DV to DVD help

[learjet035]

Hey
Just did my 1st camcorder DV to DVD conversion. I used adobe premiere to capture and edit, then used easycd/ dvd creator to burn the .mpg files created in premiere. The quality seemed a bit poor, and I'm not sure that I am even doing this correctly. Is there anything I should do differently to get better results? Thanks

[g_shocker182]

How did you capture? Did you do DV Camera thru firewire to computer and capture in full-dv resolution? Did you have Adobe's DVD settings for full-quality output?

Unless its a $3K 3CCD camera, you have to keep in mind that your not always going to get broadcast-quality shoots.

[Luddite]

i just done my first too
firewire
sony dvgate for capture
nerovision 2 for authoring
only get one hour on dvdr if ya want it the same as the dvtape
which i did
its
b e a utiful

[dcsos]

If you use VARIABLE BIT RITE, you may be able to squeeze more than an hour without ANY quality loss. I'm talking 30 extra minutes at the best tho'
and DVD blanks are now cheap enough, so just make sure either you use the ADOBE DEFAULT MAIN CONCEPT MPEG-2 setting, or higher still...

[g_shocker182]

If you use VARIABLE BIT RITE, you may be able to squeeze more than an hour without ANY quality loss. I'm talking 30 extra minutes at the best

dcsos, how can you encode in VBR? Do you do it in real-time when capturing or post capture? I'm new to VBR. THanks

[dcsos]

I do it in post!
Not when i'm capturing..but when I isolate the clips I want top put onto the DVD
That is, I don't even go to VARIABLE unless its too big to fit at a CONSTANT BIT RATE of 8 MILLION BITS.

Then I go to a variable -centered around 7MILLION
if this won't fit,
6,000,000 becomes the new TARGET RATE

[learjet035]

ok sorry, I went out of town. I captured with a firewire from a sony pc-9. I used all the premiere 6.5 default settings and when I export I dont even remember what I did. I think I chose mpg 2. So your sayn I need to adjust settings? I dont care about size as I would prefer quality. Precious memories ya know =) Anyway thanks for any tips or advice in advance!

[dcsos]

No you don't need to change DEFAULT DVD COMPLIANT SPECS IN PREMIERE

its just if you want to put more than an hour or so of DV, per disc
you need to adjust the template CUSTOM down to a lower rate

[learjet035]

ok, so if I dont have to mess with anything does anyone know why my DVD looks average? I thought I would get very similar results as playing off my camcorder. Thanks

[nsdn]

Actually I have done a lot of DV to SVCD but only recently bought a DVD burner....and I am surprised to find that there are no real guides for this...or anyone has found a good way of doing it.

Of course you can use TMPGE to produce a DVD complient stream which Nero will burn straight off, but even at VBR 7000 with max 9000 min 2000 I can still see some pixelation (not much but its there) ....which is very irritating since I thought at DVD bitrates this would all go away....arrrggggG!!! The result is good.....much better than I could get with SVCD but not as good as I expected.

I have found that Canopus does a great job at encoding with little or no artifacts but I have yet to find an authoring proggy that will burn it....they all want to re encode it...grrrr.....time to post in the authoring forum i guess

If anyone has a proven method I would love to hear it.

[VCDWotcha]

Is it that a lot of the quality is lost due to the fact the DV AVIs are interlaced sources and the mpeg2 encoder is having trouble with the compression.

Would it be better to somehow deinterlace and produce progressive AVI before encoding down to mpeg ?

Or how do the encoders handle the fact that odd and even lines can be very different in content ?

[flaninacupboard]

MPEG2 supports interlaced material, so it handles the two fields seperately for better compression. Well, at least the option is there, you just need to set it up in your encoder. deinterlacing would just make your images less smooth to watch.

For my DV material, i capture using DVapp. The resulting .avi file i open in CCE (cinema craft encoder) work out what bitrate i need with the bitrate calc, and let it do a 2 pass encode. there -is- a difference between the DV and DVD, but stikcing with 90 minutes or less on a disc, the difference is minimal.

[nsdn]

Actually I found that TMPGE DVD author likes the program stream out of procoder no problem.

The result is excellant. I believe it is better than the result I have out of Cinemacraft, in fact I would go so far as to say it is pretty close to the original DV at maximum bitrates for DVD (7M average VBR). Plus u don't have to dick around with separate audio encoding, procoder does it all

[lal]

I tried to do the following:

1. Capture thru firewire using DVIO
2. Encode to mpeg2 (2pass VBR) using TMPGenc Plus
3. Create dvd files using TMPGenc DVD Author
4. Burn using Nero.

I am kind of dissatisfied with the results. Is this a good procedure
or is there a better way to do it?

[flaninacupboard]

how much material are you trying to fit on a disc? i wouldn;t try for more than 90 minutes. what are the exact bitrate settings you're using? what audio compression are you using?

[racer-x]

I use Premiere 6.5 and get absolute excellent Quality. I have a hard time seeing the differance from source.

This is what you do:
In the Main Concept Interface, chose dvd - click advance - push quality slider all the way to 50. Click on video tab, change from default variable bit rate to Constant. Set the bitrate to 8000 kbps.

This will give about 1 hour on dvd if you use PCM audio. If you convert wave to AC3 @ 224 kbps, you'll get about 90 min.

Also if you haven't already, upgrade to Main Concept v1.3

[lal]

Check this thread "You want quality + small file with firewire? Here is how!
"
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=626407

[nsdn]

Actually Just wanted to make the additional comment in support of procoder. If you go over to the doom9 forum where the creator and advocate of cinemacraft lives (ddog) who created dvd2svcd software pack. Even he says for DV to DVD use procoder....for everything else use cinemacraft.....or TMPGE. After seeing the result of all three enoders, at least for PAL, procoder wins by quite a long way. It also has a plug in for premier which just increases its desirability.