Poor Quality of DVD Copies

With both iDVD and Toast 10, the copies I make of the movie I created in iMovie aren't as good as the original file is. The opening title cards have a lower resolution, as does the rest of the video copy. Is there any way to get an exact or near-exact copy of an original iMovie file (in Quicktime)?
I've been using 1x or 2x burn rates, with new Verbatim DVD-R discs, and the copies are still unsatisfactory.
I'd be grateful for your help! The Apple community is so terrific--what a blessing.

Hi
iDVD can't do better than DVD-standard
Roxio Toast™ 10 Pro incl BD-component - sort of can
Here You can make a Blu-Ray quality disk either
• on a standard DVD disk (up to 20-30 minutes)
• on BD-disks and by use of BD-burner
Neither of them will playback on DVD-player or Mac
They NEED a Blu-Ray player as PlayStation3
BUT THEN - You got a very much better quality.
Yours Bengt W

Similar Messages

Is it possible to improve the poor quality of DVD's?

I started my presentation in Keynote and exported the file as a quicktime movie (high quality). I then moved the quicktime movie into iDVD and when I previewed the project, the quality looked crisp...so far so good. I then proceeded to burn directly to DVD and the quality was, for lack of a better word, crap. I tried creating a disc image and using Toast but unfortunately it's not rearly as sharp as it was within iDVD.
This has been bugging me for about weeks now. I've been reading the discussion boards for a while and haven't found a solution to my problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi,
I'm also a very frustrated user experiencing the same problem with iDVD 6. This was not seen when I was using iDVD 5.
I've made a .dv file with imovie 6.0.1, and upon "Sharing" to idvd, I didn't see any drop in quality during preview. Its only when I've the DVD disc image file where iDVD compresses the .dv format to mpeg2 that a significant loss in video quality can be seen.
I've also tried out different methods of encoding the .dv file using other software:
1. Toast 7.0.1 : Same poor quality mpeg2
2. ffmpegX : I tried tweaking different settings, (video bitrate, etc), but only very insignificant improvements were seen. ( Anyone out there with success in finding the right combinations of options, please post reply!)
3. JES Deinterlacer : I don't think the problem lies with interlacing, as I don't see much improvements here either.
Anyway, has anyone checked out this website:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/idvd_6stone.html
I've actually contacted the website owner Ken Stone via email, asking him if he has seen this problem. He replied to me that he did not experience quality loss since he did not work with imovie.
I'm pretty baffled here, as I thought the problem clearly lies with the process of dv to mpeg2 encoding, and not the software that was used to create the movie or .dv file?
Anybody out there has a workaround or a definate solution?

Really poor quality final DVD output

Hi there,
I am about to pull my hair out because I am so frustrated. I hope someone can help.
The goal:
-Trying to make a DVD of family videos using premiere elements. Basically I'm just taking the long videos we shot, editing them down to a reasonable time, then putting them in chronological order w/ a simple title. Very simple stuff.
The problem:
-I have successfully made a DVD of our 2010 family videos, but the quality is HORRIBLE when played back on the DVD player.
Important background information:
-We have a mac (Mac OS X 10.6.8; processor 3.06 Ghz Intel Core i3; memory 4GB)
-I have adobe premiere elements 10
-The videos were shot from a Sony DVD 850 standard definition camera. Originally (as in 3 years ago), I wanted to use iMovie to make a DVD. Found out that because the video camera had muxed format and everything was interlaced, that the mac did not like it. Basically just upon import or when importing to imovie, there was video footage with no audio. After hours of phone support w/ apple, I was instructed to convert the files to a different format (I did this 3 years ago, at this point I have no idea what or how I did this other than I used an application I had to download). This was successful and I was able to upload to imovie, but I hated doing this conversion process as it took too long. Also the quality of the video wasn't so great (probably b/c of all of the conversion going on).
-So I purchased premiere elements and organizer to hopefully skip that need for conversion.
-At some point in the last 3 years I uploaded the files to premiere elements organizer (whatever format they were in at that point - I believe I was dumb enough to convert the originals but not sure, the mac is such a mess right now I have no idea what files are original vs not)
-Last week started making the DVD in premiere elements.
-Have tried burning AVCHD 1080i 30 - then burning to Dolby DVD (this seems to be the best quality)
-Have tried burning NTSC DV Standard - then burning to Dolby DVD
-Have tried burning AVCHD 1080i 30 - then burning to widescreen
-Have tried burning NTSC DV Standard - then burning to widescreen
The Problem:
-the quality of the video is very very poor. I can see "lines" running horizontally across the picture that kind of bounce around, esp. bouncing when there is any sound. It is so bad it looks worse than my parents old VHS tapes.
-The menus are hard to read (only readable w/ the Dolby DVD format when burning) and then the titles for each segment of movie are very very blurry.
-I've tried to render - it is taking forever (like 2 days) and stops a lot. Not sure what is going on there?
What I need:
-any suggestions
-what am I doing wrong?
-how to I find the original files if they even exist?
-what should I do at this point to try to get the best quality?
(We bought a new camera 1.5 years ago - a Canon that is HD and will work much better w/ the software - but I still need to save these 2 years worth of videos!

