Creating DVD with stills, need advice on upping the quality.

[RebeccaDesigns]

I've been searching for a solution for this problem. If this has already been solved or solutions have already been posted, please direct me to that thread... here goes.

I'm creating a short video for a family friend to be played on an HDTV behind the register at his new yogurt shop. The idea is simple and so I figured I could do this myself. I created all the stills in photoshop at the HDTV 1080p/29.97 preset. Then brought them all into iMovie, added some simple transitions and it was done. 2 mins. After he approved it from youtube, I took it into iDVD, made it loop, and burned it to DVD+R. When I put it into a DVD player, the quality is so bad! The whole image is stretched, even if I play with the zoom settings on the TV, it's still stretched. All the text on the screen is blurry and disconnected, with missing spots where the serif gets skinny. and the logo is not crisp and clean like it should be as a vector.

Here is what I had exported to youtube for approval, as a quickie link for him to see. When I exported from it from iMovie, it was at the next to lowest setting, just so I could get him to see it. But even so, this next to lowest setting on youtube looks nicer then the DVD.



Here is an example of what it looks like on a TV screen:







I am at a loss for a solution on this, and really don't understand WHY this keeps happening. I've tried exporting the movie and burning it at all kinds of setting, but the quality is still really bad on the screen. When I export it to Quicktime using the best settings on HDTV 1080p, it looks great! but as soon as I burn it, so much quality is gone. I heard that DVD is a standard definition format, so it won't matter what high def settings I use, but I find it hard to believe that I can't get this to look nice on a TV screen using DVD. I am not spending the money to purchase a BluRay Burner as he's not going to have a BluRay player for this in his shop.

Any ideas would be great on how to make this work. If you know of a better program that I can use that will allow me to loop the video so I don't have to make a 10hour long movie would be fantastic. I have my sources... Thanks for any advice in advance!

[Baldrick]

I removed your other thread.

[RebeccaDesigns]

thanks! i didn't realize there was a mac thread till I saw the links on the bottom of the page...

[neomaine]

A few things come to mind:

- Make sure to have the DVD player hooked up via HDMI or Component (reg/green/blue) cables. This will allow the player to 'upscale' the video to natice 480p (versus 480i, may want to make sure your project is progressive and not interlaced). Then, set the DVD Player to progressive output and 16:9 display.

This should take care of some of the issues from overscan, interlace/progressive conversion, analog/digital conversion (for HDMI anyway) and should make it reasonable good for 720x480p output.

- Check if the DVD player can except and play 1920x1080 pictures. Many fairly inexpensive ones can. With an HDMI hookup it could play them natively. Just copy the pictures to the DVD, instead of making a movie, in a file format and off you go.

- Check if the TV has a USB port. Many can play 1920x1080 pictures natively. Set the TV to display the pictures for 2 mins at a time.

- If the DVD player and TV cannot natively play HD pictures, pick up a fairly inexpensive media player like a first gen WDTV. Put the pictures on a thumb drive, set the WDTV to play the folder with the pictures with a 2 min display time.

Basically, baring getting a BD Player, use the native picture displaying capability of the DVD player, TV or other device to display the pictues natively intead of playing a 'movie' of the pictures.

[RebeccaDesigns]

Neo: Changing the DVD player to Progressive Scan WORKED!!!!!!!!

I have been fooling around with the settings on iDVD and in imovie and i think i found something that worked! Doing those settings and changing the setup on the DVD player worked and it looks FANTASTIC!!! just burned through 18 DVDs to figure it out... hahahaha!

[neomaine]

What's the TV and the DVD player make/model? How are they connected? Looking to see what they have for ports and what formats they support.

To get even better resolution 1080p vs 480p I'd still look into simply displaying the stills. What you're showing below probably doesn't need the details but if they start doing something like menus or lists, then the extra 6x resolution (roughly) would come in handy.

Glad it helped!

[RebeccaDesigns]

What i'm testing it out on is pretty low standard equipment. I figure, if it looks nice on this, it's GOTTA look nice on their end!

The DVD player is a DVD/VCR combo Sylvannia wired through the Motorola Cable box by component cables to an APEX Digital 46" (?) HDTV. When they have it setup in the store, it will just be a DVD player straight to HDTV. I will definitely recommend that they use either an HDMI cable or SVideo (since it's pictures, no sound) so i'm sure it will look 100x nicer just with that alone. He's testing it on his home TV with a JVC DVD player into a higher end HDTV ( i can't remember the name). I love the idea of stills, however the way that I have it set up is that certain images don't stay on the screen as long, and I don't want the blank screens to be up as long as the screens with copy. Plus, I want to make this as simple for them as possible, which is why I really wanted to do it through iDVD because I can loop it and set it to auto play and they don't have to do a thing. And for them, who don't know the difference between a DVD and BluRay, this is the easiest!

Thanks a TON for that! the combination of all the settings really puts my mind at ease!!