Pls solve mystery about DVD quality

I've read lots of articles about the best settings and workflow for going from FCP-QT Pro-Compressor-DVDSP, and followed the advice. I've also learned why my HDV footage looks pretty bad when seen with my 50" plasma.
Text is especially problematic, with jaggies there even when I use a font like Helvetica and add a drop shadow.
My question is, what do big commercial movie companies do to make their SD DVDs look so much better? Even a 50 y.o. movie like Singin' in the Rain looks 100x better.
Is it because they shot on film, or the quality of the hardware/software they use to master the DVD, or ... something else?

You may already be doing this but here is my work flow:
1. Use ProRes as your codec for your project in Final Cut.
2. Send FC project to Compressor.
3. In Compressor use the: Settings>DVD: Best Quality 90 minutes>MPEG-2
4. In the Inspector Window in the Frame Controls I will drag the Anti-alias slider almost all the way to the right. This increases the time to render out the MPEG file but seems to help the quality.
5. Then use the MPEG file for you video file in DVDPro
I am pretty new to FC and it's family of software, so there might be a better way to do this. But this seems to work for me.

Similar Messages

Question about DVD quality from iDVD.....

I've just created my first DVD using iDVD (7.0.4), and I'm not happy with the quality of the photos. They look great in Aperture. They look great in iDVD when I play the project directly on my Mac. The problem is that I burned some DVD's of the project, and when I play the DVD on my Mac (or TV, for that matter) the quality of the photos aren't anywhere near what they are in Aperture or when I play the project directly on the computer. It's useable, but is it normal to have the photo quality fall off pretty noticeably when burning it to a DVD?
(FYI - I'm using the DVD burner that's built-in on my iMac, using Sony DVD+R DVD's, and I don't see any "quality" settings that I'd be able to change before burning.)
ANy help would be greatly appreciated, as - after burning about 20 DVD's - I'm unhappy enough with the quality that I don't even feel like giving them out now.)
Thanks,
Tim

Ah - That makes sense. Thanks.
As I said, I've never done anything with iDVD before. In fact, I've never done anything "digital" with photos before. I process them in Aperture, and then make prints and that's it. Which leads me to another question then.....
What I'm trying to do is get the 150 or so photos I've taken of my son's high school baseball games onto some type of media so that I can give one to each of the players. Not knowing anything about the degradation of the photo when turning them into a DVD, I put together a "project" in iDVD where I split the photos into two groups, added two songs, and made a presentation out of it. It sounds like if I want to do something like that Blue-Ray would be the only option to maintain the quality of the photos?
If that's the case, are there any other options? Can I just drag the photos onto a CD, or does a CD compress the photos as well? As I said, I've got about 150 photos that average between 9 - 13 MB's each. Will they fit onto one or two CD's? (I'm not sure how much a CD will hold.)
Any other options/ideas for getting these photos to the players?
Thanks in advance for any more help anyone could provide.....
Tim

Quick question about DVD quality vs...

I'm going to be playing back an SD music video. I shot it on a canon XL2 miniDV in 24p 16:9. I will be using a projector (it is HD) to playback on a 110" screen. Do you think I would have better image quality playing the video from a DVD or from a Playstation 3 using a flashdrive to play a high quality AVI file or even possibly H.264... I'm going to test this later but maybe you guys have some thoughts?

In general, the less compression upon export the better the playback
A DVD is, by definition compressed to MPEG2 http://forums.adobe.com/thread/544206
I will GUESS that exporting to AVI will give you the best picture... but, as you say, you need to test

What setting is 'DVD quality' widescreen - ie about 3gb per hour?

I have videod (isn't that a such a quaint 20th century word for the podcast age?) a conference and I want to archive the footage to store on a DVD for later reediting.
The "full quality" setting is massive, I only have 90 mins, but a 20 min clip takes up over 10Gb
The 'CD-rom quality' is just not not dvd quality.
(I am using iMovie 06 btw, i will move onto 08 when it is finished)
Ideally, I would just burn the whole lot raw with iDVD and import it again if i need to reedit - but (for copyright as opposed to technical reasons i suppose) we can't just put a dvd in the slot and rip it like we can an audio cd in iTunes. I have tried the workarounds - but none of them worked for me.
Anyway, I digress: What setting is 'DVD quality' widescreen - ie about 3gb per hour?