Tarheelmommy,
Welcome to the forum.
Unfortunately, you have posted to the Premiere Elements Tips & Tricks sub-forum, which is basically a repository for articles on how to do things in Premiere. Few ever even drop by. I will Move your post out to the main Premiere Elements Forum, where you will get quick assistance, and many more "eyes," than back here.
Thank for a compresensive post too, one with a lot of useful detail. There might be a few more questions that get asked, but we could use your post as an example of how to ask a question.
Good luck,
Hunt
[Moved to Premiere Elements Forum]

Poor Quality on DVD playback on PB G4

I just purchased the powerbook G4 15'' high resolution screen. I love it, the quality of the screen and digital photos that I see are unprecedented. I do have a problem: when I play a DVD on my laptop the picture quality is poor. My old computer put forth a better quality than what I am experiencing now. Why is this and what can I do to see a better picture?
Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

csn102, first welcome to the discussions, Did you happen to go to your Apple and then System Preferences, and then to Monitor.
There are calibartion settings to calibrate your Monitor, and several Photo programs also require you to calibrate color settings before you get a true render of the photo's and or DVD Movies..
One last item of interest, please by all means do not expect a rented DVD that has been played thousands of times to have pristine quality, Most I have seen are poor at best. Don

Motion file poor quality in DVD Studio Pro

I'm using a Motion file for my DVD menu. I have double checked to ensure that all of the dimensions are correct, however the quality of the motion file is incredibly poor in DVD studio pro. Is there something that I am missing?

Don't trust the viewer in DVDSP. It's by no means accurate. Plus, since you're adding a Motion project to the DVDSP project, the Motion file needs to be converted to MPEG2 so that it'll play on a DVD. You could be either seeing a preview of a file that's not been converted yet, or else the encoding settings in DVDSP could be set too low.
My recommendation would be to burn a quick DVD and view in on a TV for quality.
Andy

[solution inside] Poor quality of DVD created with iDVD '08 (jerky movie)

Hi everyone !
I have a problem with the export of iDVD, the result is jerky.
Here's what I done
- filmed (cam sony 42E, DV)
- imported to iMovie '08, exported to the media navigator
- taken in iDVD and burned on a DVD simple layer in professional quality
And it looks like the movie is 15 images/s (but apparently no problem of sound)
I checked everything's in PAL (I'm in Europe)
I checked with another DVD
I checked the large selection in the navigator (720 * 540, H.264, 25 fps, 4Mbps)
I tried with "best performances"
I tried to cut the movie : 72 min -> 35 minutes
I exported just an image disc
Nothing fixed the problem
Finally, I exported from iMovie in .dv then integrated the file in iDVD and, this time the result was the same as in the preview (thanks to SkyDrinker for the tip)
So this is a solution, but this is strange :
or my iLife is corrupted, or the way Apple say to work (with conversion in h.264) is not good.
Did anyone else had the same problem ?
Thank you for your feedback.
Take care!

