Tips needed for best quality results: Handycam -> iMovie -> iDVD ->

[rycrostud]

Hi Guys!

This is my first post and my first video project!!

I have borrowed a Sony Handycam to video a friend's wedding. The quality of the footage that the camera burns straight to mini DVD is superb. I was hoping to carry this quality through to the finished product but I've not had much success.

The first problem is this model does not have any USB/Firewire capability so getting the video onto the Mac in the first place was a nightmare. I wish I'd realised this before I started! I ended up using MediaFork, which with almost 4GB of raw material, took an age to rip (as full quality MPEG-4).

There is a noticable drop in quality at this stage, particularly on the scenese with a lot of movement. Also the resulting files are much bigger than the 1.4GB DVDs it was recorded on! Still it is good enough to work with so I put it all together in iMovie HD 5 (which was a breeze).

iDVD 5 was simple enough to use but here's the big issue. Even at the high quality setting the resulting DVD is shockingly bad (even playing the disk image using Mac DVD player). Where there is any movement at all the edges of objects are really jagged, the colours are all washed out and it is almost unwatchable.

So where did I go wrong?

Can anyone recommend the best route in terms of getting the original footage onto the Mac, edited and onto the finished DVD without quality taking such a hit? It is such a shame - the originals look fantastic!!

Any help is greatly appreciated.

PS. I believe DVD Studio Pro is excellent but I simply do not have that kind of budget

[redwudz]

For Mac specific questions, you would likely get more answers in our Mac Forum. Moving you.

And welcome to our forums.

[terryj]

Welcome to our corner of the universe!

The main problem is the Handycam itself.
The Handycam records in Mpeg-4 format, which is the LOWEST quality
end encode on the spectrum. MPEG-2, which is Standard DVD (SD) quality
is what you are trying to accomplish as your end result, because you
say you are wanting to author a DVD.

So in following logical progression:

Beginning-->Middle-->End Result.

shoot footage-->upload RAW ( DV format)-->Edit/author to DVD (MPEG-2).

but in your scenario:
Beginning-->End-->Middle-->End Result.

shoot footage -->Handycam compresses/encodes to MPEG-4-->ingest-->edit author to DVD.

Unfortunately since MPEG-4 is an end result encode, you can't turn a finished product
into nothing but its component parts, but you can't fix Quality at that point.
Nor can you transcode it, or turn it from, Mpeg-4 to Mpeg-2 and expect it
to be gold.


In the future, you can check the camera's settings to see if it will record to
DV format, and not auto encode on the fly.

POST MORE INFO on this camera, it's specific model #, etc.
We can then look further, but normally, if it has USB/FW then
it would stream the recorded footage into the computer.
Perhaps there is something in the camera's settings other than encode to
Mpeg-4.

[rycrostud]

Wow!

Thanks for your help so far.

The model is DCR-DVD105E. It definitely doesn't have a USB or Firewire port but it does have a 10 pin AV output. Would sticking an extra card in my spare PCI slot with the right AV inputs be worth a go? Just a thought.

I have the manual and apparently the video is encoded as MPEG2, although there don't appear to be any alternative encoding options.

Hmmm... what to do?!?

[rycrostud]

This could be a solution.... possibly

http://www.formac.com/webapp/products_av_studiodv.php

[edDV]

Whoa? MPeg4? Is this camcorder recording AVCHD (MPeg4 h.264?). If so Sony will back off and say this camcorder is intended for those of our customers who do not desire to edit their video. Sony isn't clear yet what this AVCHD format is for other than direct copy to Blu_Ray or downconvert to DVD.

What is the camcorder model?

[terryj]

Wow!

Thanks for your help so far.

The model is DCR-DVD105E. It definitely doesn't have a USB or Firewire port but it does have a 10 pin AV output. Would sticking an extra card in my spare PCI slot with the right AV inputs be worth a go? Just a thought.

I have the manual and apparently the video is encoded as MPEG2, although there don't appear to be any alternative encoding options.

Hmmm... what to do?!?

Ok, so the video is Mpeg-2 recorded to DVD-R/+R.
So, the solution then would be two -fold.

1. Go to Apple.com and buy the Quicktime Mpeg-2 codec for Quicktime .
once bought and downloaded, install.

2. Go get a copy of MpegStreamclip. Use it to import in the MPEG-2 files
from the disc, and then export them to the HD as DV Stream for
editing in iMovie, FCE, or FCP.

You could get #2, but with out #1, it will not be functional.

[rycrostud]

Excellent. I will certainly try your suggestion (which will mean re-editing the whole video - but that's no problem) and report back how it goes.

Thank you so much for your superb advice.

[rycrostud]

Just a thought.... I'm not certain I can access the MPEG 2 files directly because in order to use the mini DVDs in the Mac they have to be finalised by the camera. So in other words it is just a DVD with chapters etc and the usual file structure of a DVD.

[rycrostud]

Ah haaaa!

OK. I'm getting this now I think!

I've installed the MPEG-2 codec and MpegStreamClip and it's looking good. I can play the movies on the DVD and I'm just going to try my first export as DV. Here goes.....