Hi there.
*Keep the quality*
0nce you have compressed data - you can't get the original quality back - so store as full quality as possible - and in several formats so there is always a backup.
Media
data cds don't hold that much - 700mb - so forget about them for quality productions and archiving
dvd-roms hold much more - 4,700mb (you can get dual layer ones that double it)
*'share' settings*
Now, you have 2 options for saving the movie;
1. as a file on a DVD-Rom (a compact .mov or a massive.dv)
2. as a proper playable DVD (iDVD)
If the "full quality" iM setting is too big a file for a dvd-rom (and you will be lucky to get 10 mins of footage in 4.7gb), then you could 'iDVD' it and that way you will get a good quality movie up to nearly 2 hours on a disc disc that can be played on most machines (and could even be ripped back into an editable form using third party software)
Alternatively, save it using 'expert settings' listed above and you will probably get good enough results for a longer film without having to burn it as a playable (but uneditable) dvd.
Bear in mind that unless you are using a pro camera, you may not notice the much difference with the higher settings.
Good luck - seeing your work on the big screen is a blast!

I want to produce wedding dvds.whats the best software to use...final cut x I'm thinking but what about the quality of the dvd?

i want to produce wedding dvds.whats the best software to use...final cut x I'm thinking but what about the quality of the dvd? Can i use idvd?

The only Programms I worked with are DVD Studio Pro and iDVD. You can burn a Video-DVD with Toast but there is no real option to design your Menu. Just a few themes as far as I discovered.
Do you have a Blue Ray Device to burn* the HD-DVD? Are the Bride and Groom able to watch the Blue Ray?
* which is only possible with DVD Studio Pro and not iMovie as far as I know.
This might help
For better quality I would go the Compressor & DVD Studio Pro workflow I just learned.
Export the Movie as is from Final Cut Pro and then use Compressor to encode the File.
Consider delivering the Movie in a different way like a private video on vimeo, a Website or on an SD card which is not really romantic...

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

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

Bad DVD quality

Imported video as "large" from Sony HDR SR12. burned a DVD using Toast 11. I realize Std def on a 40" LCD is not ideal but I expected better. I have Blu ray and plan to burn HD or BD but some friends do not. Render the movie in Imovie and then burn or import the raw footage into Toast and burn? I tried to increase the Mbps to 7-8 in Toast but that extended my approx 1 hour video to 2 disks needed? I otherwise tried to use the best quality settings. Any tips appreciated!

Hi
May be my notes can give an idea ?
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. (Share to Media Browser and as Large (not HD or other res.) (I never use "Share to iDVD" any version of iMovie)
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 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
Yours Bengt W

DVD quality? No...

Were my ears deceiving me when Jobs stated during the keynote that non-HD rentals were now going to be full DVD quality as opposed to the 640 horizontal max res they were previously at? I just rented two movies: "Superbad" and "Underdog". Superbad satisfies the DVD claim, at 853x479 resolution (DVD's vertical res is 480, so this movie ends up being a higher-than-DVD res horizontally to accommodate computer 1:1 ratio - if any of you understand what I'm talking about)... so far all good. But Underdog is 640x264... This falls ridiculously short of DVD res.
So here are two questions...
1) Did they make a false claim, or did some stupid employee make a mistake regarding the 640x264 rental encoding?
and
2) Since the iPods are limited to a 640 pixel horizontal res - as far as I know - how would movies like Superbad and other DVD res or better movies fit on an iPod? Has some new firmware update for the iPods made that possible?

If you convert them properly then they play fine on an ipod. ipod to plasma TV also plays fine.

What are the best asset formats to optimise DVD quality?

Hi Guys
Some of my clients have been complaining about the DVD quality they received from me, and I wondered to myself how can I improve in future.
I just want to confirm if these are the best formats for each asset:
1) Video - AVI format (as opposed to MPEG2)? The major irritation I find about AVI is that it eats up lots of disc space, and it takes a lot of time as far as transcoding in encore is concerned.
2) Photos - TIFF format (as opposed to JPEG)? Same story as above regarding disc space.
3) Audio - AIFF format (as opposed to MP3)? Same space problem as the first 2. Furthermore, my major annoyance with WAV files is that you have to know which version of WAV files are the best quality.
Now, I do not what TVs most of my past and future clients own, i.e. a normal 4:3 TV like mine or the 16:9 plasma ones (although the trend these days seem to be LCD TVs). What is the best aspect ratio to use that will work on most TVs?
Also, I use a Sony 30g HDD video camera to record events. I like it since these is no hassle about carrying tapes or DVDs around. But, the problem with the camera is that MPEG2 is the "highest quality" it can record events; my still camera can take jpeg's as the highest quality. And the photos on the DVD look - most of the time - OK in terms of quality. It's only in my last DVD that I built that I saw some of the photos having some sort of problem in the slideshow (something like a water effect on the blazers and shirts of some of the audience - definitely unwanted).
To edit my assets, I use:
1) Power director 6 (for my video). I know you are going to say I should use Premiere Pro. I'm still reading the manual for PPro2 and Ppro doesn't have SVRT like PD6 does.
2) Photoshop elements or Fireworks (for my photos). Photoshop CS2 looks very complex for me at the moment - will learn later.
3) Adobe Audition (for my audio).
All I want is to have the highest quality possible. What's the best advice?
Thanks for all your help guys.

