When I burn my AVI to a DVD it looks grainy

[VideoGirl321]

I shoot video with a Sony z1u professional camera, I load video with adobe premire 6.5 (I have used this program for a long time and have never had any problems with it.)

I avi the files, using standard NTSC format, then import the AVI into Adobe Elements to burn to a DVD for playback. I recently have been getting complaints the work looks "blurry" or "grainy" and I have been looking back, and it is very grainy.

I recently upgraded to a Mac book pro and invested in adobe pro cs5. But i still use my PC and premire because it is just what I am used to.

Can someone tell me where I am going wrong? will my new upgrade inhance the video product?

Thank you!!!

[poisondeathray]

Is this an acquisition problem? Does the AVI look fine or is it grainy to begin with? Have you used proper lighting/exposure etc... ?

If it is grainy to begin with, you could denoise before encoding to MPEG2 for DVD

What bitrate did you use for the DVD ? Higher bitrate will reduce artifacts

[VideoGirl321]

There is nothing wrong with my lighting or camera, i use a good system.

I am not sure if has to do with bit rate, or compression

These are the settings on Elements my burning software

General
Editing mode: DV NTSC
Timebase: 29.97 fps
Video Settings
Frame size: 720h 480v (0.900)
Frame rate: 29.97 frames/second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: D1/DV NTSC (0.9)
Fields: Lower Field First
Audio Settings
Sample rate: 48000 samples/second
Capture Format
DV Capture
Video Rendering
Maximum Bit Depth: Off
Preview File Format: DV NTSC
Compressor: DV NTSC
Color depth: Millions of colors
Default Timeline
Video tracks: 3
Stereo tracks: 3

[poisondeathray]

You're shooting DV-AVI, but when you encode for DVD , there is a maximum video bitrate of 9.8Mb/s . Your source footage uses almost 3x that bitrate, so the DVD will always look worse

Use mediainfo , gspot or bitrate viewer to check the bitrate used on the DVD . Low bitrates will produce macroblocking, and compression artifacts

[VideoGirl321]

So is there another way to encode so the file does not look noisey or grainy?

[poisondeathray]

You can use higher bitrates, or a better encoder like CCE

Preprocessing with denoising filters and stabilizing the footage will help compression as well

If you want more specific instructions, you will need to post a representative sample

Also , are you comparing this to other DVD's or HD footage? Often it's a limitation of the SD DVD standard. You have to go to blu-ray or AVCHD disc if you want better quality on optical media

[VideoGirl321]

Do you think using adobe pro cs5 will help at all?

(thank you for all your help btw)

[poisondeathray]

Do you think using adobe pro cs5 will help at all?

It might, because from what I recall the "elements" version has limited control over encoding settings, like bitrate etc...

But Premiere has used the Mainconcept MPEG2 encoder for years in it's products , the quality is OK. The difference being the Pro versions have more features unlocked and fine tuning/control

[jagabo]

An 8000+ Kb/s MPEG 2 encode should look reasonably good compared to the DV source. Much lower bitrates will not look as good, obviously. But maybe something else is going on. You should post a short segement of one of your MPEG 2 videos for others to look at. They'll tell you whether what you're getting is normal or not. And maybe make suggestions about what you can do to improve the situation.

[vhelp]

I'm more wondering what you mean by "grain". I mean, could you be refreing to pilexation in actuality?
If thats the case, then its probably an issue with motion (lack of tripod and shaky hands) and not enough bitrate to cover the details of the scene.

Post an actual dv clip (10mb) and an mpeg-2 clip so we can get a better idea of what this grain is.

-vhelp 5433