I have always been relatively happy with my footage but can't help but be disappointed/ let down when trying to burn it to DVD. I recently bought an EX1 and have a few clients looking to have their final product on DVD. I am unfamiliar/nervous about going from a piece edited in FCP to a DVD. Can anyone shed some light on getting the best quality export/compression etc. for DVD. I shoot mostly 1080p 24p but do not have the money to purchase a Blue Ray burner just yet so my final output would be standard DVD. Thanks!

I have always been relatively happy with my footage but can't help but be disappointed/ let down when trying to burn it to DVD.

I would suggest NOT shooting 24P if your final output is for DVD. You don't say WHY you are disappointed with the results that you've been getting, but 24P could be a part of it. Try 30P instead.

Although I don't talk about post-production too much in my EX training DVDs, except for importing, I still get a a lot of questions about my workflow. I posted this on my website a few months ago. You might find some help there.
Vortex Media: VIDEO & PHOTO Tools and Training (http://www.vortexmedia.com/XDCAM_UPDATES.html)

Good luck. It should be very simple. If you're not getting good results, then you're doing something wrong someplace in your workflow.

The fact that you're shooting 24FPS has nothing to do with it..
Most Hollywood films are encoded to 23.98FPS, and simply have a flag in the Mpeg stream to tell the DVD player to emulate 60i playback.

The biggest challenge is to get a clean downconvert from 1080P to 480P..
There's many threads about downconverting, and requires you to go the freeware route..
VirtualDub is the easiest to use, followed by perhaps AviSynth (if you're comforatable).

One way or the other, there's a common misconception, that somehow, HD material downconverted to SD produces better quality...Not the case.

Give the right person some nice glass, good lighting, and a camera, and you'll receive stunning SD footage..

The OP is using a Mac so Virtual Dub and AVISynth are not going to be much help. HD material properly converted to SD can look stunning and many, many, big budget programmes are shot in HD even though they may only be seen in SD as done right the quality can be superior. Take some of the BBC's Natural History programmes. These have been shot in HD for years and always made some of the most visually stunning SD programmes. Only recently have they been broadcast in HD.

First off for best results going from an EX to SD it is a good idea to go in to the picture profiles and reduce the detail level to -8 or lower. This will help reduce aliasing (patterning on fine detail) in any SD downconverts and IMHO gives a more pleasing HD image.

I find I get the best results by exporting from FCP via compressor. First choose the appropriate DVD preset. I don't do any 23.98 so I'm not sure if this is necessary but in the inspector window of compressor click on the encoder button and select the Video Format tab. Click on the little gear button next to video format and set to NTSC. Next click on the gear button next to Frame Rate and select 23.98.

Now select the frame controls button, then click the gear button next to Frame Controls and set frame controls to ON. Set the resize filter to BEST.

Save this as a new preset so you don't have to make the changes next time and away you go.

If you find you are still struggling, maybe because you have not backed of the detail setting then you can apply a Gaussian Blur filter set to 0.5 to your clips or timeline before you render them to soften the HD before it gets down converted.

One way or the other, there's a common misconception, that somehow, HD material downconverted to SD produces better quality...Not the case.


Peter,

Thanks for your reply. I was under the assumption that HD down-convert did produce better quality, I was unaware that this was a misconception as you pointed out. If this is true and my final product is Standard DVD, than what is the point of me, or anyone who can't burn to Blue Ray, to shoot in 1080p? Why not shoot 480p in camera if the final product will be the same? This seems really disheartening.

T
Now select the frame controls button, then click the gear button next to Frame Controls and set frame controls to ON. Set the resize filter to BEST.


Alister,

Thank you so much for you detailed response. I went through the steps in Compressor, most weren't necessary like you said the changes were already made for me. I did have to change the resize filer to BEST, man there are SOO many more settings in the Frame Controls it is overwhelming! Do the de-interlacing settings matter in frame controls even though my source footage was shot progressive?

Also, once this thing is compressed with all these settings, do you normally just bring it in to DVD studio and burn it from there? Does DVD studio encode it a second time? It has always made me nervous that DVD Studio has its own compressor settings. I'm new at the whole HD down convert burn haha sorry for all the questions.

Just bring the files into DVD studio. It will not re-encode them although it will multiplex the video and audio together.

Don't be put off by Peter's comment re the quality of down converted HD. When shot well and down converted correctly HD is quite capable of being as good as the very best native SD. Plus of course there are all the advantages of being able to zoom into the HD image with no loss of quality, improved keying (by Keying in HD) plus finer noise and grain structure.

