The best compression quality for video...

[GRAMOPHONE]

Hi,
I have been testing different parameters, compression and applications to see where and how I can get the best quality for video on a DVD project.
I'm a little disappointed with my results.
I've been analizing frames from a couple of movie and I wonder how they manage to get such a quality. In my project I have some small text that
they look readable before I convert my high resolution AVI to MPG or when the application convert it into VOB. After converting it, those text look horrible and broken.
I would really appreciate if someone let me know how I can get the best quality for a DVD project---which application? which format? which parameters for compression? etc...

Thank you so much for your help...

Gramophone

[guns1inger]

What have you used so far - so we don't waste your time suggesting things you have already tried, or to help you use them better if they are appropriate.

[bugster]

What have you used so far - so we don't waste your time suggesting things you have already tried, or to help you use them better if they are appropriate.

Also what is your source material (original source, capture method etc), how long is your video and what is your intended display device.

Remember, the commercial stuff tends to start with much higher quality material (Film, proffesional level video) than is available to the average consumer/hobbyist and that makes a big difference to the final results.

[GRAMOPHONE]

Ok, my sources are 24bits true color pictures. A high resulotion video that a friend handed to me. I don't know which camera he used, but I can asure that the quality, before encoding is great.
I'm using After Affects to put everything together and I render my project as a AVI with no compression.
To encode I have used TMPGEnc and Nero Ultra Edition.
Please, If you can suggest me what to used to keep my project as high as I could when done as DVD, I would be very obliged.

Thank you very much

Gramophone

[bugster]

Well, TmpGenc is a pretty good choice, not sure about Nero's encoder these days though in the past it was never considered very highly.

I would think TmpGenc, with full D1 resolution (720 * 480/576) should be fine. If your video is short enough, use CBR at 9000kbps, Motion search precision set at High. If your video needs resizing, TmpGenc can do that but it may be better to let AFter effects do this at the export stage, or possibly virtualdub or avisynth resize filters may be better, you will need to experiment.

[guns1inger]

Which version of after effects are you using ?
After Effects 6.5 includes the mainconcept mpeg-2 encoder, so you can export directly to a video stream is you want. Mainconcept is easily as good quality wise, and much faster then tmpgenc.

[trock]

Ok, my sources are 24bits true color pictures.

I'm not sure if you're talking about still images, but if you are you need to convert to progressive format in TmpGenc when encoding. Otherwise your DVD images will look jittery.

If you're talking about movies, forget this advice

trock