Since you raised the question of Hi8 versus DV tape formats, here are a few thoughts intended partly for you and partly for those who (unlike you) may be planning to get their first camcorder and are wondering about the different formats available.
Hi8 is a second-generation analog format that was marketed starting about 1988 to permit better resolution than the original VHS and Video8 camcorder formats. It was superseded about 1995 by the digital video, or DV, format.
Hi8 produced video of decent quality and was a good capture medium for material that was going to be distributed on VHS or SVHS tape. But the quality of DV is better, and DV has enormous advantages for editing and distribution. In particular, DV has absolutely no "generation loss" when transferring from tape to computer, from tape to tape, or from computer to tape, and it permits sophisticated editing using any one of many "nonlinear editing" applications that are available on PC's or Macs. Once you have edited your video using one of these applications, you may proceed to "author" your DVD's (i.e. add menus, etc.) and they will be of surprisingly high quality.
In mentioning Hi8 you may actually have been thinking of the Digital8 format. This is a format developed by Sony as a bridge between the older Video8/Hi8 world and the DV world. It is logically identical to DV but it uses the same physical tape as Hi8. This tape is now customarily labelled "Hi8/Digital8" to emphasize this fact. Hi8/Digital8 tape is less expensive and reportedly more robust than DV tape.
In principle Digital8 is just as good a format as DV. However, Digital8 has been targeted at a lower end of the market than DV, so even the best Digital8 camcorders may not have as good optics, as good sensors, or as many features as the better DV camcorders.
A few years ago, many people would recommend Digital8 as a very practical format for someone just getting started in video, since it was available at lower price points than DV, was identical in quality as regards format and perhaps better in value as regards camcorders, i.e. Digital8 camcorders were less expensive than DV camcorders of the same quality. Above all, Digital8 was ideal for someone who had previously used Video8 or Hi8, since the early Digital 8 camcorders would play back analog tapes and so could bridge the transition to digital. In fact, by buying or borrowing a second Digital8 camcorder, you could play back your analog tapes from one camcorder and record them as digital tapes using the other camcorder, forever after enjoying the advantages of the digital format.
At the present time, however, DV would be a much better choice than Digital8. Most (or all?) recent Digital8 camcorders have abandoned the ability to play back analog tapes. Only one or two manufacturers are making Digital8, and their offerings have dropped to a handful in recent years. This hardware will quite likely cease to be available in the near future, though the tapes will probably be marketed for years. When your present equipment wears out you would not want to be left with a library of family videos in an unsupported physical format.
In the last few years the DV format itself has been superseded by various high-definition formats, especially by HDV, a format that records to the same physical tapes as DV, at the same bitrates as DV, but, thanks to much greater compression, with twice the horizontal and more than twice the vertical resolution of DV.
Another format using even greater and more sophisticated compression, AVCHD, promises similar quality as HDV with even greater horizontal resolution, although the implementations of AVCHD available now are probably not as high in quality as the best HDV, and are certainly much harder to edit.
Despite the emergence of high-definition formats, there are good reasons for some people to prefer standard-definition DV at this time. One reason is cost. A good HDV camcorder -- the Canon HV20 is probably the best consumer model right now -- is likely to cost $1,000 or a bit more, while good DV models cost a few hundred. A second reason is low-light capability. The imaging chips for high-definition have many more pixels than the chips for DV. If the lenses are the same size, then these pixels must be crowded into a sensor about the same size as that of a DV camera, meaning that each pixel must be smaller and therefore less responsive to low-light conditions. So a good DV camera may be much better in low light than even the best high-definition camcorder of the same size.
Camcorders are now available that record direct to DVD (NOT advisable as John Smith said: the DVD medium is not robust for long-term storage and the necessary MPEG2 compression robs your source video of the quality it would have on tape and is much harder to edit).
Camcorders are also available that record directly to hard disk. Depending on the implementation, and your handiness with computers, thes might be just right FOR SOME USES. In particular they permit much more rapid turnaround between shooting and editing, so they might be right for something that is needed quickly but where archiving is not important (for example, shots of a football team at practice). But (as you have undoubtedly discovered with your 30gig Sony) you must download the material from camera to hard drive when the camera fills up, and this is not as easy as putting in a new tape. Also, the file may not be stored on disk in the relatively uncompressed, and easily edited, DV format. Finally, no hard drive is as safe a storage medium as a tape. With a hard drive and especially with a DVD, you risk losing everything to a crash or scratch; with a tape, you risk at most losing a few frames to a dropout caused by imperfections in the media.
Only you can balance all these factors knowing the type of things you will be shooting, how you will view or share your videos, and what you plan to do with them in the future. Note that DV can be edited together with HDV by many editing programs, though either the quality or the size on screen or both will be noticeably different. Also note that the high-definition formats are all in the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio, like the newer TV's, while DV was originally 4:3 and may be available in 16:9 but with the additional width achieved by stretching the same number of pixels and possibly by using a smaller fraction of the imaging chip.
I would recommend that you search for articles and forums about camcorders to learn what is available. There is a lot of information out there. As for me, I would certainly not recommend Hi8, or even Digital8, at this time. Choose DV if you have a pressing reason for it, such as cost or the need to get good images in low light; otherwise make yourself more future proof with HDV or AVCHD. They will produce high-quality DVD's when "downconverted" when capturing them into the computer or when exporting them from the nonlinear editor or authoring program (experiment to find which method is best). Unless you are using AVCHD, which is not a tape-based format, stick with tape (for now) if you are concerned with long-term storage.
Best wishes!

