Low quality image

[SWEET MEMORIES]

Hi there I do have a problem: when I started makin dvds I usually capture the mini DV tapes to my hard drive using Pinnacle Studio 14. and tried to burn the disc from the program itself ending only in a big waste of dvds. Now I do capture the tapes to an AVI format using Pinnacle and I do edit the movie using the same software, after that I do create an MPEG dile again using studio. Then I use Encore CS4 to add menus and create a DVD. so far so good, but Now when I want to use footage from a card (from my Nikon d7000) I do the same process but when I convert the edited result to MPEG I los alot of quality. WHAT CAN i DO?

[sanlyn]

Welcome to Videohelp.

No one can offer advice about video that we've never seen. You should submit a short sample to the forum. If you need help doing this, just ask.

[budwzr]

Set the camera bitrate higher, or shoot in a 60p mode.

[smrpix]

Most likely with the Nikon footage you are downcoverting fron high definition to standard definition to meet DVD specs, but you have provided far too little information for an actual answer.

[SWEET MEMORIES]

Well My question is wht format sholud I convert my studio proyect in a way the final result has decent quality

[smrpix]

What are the specs of your Nikon files? Dimensions, Framerate, Bitrate at the very least. You have to end up with 720x480 mpeg2 file for a Texas-standard DVD.

[Wolfen]

Ideal would be not to re-encode the video files that much try camera -> end product in one shot if you can, as for the format it depends what format the program outputs or what you intend to use them for. I use High Quality low(not too low) bitrate X.264/AAC MP4 for my final encodes.

[SWEET MEMORIES]

This are the specs for the nikon footage: Frame Width 640. Frame Height 424. Data Rate 4624 Kbps.
Total Bitrate 6215 Kbps. Frame rate 29 frames/second.

[smrpix]

Yuck. Okay, just did a test with my d7000. There's no way you're going to make this look good. The picture is too small and there are aliasing artifacts all over the place.

I dropped it directly into Encore with miserable looking results and also did an FFmpeg conversion with miserable results -- all this without an intermediate conversion to edit, so there is presumably less loss than your process would entail.

edit: Set up your Pinnacle project as DV NTSC and output as DV NTSC -- That will be the least bad.

My recommendation, shoot at a 1280x720 NTSC (29.97) resolution. It won't put a huge strain on your system and the results will be much more satisfactory. There may be avisynth scripts that will help you out with your existing material, but make your life simpler by shooting at a higher resolution going forward. The final DVD will not be as sharp as your 1280x720 file, but it will be vastly superior to what you're seeing now.