I had the same problem with jerky pans and dancing pixels particularly when using Ken Burns on stills.
Here is a solution. Save the 08 movies in Quicktime using AIC encoding then burn using Toast 8 with the quality slider set to best. The improvement in quality is substantial.
There is some improvement(not as much as using Toast) using Quicktime AIC encoding then burning with iDVD with Professional Quality and dual layered DVDs just to make sure the quality indicator is well into the green.
The disadvantage in using Toast as compared to iDVD is that the cool menus are lost.
PS: All my burning is done using NTCS but it should not make a difference.

Video exporting poor quality to dvd

after i export my vid. to quicktime the quality becomes distorted on the dvd(when watching it on tv monitor)... anyone know how to fix it?

i've tried exporting both ways now each 1 is just as distorted as the other... i read in other forms about using imovie or something to import but i've always just firewired from my cam(dv) to ntsc... do you think importing a diff way will improve the vid?

DVD poor quality

I just created a DVD but the video quality is too poor to use. I get 'ghosting' or flicker with motion, which is 99% of the content.
A client gave me 14 home-made DVDs containing video of high school basketball games and asked me to create a highlight video. I edited the VOB files in Premiere CS4 (4.1.0) to pull highlights and compile them into a single highlight DVD.
I exported the video to Adobe Media Encoder (4.0.0.374) to create a F4V file to be used on websites. I used the standard preset. The quality of the F4V video is good.
I then used Adobe Dynamic Link to export to Encore CS4 (4.0.0.258). I burned a DVD and the result was a DVD with poor quality.
There is a brief clip in the highlight video that I recorded myself of the athlete providing a short introduction of himself. That clip and the still titles I made look good on the DVD, but the highlight clips from the client's DVDs are very poor.
From some of the discussions I've already read in this forum, I assume I need to change a field option or the Anti-flicker value under Effect Controls or something similar, but haven't figured out what yet. Also, when I make changes to values, do I have to burn a DVD to see the result of the change or is there a better way to preview?
Thanks for your help!
Dan

A client gave me 14 home-made DVDs containing video of high school basketball games and asked me to create a highlight video. I edited the VOB files in Premiere CS4 (4.1.0) to pull highlights and compile them into a single highlight DVD.
It is very likely that the double MPEG-2 encoding is degrading the material too much. Is it possible to get back to the client's original tapes? That would save one MPEG-2 compression. Otherwise, what you have is probably as good as it will get.
Good luck,
Hunt

What is the best way to copy a DVD i made from iMovie? It was HD720 and I don't want to lose any quality in the copies.

What is the best way to copy a DVD I made from iMovie? It was HD720 and I don't want to lose any quality in the copies. I need to distribute it to about 20 people. It's 42 minutes long.

You will need to save it as a video to the camera roll.
Import it into windows as you would a photo.
Then purchase DVD authoring software, and create a DVD.

How can i improve burning quality of dvd.looks fine in preview on idvd,but final burn quality is poor/

how can i improve burning quality of dvd.looks fine in preview on idvd,but final burn quality is poor.

Had same problem with iPhoto pictures and poor burn quality. Went back to original picture file and dragged images into idvd project from there. Set encoding at professional quality and burned at slowest speed. Got very good result with high quality slideshow when played on TV.
Also tried Old Toad's Aug 30, 2011 advice to get a slideshow into iDVD with transitions, music, etc. from iPhoto.
Again the quaility of the burned CD was very good.

I must be doing something stupid: Very poor quality DVD rendering!

