HD footage to SD DVD looks like CRAP!!!!!

I am having some similar difficulties, but not quite the same as the OP. I am shooting natively in HDV (I know, but it's all our company can afford), using a Kona LHe to capture into ProRes 422, and downconverting using Compressor. I was actually fairly happy when I viewed the finished product on an HD projection screen (60+", but that was playing it through a PS3 that was upconverting it to 1080i. However, I was fairly disappointed when viewing the product on a 13" standard def 4:3 Sony Trinitron monitor. I was not expecting it to look like HD, of course, but I was expecting it to look at least as good as standard definition footage shot and switched with a composite switcher. However, the product looked soft and washed out when compared to the standard def footage. I know the washed-out look is probably due to the colorspace of HDV, but is there a reason for the softness, and is there a way to fix it? When viewed on an HD monitor during editing (coming out 1080i component from the Kona card) the image looked stunning. I should hope there's a better way out there of doing the down-conversion that produces a crisp image, similar to something you would see in a commercial DVD. Any thoughts?

Hi Ajmax,

I came to your post from while ago looking for same solution. Have you by any chance ever found the best settings how to make the best quality DVD. If yes, please would you be able to help me out with the steps. I'm facing the same issue right now.
Thank you.

Pedja

ajmax: Compressor's MPEG-2 compression is strictly amateur. Commercial SD DVD's use such systems as ccxstream. Intelligent apportionment of color, resolution, and motion compression, scene-by-scene (even second-by-second) gives incomparably better results than simpler software can.

I'm strictly amateur. I use Innobits Video Purifier to do the down-resolution. It does it more cleanly than Compressor. I apply some video noise filtering at the same time. All this in 8-bit uncompressed. Finally I use Compressor to make a half decent MPEG-2. The video noise filtering allows more of the MPEG-2 bitrate to be devoted to image.

Deinterlacing, with Innobits Video Purifier, before making the MPEG-2 may also be advantageous. (I must find my notes on this.)

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Do not downconvert the edited HD video, just encode it in compressor and you will be a happy person. We've released a couple of hundred hours of SD DVD's shot in HD and they are beautiful. so much so that for many years before BluRay several plasma makers were using them to demo their sets.