I'm not trying to put anybody off here....
It's just that there's a whole generation of newcomers buying into HD, just to realize that when it's time to produce SD, there' no "Easy" button. Well, there is, but the "Easy" button creates a horrible product. In fact, there's more than enough threads showing people's frustration with the downconverts speaks for themselves.


Unfortunately, since i'm a Matrox RT.X2 user, i've found it disheartening to have to revert to extra processes to produce a DVD..

The biggest advantage to our situation, is that when you finally can afford the BluRay burner, and BluRay players are $50 at Walmart, and most customers expect BluRay you can simply reload your project footage, and output for proper encode...

Well, i can.....I simply recapture my tapes :)

The new FCS3 offers a very easy --and far from horrible--solution. Use Share to burn a DVD. I'd downloaded all the tips on which codecs to use to get a good sd dvd from hd, including the "dump to sd timeline" workflow (yes, field dominance set to none), and no disc I've made looks better, including on an HD monitor, than the simple mpeg2 compression disc that FCP burned from my xdcam timeline via Share.

For xdcam users, that and the new Log & Transfer utility with advanced clip naming make the upgrade well worth it.

I shoot 1080p24 all the time on my EX-3. I never use anything else. My SD DVD's look fantastic. My customers always remark on the quality.

Edit in HD (EXDCAM EX 108024 in FCP). I output a self contained movie in this HD codec. I check the movie at this stage. Bring into Compressor and apply Apple SD DVD setting. I only tweak the 16:9 settings and check that the movie size is OK at 720 x 360 (or whatever it scales). I do raise the quality to as high a bitrate as the standard 4.6G DVD will hold. You can calculate this bitrate to get the maximum allowed. This gives me the mv2 file to bring into DVD Studio Pro. I mix audio separately in Soundtrack Pro into a Dolby Surround Sound File.
That's it. I sell hundred's of DVD's each month direct from my website and in six years not one has been returned for poor quality!

I shoot 1080p24 all the time on my EX-3. I never use anything else. My SD DVD's look fantastic. My customers always remark on the quality.


Great!!!
Perhaps Zach could use your advice.

I realized i was in the wrong subforum, and brought up some issues related to those of us that shoot 1080i.
Good luck...

The new FCS3 offers a very easy --and far from horrible--solution. .

Mike,

I have heard that about FCP3 but unfortunately I can't afford it yet, I have the academic version so an upgrade isn't possible, which sucks. But if there is somewhere that shows the settings/compressions for the magic "share to DVD" and or "convert to SD timeline" I would be interested in checking it out.

I do raise the quality to as high a bitrate as the standard 4.6G DVD will hold. You can calculate this bitrate to get the maximum allowed.

Jon,

Thanks a lot for the info. I have never exported from FCP self contained, I'll have to try it out. Would you mind explaining a little about bit rate? What is it exactly? How do I know how much a standard 4.6G DVD will hold and how do I calculate the bitrate to get the maximum allowed?

I shoot in 720/50p or 1080/25p and keep everything progressive right through to encode. I also encode @ a constant bit rate 8meg with frame controls turned on and the resize filter set to best. Most of my work is 30mins spots or under 60mins and is able to be encoded at a high bit rate. This way it looks good and can still fit on a SD 4.7g DVD.

Sure, going from HD to SD you will loose resolution but if shot correctly it should still hold up. Another way is to get youself a 2/3" SD camera.

Cool

Zach - you can download an app for the bitrate size here - Bitrate Calculator (http://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm) or go here Bitrate Calculator (http://www.3ivx.com/support/calculator/index.html)

I use trial and error - I select the best quality DVD setting in compressor (90mins) and then raise the bitrate to its max allowed.
I think exporting a self contained file is key for you, as I think exporting direct from FCP to compressor is your weakest link. I am running the new FCP3, and this has now been totally reconfigured in the new FCP upgrade, so it was obviously not a good method. Import the self contained movie file into compressor and you can compare the results of SD compression in the preview window.
Going from HD to SD is a perfectly good workflow. I shoot HD because sometimes my footage is purchased as stock from cable networks, however all my DVD's, which is 99% my income are SD.

I think exporting a self contained file is key for you, as I think exporting direct from FCP to compressor is your weakest link.

Jon, Thanks for the bit rate stuff, I appreciate it. When you say "self contained" you just mean exporting my project as a quicktime with current settings/full res from FCP correct?

DVD Studio doesn't encode or compress the quicktime when I import it right? It scares when when I can right click on the thumbnail and see an ENCODE setting with more bit rate/aspect ratio encode options. When I went from FCP to compressor then to DVD Studio when I right clicked on the thumbnail the ENCODE setting was grayed out, this made me feel better. You are saying that workflow is not as good. Is it stupid for me to be worrying about that?