Exporting For DVD Quality

I have a project I want to burn with iDVD. But I am clueless about the quality settings. What would be the best setting for burning to a DVD? Thanks ahead of time.

Exporting to QuickTime Movie. iDVD does the compression.

IMovie and DVD Quality

Hello,
I tried to burn a dvd (iDVD) with 3 short movies (2 min).
- 1 movie imported (as Large) from a Canon HG10 Camcorder (AVCHD) and exported to the media browser (as Large) for iDVD.
- 1 Movie imported from an old Sony minidv camcorder (SD) and directly used in iDVD (.dv file).
- 1 Movie from the same Sony camcorder and exported to the media browser (as Large) for iDVD.
My problem is that once played from the DVD, the quality of the first movie is very poor (not smooth, picture quality, ...). In fact the second one (from SD .dv file) look far better (and actually very good).
How can it be ? I know that you cannot burn HD content on standard video DVD without converting it to SD, but how can the resulting quality be so poor, not even approaching standard quality of an old SD camcorder ? I'm also aware that i didn't import my movie from the camcorder at full quality (1920/1080) but 960/540 should be enough for home DVD quality.
Remarks :
I tried to burn the first movie from the original (and very large) .mov file instead of the media browser file but same problem.
The quality of the third movie was also very poor.
Am I missing something ?

This is very interesting Aaron ... Thank you for the link. I will try this out.
I have a HDD camcorder (MPEG-2) and have been experimenting with different workflows in the past few days, and here is what I found:
*A) Camcorder (MPEG-2) --> iMovie08 --> Media Browser --> iDVD*
Picture is blurried, colors look washed out. Not much, but catches someones eye (ie. my family)
*B) Camcorder (MPEG-2) --> MPEG Streamclip (convert to DV) --> iMovie HD6 --> iDVD (direct export from previous).*
This worked good, and the quality is very close to original, played on TV directly from the camcorder. The only thing I did not like is lengthy process of converting to DV + importing to iMovie HD6. One note here ... When converting to DV in Streamclip, "deinterlacing" setting should be checked! Otherwise, the edges become jagged.
*C) Same workflow as 'A', but prior to importing clips into iMovie08, I changed the quality setting in QuickTime preferences to "Use high quality video setting when available".*
Now, quality wise, 'C' = 'B'! There has been a lot of discussions on this topic, for iMovie08+DV content, but it seems that works with MPEG-2 as well. Perhaps (I'm far from expert) iMovie08, during conversion process (ie. for media browser, or internally) uses some of the QuickTime help, regardless of whch export (share) option is selected. I also noticed a difference in processing time (longer), when preparing the project for media browser. I may be mistaken about my speculations, but difference in quality is very pronounced.
Message was edited by: Milan 011
Message was edited by: Milan 011

"DVD quality" rentals really DVD quality?