I am new to Apple products and after trolling this forum, I was able to create a DVD using iDVD on my Mac mini Core Duo - 2Ghz model. But, the video is of very poor quality (compression artifacts). I am lookging for guidance to creating a better video quality. But first, let me give you some background...
I have created enough DVDs for my home videos captured both from my S-VHS camcorder and min-DV camcorders (both PAL and NTSC) using Pinnacle Studio (buggiest software in the world) and Adobe Premiere Elements under Windows. I have clear expectation of video quality and understand the quality differences between various standards.
I have a fairly new toy - Canon Powershot TX1 digital camera which is an amazing compact camera that shoots 720p video @ 30fps and stores them in MJPEG format. Very good optics (10x optical image stabilized zoom). The only con is that it has very poor low light shooting ability.
The steps I took to create this DVD...
1. Import the .avi and .jpeg files from my camera into iPhoto library.
2. Use iMovie (all part of iLife'08) to stitch the avi clips and also some of jpegs. Added transitions, titles and music in iMovie.
3. Also, added some of my old low resolution avi files (from my older Canon camera - probably in 640x480 resolution).
3. Exported it in the largest file mode (960x540) which created a 1.8GB file.
4. Opened this movie file in Garageband and added the Chapter markers.
5. Shared it with iDVD which automatically launched iDVD and showed the chapters in very nice scene selections menus.
6. Invoked the Burn menu to burn the movie into a DVD using iDVD.
Am I using the right methodology (I want the chapters)? I also observed that an earlier project which was pure 15 minutes of 720p content created a 4.7GB size exported file from iMovie whereas this current project has 51min of avi (of which about 10min is low res and the rest is in 720p format) and 12min of still photos produced a 1.8GB file when exported. This clearly tells me that the exported file is of poor quality. Why did that happen? Was it because I mixed the content and included low res videos?
I should probably try creating a DVD from the pure 720p content and see how that looks.
Any pointers would be a great help. BTW, the mac mini, iPhoto and iMovie forums are just awesome. The quality of posts and responses is very high.

Thanks a lot, F Shippey.
I exported it as a .dv file and then I was able to produce the DVD correctly with the Revolution theme and 11 chapters. I haven't done any editing any clips yet in iMovie. In most cases, I will not need to do that in most cases as the Canon TX1 creates individual avi clips every time I record and stop a recording. Having used a camcorder for over a decade now, I know how silly most of the recordings are.
I will be rendering most of my videos as h.264 so that I can use the mac mini as a media server instead of using DVDs. I have to rip my own DVDs as h.264 soon (back to handbrake).
PS: While creating my first DVD in OS X + iLife'08 tools, I noticed the following bugs:
1. The clips disappear from the display in the editing window when the project becomes large and I had to zoom in and out to make them reappear. I verified that I wasn't viewing past the end of the last clip. If I hover the mouse in the blank window, it will show the clip in the preview window on the right.
2. I had 11 chapters marked in Garageband and then I shared it with iDVD, it created two pages of scene selections with 6 chapters in each page. In the 2nd page, it added a random window (unconnected) for the 12th chapter that I didn't have. I didn't check for that and so my finished DVD has this weird 12th chapter with a copied moving clip in the window, but when selected, it doesn't do anything.
These two bugs are way few compared to what Pinnacle Studio threw at me.
Message was edited by: new2appletv

DOH! Poor quality output after 4 days trying to perfect the DVD

Hi guys
I have been trying to burn a 1hr 27min .avi file (700MB) for 4 days now. Ive tried a few ways but each time the DVD has poorer quality video than the original file.
I tried:
- opening .avi file in ImovieHD and then sharing it with iDVD (it refused to burn it, after going thru the whole rendering encoding process mind you)
- going straight to iDVD (definitely it would not burn)
- opening in QT Pro and then 'stream as DV'. which i opened in iDVD and saved as disc image with menus etc. burnt using toast titanium - probably the best result so far i think)
however the dv file was worse than an mp4 file i created using iSquint from the .avi.
- have also tried just opening the avi in toast and burning from there. worse product than the previous one.
So, any suggestions? The main problem is things look quite jagged and a bit pixelated if you know what i mean. Where as the mp4 file, which ive played using iTunes and VLC, is quite smooth (but you can see there's still a bit of quality loss when sharp movements are made by the actors.(expected).
So I've lost lots of time on this stupid thing, but I just really want to sort out how to do it well once and for all.
Any help would be most appreciated.
Thanks

