Help - ready to throw in the towel on mpeg2 encodes to DVD

[hurdsam]

My (inexperienced) many attempts the past couple of months to make a quality 30 minute youth soccer video from consumer camcorder footage edited through FCP 3.0.4 has me about ready to go back to good old reliable DV masters and VHS dubs. Tedious, yes, but at least it works. I've tried Toast 6.0.5 and BitVice and am not satisfied with quality from either one. Toast is randomly unusable - high action scenes periodically (not always) exhibit an unnerving strobing effect when watching burned DVD on TV (like every other frame missing or slow). This effect is not seen with QT input file nor with DVD player on computer. Toast encodes also exhibit very large block artifacts on some transition scenes. BitVice doesn't exhibit those problems, but generally looks worse than Toast encodes in terms of 'graininess' of picture - particularly in high action scenes. The encode input files (QT format) are exported directly from FCP as self-contained, FCP movies (720x480 NTSC, 29.97fps, interlaced).

I'm a self-avowed novice in this - but was hoping there would be a more consistent and fool-proof approach to making quality DVDs that looked at least close to 2nd generation VHS created from DV masters. So far I haven't been able to come close.

Any suggestions for alternate approaches to what I've outlined above, or other applications? I don't want to go broke trying different apps - didn't think I was trying to do anything too complex - but am currently of the opinion that the whole 'encoding to DVD' process on the Mac is not yet ready for prime time. There must be a better way - help, anyone!

Thanks in advance!

[thoughton]

If you're relatively new to all this, and your input video is 4:3 digital video, you should probably be using iMovie and iDVD. Slick integration between those two, and free with DVD writer macs.

Any particular reason you're using FCP? And if you have FCP, perhaps you also have DVD Studio Pro? In that case you should probably be exporting from FCP to Compressor.

[miksu]

Tried Toast 6.x SVCD feature few times, it's crab. Same propably applies to it's DVD-encoder, since they're both MPEG2 and likely to use same encoder.

Now using "good-value" DV-Cam(PAL), FCP Express (1.0.1) and iDVD3, fantastic picture quality and fast encoding even on old 450MHz "Sawtooth". iDVD4 is supposed to give you option to choose "Better" or "Faster" encoding, but personally I think there isn't really need for those options.

FCP and iDVD work well together, so if U prefer FCP, use it. But iDVD is definitely better choice than Toast. If you have "unsupported" DVD-writer, propably there is patched driver (take a look at www.xlr8yourmac.com).

[hurdsam]

Thank you both for the suggestions. While I'm not an expert - my editing requirements go well beyond iMovie - started there three years ago and quickly outgrew it. I will eventually move up to DVD Studio Pro but want to wait to version 3. Other sites I've visited indicate that it's current encoder is often not as good as Toast's. These sites also pan iDVD as not having a good encoder. I've not tried iDVD because I use an external DVD burner. My understanding is there's no way to use iDVD with external burner. I will check the link you mentioned to explore further.

Thanks again.

[thoughton]

There are ways around the iDVD external drive issue. One is to obtain a 8k .sit file named "HPfurz" which contains a Hurz and a Pfurz file, do a search for it, there should be links both on this site and on MacOSXhints, it enables iDVD to create a disk image instead of burning to DVD - so you can later burn the image to an external burner. I think there might also be a patch or two to enable iDVD on external drives (not positive about this one).

Secondly I would take a giant pinch of salt with that other site's comment about Toast's output quality being as good as iDVD and DVDSP. In my opinion someone was pulling your leg

[SERBIAN]

Agreed with thoughton...

[terryj]

Using DVDSP2, and exporting footage from FCP 4 to Compressor,
you should get great footage, comparable to first gen VHS or better.

The only issue I have had thus far with DVDSP/Compressor/FCP
is with downloaded xvid .avi files, where someone encoded the
whole 2+ hr movie to xvid .avi, and in trying to run these through Compressor to MPeg-2 creates blockiness and random "greenspotting"
through out the final encode. ( My trick to workaround is
to run {encode to new}the xvid .avi through ffmpegx, generate a
[MPEG-4] .avi at half original size, with pass through audio, then
run that file through DIVX Doctor to QT movie. It fixes the file's
video to more compatible QT, and then I run this through Compressor
to generate a 3.5 mpbs 2 pass VBR Mpeg-2, which looks fine.)

But, I definitely get MUCH better results with Compressor than
using Toast to generate MEPG-2.

[hurdsam]

Thanks, all, for the valuable perspectives...I'll put DVDSP on my watch list and will get ilife 4 so i can try the above suggestion for making an image file from iDVD.

Thanks again!