Bad DVD Quality Problem

[TenaciousZak]

Alright, I'm obviously a noob, or I wouldn't be posting in this forum. First and foremost, I'm Zak, nice to meet you guys. Can you help me with a little problem I have?

My friend and I film movies for fun and we give them to our friends and keep them for ourselves. We use a fairly good camera. I don't know the exact camera, as I don't have it with me, but it was 550$ at Best Buy and it is a Sony, if that helps tell you guys anything about the quality of the video. Anyway, after we film the video, we upload it to the computer (brand new laptop, great media features, great video and sound cards) via Firewire. From there we edit the video to our liking with Windows Movie Maker. To burn a DVD, we export the video as DV-AVI and we use MyDVD to create the menu and actually burn the file onto the disc.

However, we have never had good, clear quality. We aren't too new to this, as we've made 3 films and have been using the software for over 2 years. My questions:

1)How can we get crisp, clear quality? I'm not talking HD, just something that is relatively unblurry. What are we doing wrong? I was under the impression that importing/exporting the video with Windows Movie Maker as DV-AVI was the best quality way to do it. Am I in the wrong?
2)Is there any way to lessen the time it takes to burn the file onto the disc? I'm fine if there's not, and if there is a way to do this, would it compromise the quality of the DVD?

Here is a sample of the finished DVD quality when played on a television:
http://www.freewebs.com/zakstevemovie/3-19.htm

Imagine that video, but stretched to fit a 20"(or higher) television..

Please help?

[redwudz]

You seem to be on the right track. It's a little hard to tell with the video you linked to.

Have you viewed the DV at different stages before it was encoded the MPEG? You will see interlace artifacts unless you have a video player that handles interlace properly. If you have quality loss, you need to determine where it's occurring.

How long is the running time of your finished video? The running time determines the bitrate and the bitrate largely determines the quality. Gspot 2.60 should tell you the bitrate of the finished MPEG video. Very generally, an hour of video should get very good DVD quality. You appear to be using a tripod and that helps to keep down shake and wasted bitrate from that type of movement.

If you are having a quality problem, I think it's in the encode stage. You might try a different MPEG-2 encoder with a representative clip of maybe 5 - 10 minutes with different encoders and mainly different bitrates and encoder settings to see what the quality will be with each. HC and QuEnc are two freeware encoders you can try or try the trial version of TMPGEnc encoder as it may be a little easier to set up.

And welcome to our forums.

[TenaciousZak]

Thanks. I'd say the movie is about an hour long (good estimate.) So you're saying that I should:

a)edit video and export as DV-AVI.
b)Use HC, QuEnc, or TMPGEnc to encode the video file into an MPEG-2. And this will give me better quality.
c)Go into MyDVD and import the encoded video to burn to DVD.

Am I right?

[Krispy Kritter]

Just a thought from your description above, you questioned how to decrease the "burning" time of the DVD. Burning time is related to your media speed and the burn speed you select. A typical 8x SL disc takes about 10 minutes to burn. The only way to burn faster is by getting a faster burner and better media.

However, I expect your "burn" time with MyDVD is much longer. All the extra time isn't used to burn the disc, it is because MyDVD is converting your video into dvd compliant mpeg2. You will get better results performing the encoding yourself as redwudz explained. Just keep in mind you will ensure MyDVD doesn't re-encode your video.

[lordsmurf]

Your quality problems are due to your software choices. Use WinDV to transfer the DV video to the computer, use something better to edit (Premiere Elements is good, and very inexpensive), and then good authoring software (Elements can also author). Burn in whatever, like Nero or RecordNow.

Easy enough. No problem.