Taking a big hit in quality

Those who have read my posts in the past know about my struggles with HDV and Compressor. I find that I take a large, noticeable quality hit by using Compressor, so instead I master everything back to HDV tape, record that to a set-top DVD recorder, extract the MPGs off the disc and proceed to author.

I have found that whenever HDV is in the equation, I get this hit in quality. So lately, for my motion DVD menus, I have been using strictly ProRes, and then I use Compressor, and everything is fine...until now.

This time, I used ProRes, and got basically the same quality hit that I get with HDV. The following image demonstrates the quality loss I'm getting. The clip is ProRes and I am using the preset for DVD Best Quality 90 minutes.



Any help would be great!!!

Casey

You record from an HDV deck to a DVD recorder, then extract from the resulting DVD and run that again through the encoding process?

That sounds utterly wrong to me. You're taking an extra massive hit in quality by running your video through two stages of DVD compression.

I'd check your Compressor settings and make sure you didn't change something.

Also, have you tried just using full-quality movie files into DVD Studio Pro? That should have been your next stop in your experiment, not a nutty DVD recorder workaround.


www.derekmok.com

Oh, I don't encode to DVD twice...I strip out the M2V and AC3 files off the original DVD using MPEG Streamclip...then I import them into DVDSP and continue to author.

Strange as the process may seem, it is giving me the best quality since I am using *gasp* HDV. I shoot with the Sony Z1U, edit in HDV and lay my edit back to HDV tape.

This time, HDV isn't even part of the equation...if you look at the graphic I uploaded, it gives me a massive quality hit on the logo (I'm not concerned about the background). You can see the logo gets extremely jaggy.

When I go to tape and then to DVD with this, it looks perfectly sharp, so I know it's not just the size of the logo that's "too small".

I have tried making a motion menu using the M2V file that I get from putting this to tape and DVD, but for some reason there is a white flash that happens before the video starts...I can't seem to get rid of that, so I tried recreating the whole thing in ProRes.

Casey

The reason you are getting a big quality hit is because you are going from HD 1920x1080 (or 1440x1080 HDV) down to 720x480 for SD DVD. Which is less than a quarter of the resolution of your original.

The preview you are seeing is an approximate "blow-up" or up-res of the SD footage.

If you want to master HD to disk then you need to make HD-DVD (now obsolete) or Blu-Ray.

Read Ken Stone's article on how you can burn Blu-Ray compatitble HD disks with SD DVD (Red laser).

[www.kenstone.net]



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

The thing is...the quality is acceptable to me using the DVD recorder method, and it is unacceptable using the Compressor method. The text on the logo is actually readable on my 32" LCD TV with the DVD recorder method, and it isn't readable at all with the Compressor method. So it shouldn't be a MPEG2 SD issue, since I know it is possible to get acceptable results.

I'm trying to figure out what the difference is...especially since I shouldn't be getting better results with the DVD recorder, but I am.

I changed the quality to ProRes HQ and now the graphic looks fine.

Strange, but true!

Um yeah but the DVD will be MPEG2 no matter what you feed it...

Noah

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Noah, check out this other thread of mine...it goes into a bit more depth:

[www.lafcpug.org]

Thanks!
Casey