Convert Can on 7D movie files to DVD

[mish_09]

Hi. I'm a photographer who is very new to video. Recently I captured a bunch of HD video and stills on my 7D, used CyberLink Power Director 11 to edit all into a 10 min movie, added audio and it all looks great on screen. The problem is when I burn to DVD and watch on TV, the quality is terrible. I've tried saving in a number of different formats, AVI, MPEG-4, MOV but they all come out looking really pixelated. How do I get great quality DVD from what starts out as great quality movie and jpegs? Is it the software I'm using, the file type, the DVD burner or the DVD itself? Would love to know what I'm doing wrong!

[manono]

Well, one problem is that your source is Hi-Def and DVD is Standard-Def, so it'll never look nearly as good.

You say, "The problem is when I burn to DVD and watch on TV, the quality is terrible" So, how did you go from your Hi-Def short video made with Power Director to the DVD? What did you use? Does Power Director do the conversion to DVD video also? Does the resulting DVD look OK on the computer but only bad when played on your standalone?

A sample of the output - 10 seconds or so - made available might help us determine what's wrong with it. But again, please detail the workflow after the creation of the Hi-Def 10 minute video to the final DVD. Also, if it's jumpy handheld interlaced stuff, often DVD doesn't support a high enough bitrate to make it look decent. You used a tripod to minimize shake?

[mish_09]

Hi manono. Thanks for your response. I've tried a few different ways - used Power Director to save the file in DVI format and then create the disc itself. Also tried using Power Director to save the file in different formats and then used Windows Movie Maker to burn to DVD. Neither results were successful enough. The TV format used in Power Director was NTSC (30 FPS) and all of the video was shot using a tripod.

[_Al_]

Bad resize algorithm or encoder quality not good, perhaps even 30p to 60i conversion going on ? Maybe some combinations of those.
Samples of the original and final DVD would tell more.

[manono]

I've tried a few different ways - used Power Director to save the file in DVI format and then create the disc itself. Also tried using Power Director to save the file in different formats and then used Windows Movie Maker to burn to DVD.

So, you created a number of lossy intermediate versions before going to DVD? Better would be to take your joined and edited Hi-Def source and convert that directly to DVD. Does Power Director allow you to save it in a lossless format? Ones such as Lagarith, HuffYUV, and the like? What's DVI format? The only DVI I know is the Digital Video Interface connector. Do you mean DV AVI, perhaps? In any event, the last program most around here would use to create quality DVDs would be Windows Movie Maker. Maybe try something like Avs2DVD. You might have to check if it accepts whatever format you created using Power Director.