard DVD-Player.
Blu-Ray / BD can be coded onto DVDs but limited in time to - about 20-30 minutes and then need
_ Roxio Toast™ 10 Pro incl. BD-component
_ BD disks and burner if full length movies are to be stored
_ BD-Player or PlayStation3 - to be able to playback
The BD-encoded DVDs can be play-backed IF Mac also have Roxio DVD-player tool. Not on any standard Mac or DVD-player
Full BD-disks needs a BD-player (in Mac) as they need blue-laser to be read. No red-laser can do this.
• HOW much free space is there on Your internal (start-up) hard disk. Go for approx. 25Gb.
less than 5Gb and Your result will most probably not play.
• How it was recorded - Tripod vs Handheld Camera. A stable picture will give a much higher quality
• Audio is most often more critical than picture. Bad audio and with dropouts usually results in a non-viewed movie.
• Use of Video-editor. iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not the tools for DVD-production. They discard every second line resulting in a close to VHS-tape quality.
iMovie 1 to HD6 and FinalCut any version delivers same quality as Camera record in = 100% to iDVD
• What kind of movie project You drop into it. MPEG4 seems to be a bad choice.
other strange formats are .avi, .wmv, .flash etc. Convert to streamingDV first
Also audio formats matters. I use only .aiff or from miniDV tape Camera 16-bit
strange formats often problematic are .avi, .wmv, audio from iTunes, .mp3 etc
Convert to .aiff first and use this in movie project
• What kind of standard - NTSC movie and NTSC DVD or PAL to PAL - no mix.
(If You need to change to do a NTSC DVD from PAL material let JES_Deinterlacer_3.2.2 do the conversion)
(Dropping a PAL movie into a NTSC iDVD project
(US) NTSC DVDs most often are playable in EU
(EU) PAL DVDs most often needs to be converted to play in US
UNLESS. They are play-backed by a Mac - then You need not to care
• What kind of DVDs You are using. I use Verbatim DVD-R (this brand AND no +R or +/-RW)
• How You encode and burn it. Two settings prior iDVD’08 or 09
Pro Quality (only in iDVD 08 & 09)
Best / High Quality (not always - most often not)
Best / High Performances (most often my choice before Pro Quality)
1. go to iDVD pref. menu and select tab far right and set burn speed to x1 (less errors = plays better) - only in iDVD 08 & 09
(x4 by some and may be even better)
2. Project info. Select Professional Encoding - only in iDVD 08 & 09.
Region codes.
iDVD - only burn Region = 0 - meaning - DVDs are playable everywhere
DVD Studio pro can set Region codes.
1 = US
2 = EU
unclemano wrote
What it turned out to be was the "quality" settings in iDVD. The total clip time was NOT over 2 hours or 4.7GB, yet iDVD created massive visual artifacts on the "professional quality" setting.
I switched the settings to "high quality" which solved the problem. According iDVD help, "high quality" determines the best bit rate for the clips you have.
I have NEVER seen iDVD do this before, especially when I was under the 2 hour and 4.7GB limits.
For anyone else, there seem to be 2 places in iDVD to set quality settings, the first is under "preferences" and the second under "project info." They do NOT seem to be linked (i.e. if you change one, the other is NOT changed). take care, Mario
to get this to work I
• Secure a minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up (Mac OS) hard disk
• Use Verbatim DVD-R (absolutely no +/-RW)
• Set down burn speed to x4 - less burn errors = plays on more devices
• No other process running in background as - ScreenSaver, EnergySaver OR TIMEMACHINE etc
• and I'm very careful on what kind of video-codecs, audio file format and photo file formats I use
• and I consider the iDVD Bug - never go back to video-editor to change/up-date - if so Start a brand new iDVD project
• Chapters set as they should - NO one at very beginning and no one in any transition or within 2 sec from it
• Lay-out - Turn on TV-Safe area and keep everything buttons, titles etc WELL INSIDE not even touching it !
Try to break the process up into two stages
• Save as a DiskImage (calculating part)
• Burn from this .img file (burning stage)
To isolate where the problem starts.
Another thing is - Playing it onto a Blu-Ray Player. My PlayStation3 can play BD-disks but not all of my home made DVDs so to get this to work I
• Secure a minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up (Mac OS) hard disk
• Use Verbatim DVD-R (absolutely no +/-RW)
• Set down burn speed to x4 - less burn errors = plays on more devices
• No other process running in background as - ScreenSaver, EnergySaver OR TIMEMACHINE etc
• and I'm very careful on what kind of video-codecs, audio file format and photo file formats I use
• and I consider the iDVD Bug - never go back to video-editor to change/up-date - if so Start a brand new iDVD project
• Chapters set as they should - NO one at very beginning and no one in any transition or within 2 sec from it
• Lay-out - Turn on TV-Safe area and keep everything buttons, titles etc WELL INSIDE not even touching it !
TO GET IT TO WORK SLIGHTLY FASTER
• Minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up hard disk
• No other programs running in BackGround e.g. Energy-Saver
• Don’t let HD spin down or be turned off (in Energy-Save)
• Move hard disks that are not to be used to Trash - To be disconnected/turned off
• Goto Spotlight and set the rest of them under Integrity (not to be scanned)
• Set screen-saver to a folder without any photo - then make an active corner (up right for me) and set
pointer to this - turns on screen saver - to show that it has nothing to show
• No File Vault on - Important
• NO - TimeMachine - during iMovie/iDVD work either ! IMPORTANT
• Lot's of icons on DeaskTop/Finder also slows down the Mac noticeably
• Start a new User-Account and log into this and iMovie get's faster too - if a project is in a hurry
• And let Mac run on Mains - not just on battery
Yours Bengt W