During the "Stevenote" yesterday, Mr. Jobs indicated movie rentals would be DVD quality. Of course, some titles will be in HD, but for this question I am not concerned about that.
For those of you who have been able to rent movies, in your opinion are the movies true DVD quality? Or did he leave out the "near" prefix?
I bought a couple movies quite a while ago on iTunes, but there were noticeable artifacts, so I haven't purchased any since.

Well, I'll be. You are exactly right John. I just saw the Macworld article:
http://www.macworld.com/article/131580/2008/01/itunesmovierentals.html
The article quotes Apple VP Greg Joswiak (the obvious love child of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak) as saying the standard definition movies downloaded on the AppleTV are actually better than those downloaded onto computers (DVD quality versus near-DVD quality).

Apple TV CANNOT play DVD-quality video, let alone HD.

Ok, somebody needs to teach me a lesson (literally). This video encoding stuff is giving me headaches...
If I rip a DVD using MPEG-4 and H.264 at 100% quality the resulting file is over 8000kbps, which is higher than the 5000kbps Apple TV supports.
So, resolution-wise Apple TV may display DVD and HD signals, but when it comes to quality, it's not even close to what it should be. Is that an accurate statement?
According to the wikipedia, DVDs are encoded with MPEG-2 at 8000-14000kpbs. Now, it also says that MPEG-4 H.264 allows you to have similar image quality at much lower bit rates and much lower file size.
So the question would be, can a 5000kbps MPEG-4 be comparable to a 10000kbps MPEG-2 from a DVD?
....Or do I get all this completely wrong?
Thanks for any insight,
Julian
Dual 2.7 GHz PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2.5 Gb RAM

I'm pretty critical about my video quality and I've done a fair amount of testing using Apple's H.264 codec (using QuickTime Pro and Final Cut Studio). So, here's my take on H.264 -- it's NOT as good as many would have you believe. It's better than MPEG2, but I'd question any claim that it is four times as "good." I'd say that under the best of circumstances it's more like twice as "good" or twice as efficient as MPEG2. In any case, a 2X improvement over current state-of-the-art MPEG2 is still a pretty remarkable achievement.
So, where does that leave us with the AppleTV? First, you're not going to get consistent, solid HD quality at only 5Mbps (the limit on AppleTV). However, if you have good material and you encode with care you can definitely produce content that will exceed the quality that you might see on a standard definition DVD (or for that matter, probably as good as any anamorphic DVD).
Then there is the issue of frame rate, since the AppleTV will only do 24fps at 720p (spec) you're probably going to experience frame rate conversion artifacts on some material. Finally, the AppleTV lacks a "true" 1080i mode since for 1080i it just scales the picture up by two times from an internal video source at 960 x 540.
In any case, I'd say that given the proper source material (and the "proper" encoding) that the AppleTV potential sits somewhere between DVD quality and true HD. Of course, the video material that Apple currently sells on the iTunes store is encoded at approximately 1.5Mbps and at frame sizes equal to or smaller than 640 x 480. Given those (low) numbers, you should not expect anything that even approaches DVD quality (assuming that you compare against a good DVD). However, I don't believe that Apple has ever claimed "DVD quality" with the current iTunes content. Under the best of conditions -- and the quality varies widely -- the current iTunes content is most similar to a decent standard definition broadcast, but with a slightly different "look" and a different set of defects than you would see in an analog broadcast.
In the interest of a full disclosure, you should know that I already own an AppleTV and I think it's a pretty good product (i.e. it's worth the $300 even though it may never really achieve HD quality). But let's be fair, if it offered solid HD playback, 30fps 720p, and true 1080i it would be a near "steal" at only $300 (given its audio and still photo capabilities, its wireless 802.11n features, the internal HD storage, and its beautiful "10-foot" GUI).

Why Buy Apple TV When IPOD can connect to TV In DVD Quality

Ive been a PC guy my whole life but now Im looking into Apple products more so than ever. I bought some AV Cables for my ipod and connected to my TV and was amazed by the picture quality. My question is - What does Apple TV offer thats worth paying $250 more rather than connecting an ipod to a TV?

WHATY IF I dont think paying $250 more for those relativley small comforts is economical. And I have 10 movies and 5-6 TV shows. (For me) Thats far more than enough LOL. And I dont mind getting up walking 8 steps and plugging in 1 cable. This is the one thing about Apple I havent liked - pay a few hundered dollars more for very small convienences. And it may not be DVD quality but in my oppinion its 95% close enough lol.

Pls solve mystery about DVD quality

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