G'day Looneysbin
Sounds like a hardware problem. Is your drive under warranty?
For a start, try rendering your iDVD project to a disk image, instead of burning straight to disk.
Then, create a new Burn Folder on your desktop, and drag the VIDEO.TS file from the opened disk image to the burn folder (note that only an alias actually gets put in the folder).
Next, use Control-click on the Burn Folder to get the contextual menu, and select 'Burn Disc'. Follow the prompts, but burn at the minimum speed available.
This way, your apparent hardware problem won't mean re-rendering the iDVD file each time you try and burn a disc.
You can also keep the .img file on your hard drive as a backup of the disc.
You might also be having a problem with quality of the actual discs themselves. What brand are you using?
Regards
Santa

Poor quality DVD and img

Both the burnt DVD and the.img copy have very poor quality when played. It is particularly noticeable on the text which acts as a link to the other parts of the DVD. The preview is fine and the encoder is set to "best quality" ..HELP!

I'm looking for answers too: Having the best possible dv-quality raw material, I am puzzled that iDVD chooses to only use 1.2 GB of the 4.3 GB available on the DVD - even though I use the "Quality"-mode instead of best performance!
The loss of quality really is visible - also on tv!
/Jan
PB12 1.33 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.4) Modified HD Hitachi 7200 rpm 60 GB

Poor Quality DVD with AVCHD input

Hi all:
I did not find this addressed on the iDVD pages or this page. I have imported AVCHD format video of my son's soccer game. Used iMovie08 7.1.1 to edit it. I was shooting in sports mode. It looks great connected directly to the TV.
After rendering the movie (takes forever!) and burning a DVD, the quality output on my 50 inch tv is horrible. I tried using Xbox, the older PS2 and an built in older DVD player. The quality was poor especially when tracking the ball and the players (panning) across the field. I shot in wide format and burned in that format. Am I missing something?
Is there something I can do? I spent all this money on the Canon HF10 and would really like to see it and share it! Also, is there a faster way to import besides the USB port? I know...a computer upgrade is also in my future.
Thanks in advance.

Steve Mullen wrote:
What you are describing is nothing more than using iMovie 08 with iDVD in a fully logical--yet wrong--way. To see you do not need to have poor quality from FullHD, go to http://www.vimeo.com/user364340/videos
HEY, AM I READING THIS RIGHT, (yeah I'm shouting)
Your telling us you know how to use im08 and iDVD in some way that (apparently) no-one else knows but you won't share it, at the same time as advertising your book in your signature. I think you should be reading the terms and conditions of the forum here.
Oh and by the way, while the video in the linked clips is indeed crisp and clear it stutters like a nervous old man with Parkinsons, not sure if the clips are yours but have to wonder if your books merely tell us how to make less than acceptable video.
Tom Wolsky writes some really excellent books but is quite happy to share his knowledge for free and has helped 10's of thousands of people in the video forums. Indeed Jon and Karsten from this very forum have shared their considerable knowledge in the form of online written and video help.
Get a grip Man.

Poor quality (vibration) on video clips when it burns onto DVD

We created 15 mins video on Final Cut Express, saved on Quick Time, and burned onto DVD. Although the video on Quick Time was fine, some of the quality of the video clips on DVD we burned was so poor....It had so much vibration on some of the video clips. We tried on both Best Performance & Best Quality, but they both had poor quality. Do you have any suggestions? Do you think upgrading to I Life 08 will help? Please Help!!!! Thanks!

It had so much vibration on some of the video clips.
Video on a DVD is mpg-2 compressed (which looks at frame to frame differences in compression) and is interlaced.
If you have content with lots of movement - like many hand-held shots - mpg-2 compression and interlacing will act to create lots of 'jumping' or 'vibration'. The only solution is to use a tripod and avoid shaky, hand-held shots.
BTW, for a short clip, 'Best Performance' will give you the best quality you can get.
F Shippey

Poor Quality of DVD Copies

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