IMac 24" video quality issue (streaming and non)

I have searched the forums extensively and not found anything that quite matches the issue I'm currently having. If you know there's a previous thread with a solution please direct me there.
This issue first popped up when I tried to watch the season finale of 30 Rock on Hulu: the focal points of the scene weren't as sharp, everything in the background seemed seemed to pixelate intermittently and if there was any kind of motion, there was pixelation around that. I chalked it up to Hulu's new player, especially since anything else I watched on Hulu had all the same attributes.
Then, after taking a break from not using my Netflix, I noticed that anything I streamed on there did the same things. I checked my ISP download speed and it was 20mbps (way above the suggested amount for DVD-quality picture). It also seemed fishy that when streaming Netflix through my Xbox 360 (and the same router), everything looked beyond crisp.
The final straw came playing DVDs. I noticed some of that same degredation around motion that plagued the other two examples, although on a much smaller scale (my assumption being that the quality starts out much hire from a DVD source than streaming).
Has any one ever had this issue? The machine is not even 2 years old yet (Purchased March 2008).
Thanks in advance for any and all responses,
Leo

The general question of whether to use interlaced footage is a topic for another forum (e.g. the Video Lounge) but one thing to bear in mind when embedding video into PDFs is that it won't usually play at 1:1 pixel scale. Resampling will occur, and that can introduce visual effects.
You have two options to make the video play at '100% size' - either set the Rich Media Annotation to play in a floating window and define it to match the footage dimensions, or use a custom version of the videoPlayer widget that turns off scaling.

HDV NTSC & PAL to SD DVD

PLEASE HELP!!
I've got two different projects that need to be combined into one dvd for the client.
problem is the first project was shot and edited as HDV 1080/60i and the second at
1080/50i, so i have an NTSC sequence and a PAL sequence.
the DVD needs to be in PAL.
also, i'm completely confused in regards to getting HDV to a SD DVD.
can't figure out what's the fastest, highest quality workflow.
thus far using compressor and dvd studio pro 4 to build the DVD using just the PAL sequence i've gotten nothing but interlaced awful looking video.
i've searched the boards on these subjects but i'm still not getting anywhere, just more confused.
any guidance is greatly appreciated!
thank you

thanks RedTruck, i will try this!
quick question:
is JES deinterlacer the best way to convert the NTSC HDV to PAL HDV (or 1080/60i to 1080/50i)?
client also now wants this on PAL digibeta, so i'm thinking maybe the easiest way of doing all this is getting everything to 1080/50i HDV PAL, exporting via the camera back to HDV tape then taking the HDV tape to a dub house and have it downconverted there to DigiBeta. from that, reimport as SD PAL to make the PAL DVDs. how does this sound?

