DVD quality

[NickyM]

I have recently been editing some old home movies from camcorder that I want to save to DVD. The finished picture quality is pretty good on my editing suite. I converted the file format to MPEG ready to burn the DVD ( I have read that this is the correct formation most DVD players ) The DVD is very fuzzy and pixelated
I am so disappointed and frustrated... any tips on what I can do to keep a better picture quality....many thanks for any advise

[Sharc]

My best guessing: The bitrate is probably too low. Check your encoder settings and increase the bitrate.
What encoding & authoring SW are you using?

[ProWo]

Render with min 2.5 Mbits.

[jagabo]

Keep the video interlaced. Render 8 Mb/s or higher. Don't put more than 1 hour on a single layer DVD. Use Verbatim DataLife or DataLifePlus discs.

[orsetto]

Camcorder footage captured in super-duper highest quality (huge file in your editing suite) can sometimes be perversely tricky to translate into a decent-looking standard dvd. Try the specifications suggested above, if results are still disappointing perhaps try a different path to the goal (import the original capture files directly into a dvd authoring utility like AVStoDVD or DVDflick, and let the authoring utility do the MPEG conversion internally as it creates the dvd files).

If you don't actually require a dvd formatted in MPEG2 to play on standalone dvd players, you could try simply copying the original edited capture files to a blank dvd (creating a normal PC data disc). Your grandfather's old dvd player won't play this, but most standalone blu-ray players and PC software players will handle it just fine (playing the files in same quality as your editing suite, since no MPEG conversion was necessary). Success might depend on the format specs of your editing suite files: if they're too exotic for the target player they may need to be tweaked slightly for broader compatibility.

[DB83]

I second all the above comments with a few more.


Yes, dvd is mpeg2 but it is not as simple as that. Read 'What is' (see link at the top of this page for the encoding parameters for dvd-compliant mpeg2 files). Anything else and when you come to creating your actual dvd disk will involve a re-encode and that can impact your quality.


Another factor is the actual dvd player and, equally so, the tv you are viewing the final disk. Putting it simply the larger the tv screen the lower the perceived quality unless the player is performing some upscaling.


And do answer the questions asked. You were quite fortunate in getting the first reply some 10 minutes after you started your topic. Yet you have not posted anything since.

[dellsam34]

If your lossless files are AVI 4:2:2 with like 100GB an hour you can encode to h.264 while keeping the 4:2:2 chroma intact with like 15-20 MB/s rate and the files will be like 8GB/hour small enough to put on a dual layer DVD while keeping the visual quality identical to the source (hard to notice the difference), MPEG-2 cannot achieve that.

[Tom Saurus]

I am sure you have received some great advice about the DVD specifications. I would suggest making some good quality .mp4 files from your original files as well. Who knows you might want to play some of your home videos on a tablet or a media player. DVD menus and such are nice but it is nice to have additional options. If you keep your original files even though they are huge you have the option to convert later on to whatever format that comes along.