DVD quality from Encore CS5.1

[surffx]

Hey everyone, thanks for taking the time to read my post and share your knowledge.

I shot some footage in 720p then edited it in Adobe Premeire (CS 5.5) with out changing the resolution. I then rendered the project matching the orignal settings (720p).

Next I took that output file into Encore and authored a standard definition DVD (720x480). The result looks pretty bad on an HDTV really grainy and kind of choppy. It looks a little better on an old CRT tv but still not as good as when I used to do plain old NTSC DV.

Any ideas on what went wrong, or how I could get better quality?

Thanks again.

[aedipuss]

you rendered twice, it will lose quality each time. i'd try going from the 720p directly to dvd spec 720x480 30i mpeg-2 with ac3 audio. no 480i is going to look great blown back up to 1080 by the tv but it should look ok.

[surffx]

Thanks for the advice, I did try that my first go around. From Premeire I rendered my timeline to 720x480 30i mpeg2. Then I brought that into Encore. It just burned a DVD without rendering anything. Pretty much the same result no increase in quality. Grainy, chopy, and the light looks washed out too.

Sorry.

If I know I'm not going to be buring a blu-ray (HD-DVD) would it be better to shoot my footage in 720x480 30i? Would this avoid this problem?

[jagabo]

I suspect Encore converted your 60p source to 30p by discarding every other frame, then encoded as 30i. Or maybe you got the field order wrong when you authored the DVD.

Noisy, shaky handheld camcorder video does not encode as well as professionally produced films. What bitrate did you use?

[surffx]

Good question about the bit rate (which is something I don't know alot about) The first time I did it I used 7. The second time I tried it I used 9.4 which looks to be the highest. My thinking was that higher was better as far as quality goes. But nither turned out very good.

Is there a specific bitrate I should be using?

Now about fields. When I used to shoot in DV it was understood that lower fields first was the rule. But when you shoot in 720p do you even worry about fields? I though it was progressive so that didn't matter?

On top of that...when I go into the settings in Encore there are two tabs. One for DVD one for Blu-Ray. On the DVD tab you can choose your bit rate 6, 7, 8, 9.4, but the other settings are greyed out. Mpeg-2, 720x480, 29.97 frames, and lower fields first you can't change. So I don't know what to do there.

[jagabo]

Good question about the bit rate (which is something I don't know alot about) The first time I did it I used 7. The second time I tried it I used 9.4 which looks to be the highest. My thinking was that higher was better as far as quality goes. But nither turned out very good.

Is there a specific bitrate I should be using?

The max video bitrate supported by DVD is 9.8 Mb/s. So your 9.4 is about as high as you can go. That should be enough to keep most most material from getting too blocky.

Now about fields. When I used to shoot in DV it was understood that lower fields first was the rule. But when you shoot in 720p do you even worry about fields? I though it was progressive so that didn't matter?

Your 720p source is progressive but to make a DVD out of it you have to convert to 480i30. There are two ways this can be done.

A program can first resize to 720x480 then take a field from one frame and a field from the next frame and interleave them. That will produce an interlaced video with 60 different images per second for very smooth motion. Unless the field order was set wrong. In which case you get a two-steps-forward-one-step-back stutter. At 60 fields per second that looks like a very fast shake or flicker any time there is motion.

The other way would be to throw out every other frame, resize to 720x480, then encode it as if it was interlaced. In this case the field order doesn't matter because both fields come from the same point in time -- it doesn't matter which you see first. But 30 pictures per second is a little jerky/flickery. It's especially noticeable on moderate speed, bright, panning shots.

Another possible problem is it the video was encoded progressive rather than interlaced. NTSC DVD doesn't officially support progressive encoding.

On top of that...when I go into the settings in Encore there are two tabs. One for DVD one for Blu-Ray. On the DVD tab you can choose your bit rate 6, 7, 8, 9.4, but the other settings are greyed out. Mpeg-2, 720x480, 29.97 frames, and lower fields first you can't change. So I don't know what to do there.

I can't help you with those particular programs since I don't use them. But if you can post short sample (with motion) of your MPEG video I can take a look at it. You can use DgIndex or Mpeg2Cut2 to extract a short clip.

[edDV]

If you encode to 720x480i30 in Premiere, Encore should not be changing anything. The DVD should match the Premiere 720x480i30 file.