DVD quality

Sorry for my poor english.
I 've made a 94 minutes imovie (ilife 11) project with my brand new retina.
But when I make a dvd from idvd of the imovie project, I get a bad quality film (worse than before with the old imovie).
I try to save the project for a double layer dvd to avoid compression but I get the same bad quality.
Thanks for your help.
olivier

Hi
There are many layers to this Question - May be You find help here
DVD quality
1. iDVD 08, 09 & 11 has three levels of qualities. (version 7.0.1, 7,0.4 & 7.1.1) and iDVD 6 has the two last ones
• Professional Quality
(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - BEST (but not always for short movies e.g. up to 45 minutes in total)
• Best Performances
(movies + menus less than 60 min.) - High quality on final DVD (Can be best for short movies)
• High Quality (in iDVD08 or 09) / Best Quality (in iDVD6)
(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - slightly lower quality than above
Menu can take 15 minutes or even more - I use a very simple one with no audio or animation like ”Brushed Metal” in old Themes.
About double on DL DVDs.
2. Video from
• FCE/P - Export out as full quality QuickTime.mov (not self-containing, no conversion)
• iMovie x-6 - Don't use ”Share/Export to iDVD” = destructive even to movie project and especially so
when the movie includes photos and the Ken Burns effect NOT is used. Instead just drop or import the iMovie movie project icon (with a Star on it) into iDVD theme window.
• iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not meant to go to iDVD. Go via Media Browser or rather use iMovie HD 6 from start.
3. I use Roxio Toast™ to make an as slow burn as possibly e.g. x4 or x1 (in iDVD’08 or 09 this can also be set)
This can also be done with Apple’s Disk Utilities application when burning from a DiskImage.
4. There has to be about or more than 25Gb free space on internal (start-up) hard disk. iDVD can't
use an external one as scratch disk (if it is not start-up disc). For SD-Video - if HD-material is used I guess that 4 to 5 times more would do.
5. I use Verbatim ( also recommended by many - Taiyo Yuden DVDs - I can’t get hold of it to test )
6. I use DVD-R (no +R or +/-RW) - DVD-R play’s on more and older DVD-Players
7. Keep NTSC to NTSC - or - PAL to PAL when going from iMovie to iDVD
(I use JES_Deinterlacer to keep frame per sec. same from editing to the Video-DVD result.)
8. Don’t burn more than three DVDs at a time - but let the laser cool off for a while before next batch.
iDVD quality also depends on.
• DVD is a standard in it self. It is interlaced Standard Definition Quality = Same as on old CRT-TV sets and can not
deliver anything better that this.
• iMovie'08 or 09 or 11 - CAN NOT DELIVER THIS any way know - as they all discard every second line when going from Event's to Project's = Can not be mended.
• iMovie HD6 - Can deliver 100% of what any DVD authoring program needs - and so can -
• FinalCut - any version
HD-DVD was a short-lived standard and it was only a few Toshiba DVD-players that could playback.
These DVDs could be made in DVD-Studio Pro. But they don’t playback on any other standard DVD-Player.
Blu-Ray / BD can be coded onto DVDs but limited in time to - about 20-30 minutes and then need
_ Roxio Toast™ 10 Pro incl. BD-component
_ BD disks and burner if full length movies are to be stored
_ BD-Player or PlayStation3 - to be able to playback
The BD-encoded DVDs can be play-backed IF Mac also have Roxio DVD-player tool. Not on any standard Mac or DVD-player
Full BD-disks needs a BD-player (in Mac) as they need blue-laser to be read. No red-laser can do this.
• HOW much free space is there on Your internal (start-up) hard disk. Go for approx. 25Gb.
less than 5Gb and Your result will most probably not play.
• How it was recorded - Tripod vs Handheld Camera. A stable picture will give a much higher quality
• Audio is most often more critical than picture. Bad audio and with dropouts usually results in a non-viewed movie.
• Use of Video-editor. iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not the tools for DVD-production. They discard every second line resulting in a close to VHS-tape quality.
iMovie 1 to HD6 and FinalCut any version delivers same quality as Camera record in = 100% to iDVD
• What kind of movie project You drop into it. MPEG4 seems to be a bad choice.
other strange formats are .avi, .wmv, .flash etc. Convert to streamingDV first
Also audio formats matters. I use only .aiff or from miniDV tape Camera 16-bit
strange formats often problematic are .avi, .wmv, audio from iTunes, .mp3 etc
Convert to .aiff first and use this in movie project
• What kind of standard - NTSC movie and NTSC DVD or PAL to PAL - no mix.
(If You need to change to do a NTSC DVD from PAL material let JES_Deinterlacer_3.2.2 do the conversion)
(Dropping a PAL movie into a NTSC iDVD project
(US) NTSC DVDs most often are playable in EU
(EU) PAL DVDs most often needs to be converted to play in US
UNLESS. They are play-backed by a Mac - then You need not to care
• What kind of DVDs You are using. I use Verbatim DVD-R (this brand AND no +R or +/-RW)
• How You encode and burn it. Two settings prior iDVD’08 or 09
Pro Quality (only in iDVD 08 & 09)
Best / High Quality (not always - most often not)
Best / High Performances (most often my choice before Pro Quality)
1. go to iDVD pref. menu and select tab far right and set burn speed to x1 (less errors = plays better) - only in iDVD 08 & 09
(x4 by some and may be even better)
2. Project info. Select Professional Encoding - only in iDVD 08 & 09.
Region codes.
iDVD - only burn Region = 0 - meaning - DVDs are playable everywhere
DVD Studio pro can set Region codes.
1 = US
2 = EU
unclemano wrote
What it turned out to be was the "quality" settings in iDVD. The total clip time was NOT over 2 hours or 4.7GB, yet iDVD created massive visual artifacts on the "professional quality" setting.
I switched the settings to "high quality" which solved the problem. According iDVD help, "high quality" determines the best bit rate for the clips you have.
I have NEVER seen iDVD do this before, especially when I was under the 2 hour and 4.7GB limits.
For anyone else, there seem to be 2 places in iDVD to set quality settings, the first is under "preferences" and the second under "project info." They do NOT seem to be linked (i.e. if you change one, the other is NOT changed). take care, Mario
to get this to work I
• Secure a minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up (Mac OS) hard disk
• Use Verbatim DVD-R (absolutely no +/-RW)
• Set down burn speed to x4 - less burn errors = plays on more devices
• No other process running in background as - ScreenSaver, EnergySaver OR TIMEMACHINE etc
• and I'm very careful on what kind of video-codecs, audio file format and photo file formats I use
• and I consider the iDVD Bug - never go back to video-editor to change/up-date - if so Start a brand new iDVD project
• Chapters set as they should - NO one at very beginning and no one in any transition or within 2 sec from it
• Lay-out - Turn on TV-Safe area and keep everything buttons, titles etc WELL INSIDE not even touching it !
Try to break the process up into two stages
• Save as a DiskImage (calculating part)
• Burn from this .img file (burning stage)
To isolate where the problem starts.
Another thing is - Playing it onto a Blu-Ray Player. My PlayStation3 can play BD-disks but not all of my home made DVDs so to get this to work I
• Secure a minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up (Mac OS) hard disk
• Use Verbatim DVD-R (absolutely no +/-RW)
• Set down burn speed to x4 - less burn errors = plays on more devices
• No other process running in background as - ScreenSaver, EnergySaver OR TIMEMACHINE etc
• and I'm very careful on what kind of video-codecs, audio file format and photo file formats I use
• and I consider the iDVD Bug - never go back to video-editor to change/up-date - if so Start a brand new iDVD project
• Chapters set as they should - NO one at very beginning and no one in any transition or within 2 sec from it
• Lay-out - Turn on TV-Safe area and keep everything buttons, titles etc WELL INSIDE not even touching it !
TO GET IT TO WORK SLIGHTLY FASTER
• Minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up hard disk
• No other programs running in BackGround e.g. Energy-Saver
• Don’t let HD spin down or be turned off (in Energy-Save)
• Move hard disks that are not to be used to Trash - To be disconnected/turned off
• Goto Spotlight and set the rest of them under Integrity (not to be scanned)
• Set screen-saver to a folder without any photo - then make an active corner (up right for me) and set
pointer to this - turns on screen saver - to show that it has nothing to show
• No File Vault on - Important
• NO - TimeMachine - during iMovie/iDVD work either ! IMPORTANT
• Lot's of icons on DeskTop/Finder also slows down the Mac noticeably
• Start a new User-Account and log into this and iMovie get's faster too - if a project is in a hurry
• And let Mac run on Mains - not just on battery
Yours Bengt W

DVD Quality - LCD vs. PLASMA

How come DVD quality is different on a LCD than on a Plasma. I tested my DVD that I made using iDVD6, and on a LCD the quality is acceptable. Then when I play the DVD on a Plasma display the images appear very bright...almost unrecognizable.
Please help...do my original images need adjusting. How come the images are extra birght? I am handing out this DVD to many people and I need to make sure compatability isn't going to be an issue.
Thanks in advance for the help guys!
Eddie K

Hi Ed,
<Spock mode on>: well, one monitor shows correct content, the other not... what is in both cases identical? the dvd. so, pure logic exclude the dvd misbehaving, doesn't it...?
<Spock mode off>
it is easy to create ugly looking DVDs with iDVD (as long as the input is "ugly"), but as long as your TFT shows acceptable results, why should the dvd been authored wrong??! the few tests I remember told us, iDVD does a ... good job (not exciting/tripleA/GoldenStandard...) but for a consumer product with that much convenience.... excellent.
did you calibrate both displays? (that is a long and boring process....)
you did in both cases use the same dvdplayer with same connection?
how do commercial dvds behave with both monitors?
in my humble opinion, Plasmas are often "mis-adjusted" (too much contrast, much too much colors... what do I say, COLORS!!! )

DVD Player: Poor tolerance to less-than-ideal DVD quality?

"Real world" DVDs from rental stores have surface scratches, fact of life AFAIK most DVD players handle most of these fine. (With the odd exception, naturally.) I have had 6 consecutive DVDs that "broken down" on being played using Tiger's DVD Player (10.3.9). At first I blamed the DVD quality, but now I suspect I should be blaming Apple's software for not handling "real world" standards--?
Its a bit hard to believe 6 in a row are faulty, or the store would be getting a rain of abuse. Currently, I'm getting more more DVDs that "break down" than that play right through...
I'd welcome other's experiences: is "normal" for Apple's DVD Player? Do "set top" DVD players perform better? If so, why? Etc, etc.
Basically, I'd like to get the low-down on what's up. I'm thorougly sick of finding my movies "stall" on me, it makes the whole thing pointless after all.

While I could try a cleaner, I'm doubtful that this is the problem: the stalls occur in essentially the same places on replaying the DVD, even after ejecting and re-starting the movie. I would have thought a dirty lens would show a more random pattern of issues--?
(Excuse the very slow reply: I've been trying over a couple of days to post when Apple's forum is actually working for me!)

PAL qt to DVD quality issues

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