Simon brings up a good point. Make sure you're burning a progressive DVD if you're shooting 24p. (or 30p for that matter). Makes a BIG difference.

Zach, I am not sure what you mean by right-clicking the thumbnail? There are no further encode/compression settings in DVDSP.

The self contained file from FCP will be a large HD file - 1020 x 1080. Import into Compressor and export using the DVD presets. Keep 24p - progressive all the way. You should copy the Compressor preset and then fine tune the settings as I said before (bitrate).

This will give you the mpeg 2 file with .m2v format. This is what you import into DVDSP. DVDSP will not recompress this file - it "muxes" the file according to your DVD menu.

Jon,

Tried out your method, everything looks great. Thanks a lot.

I think the reason some people have better success than others depends on whether they are just transferring raw footage, or a finished project with lots of graphics, etc...

Image quality issues are much more noticeable when you're trying to compress graphics along with your footage.

I'm going to try boosting up the date rate as you suggested. But if you check the DVD SP manual, you'll notice that they caution you about doing this. It seems that you can actually boost the date rate up so high that "some" dvd players can't play it. I just wonder if this is an old warning. Maybe modern dvd players can handle higher data rates. You've never had a problem with this?

i'm at such a loss but after ruining my entire weekend...10 hours saturday and 10 hours sunday!!! i have had NO SUCCESS! i tried it all and the DVDs i create look like garbage!

i shoot in HD with XH A1, edit in FCP7 with DVD studio pro.

tried exporting QT movie, hi rez settings, importing that file into compressor at the nice 90 min. setting at CBR 6.8 and 7.0, bring that into DVD studio pro...garbage DVD...all pixelated! tried exporting FC timeline right into compressor and skipping the export to QT first.... bring that into DVD studio pro...garbage pixelation! nothing works. i see some users saying all they do is export to compressor from final cut 7 and wammo!!! a great DVD! i do the same thing and mine is pixelated!

i'm going to do what works.... export as HI_REZ QT movie with H.264 and import that large H.264 into iDVD. it looks really nice. iDVD encodes the huge H.264 video really nice...DVD studio pro doesn't handle H.264 at all which is too bad.

compressor and DVD studio pro are garbage!!!

i'm at such a loss but after ruining my entire weekend...10 hours saturday and 10 hours sunday!!! i have had NO SUCCESS! i tried it all and the DVDs i create look like garbage!

i shoot in HD with XH A1, edit in FCP7 with DVD studio pro.

tried exporting QT movie, hi rez settings, importing that file into compressor at the nice 90 min. setting at CBR 6.8 and 7.0, bring that into DVD studio pro...garbage DVD...all pixelated! tried exporting FC timeline right into compressor and skipping the export to QT first.... bring that into DVD studio pro...garbage pixelation! nothing works. i see some users saying all they do is export to compressor from final cut 7 and wammo!!! a great DVD! i do the same thing and mine is pixelated!

i'm going to do what works.... export as HI_REZ QT movie with H.264 and import that large H.264 into iDVD. it looks really nice. iDVD encodes the huge H.264 video really nice...DVD studio pro doesn't handle H.264 at all which is too bad.

For anyone new to producing DVDs from Final Cut, may I recommend the DVD Studio Pro tutorials by Larry Jordan over at Lynda.com ? I decided I'd had enough of iDVD and took the plunge to learn how to do it properly.

I am producing training videos for a client and need a workflow that...works.

The tutorials are superb and Larry is a great teacher. The thing about watching a tutorial and taking notes is that it's like being back at school - I remember things, which at nearly 50 is no easy task....

HTH

Cotty

Steve, be sure you turn on "Frame Control" in DVDSP or you WILL get garbage.

I've been struggling with this stuff for 12 months as well. I only just got an EX1 and shudder to think about burning dvd's or bluray for that matter.

I burned a test DVD of an intial edit of something shot in HDV from an FX1 yesterday and the DVD did indeed look like garbage on a HD monitor upscaled from a HD player. I assumed it was something I did wrong in the encode (went straight from FCP to compressor then into DVD SP). I didn't tweak any settings though so I'm going to experiement with things from this thread and update. My next shoot is mixing HDV and XDCAm from the EX1 and then output to SD DVD. Any tips on capture settings for the EX1 greatly appreciated. At this atge I'm thinking HDV on one cam and 720P on the EX??

I read about this problem here and was quite worried, especially because a friend was having trouble with his attempts to make SD DVD's.

However I had excellent results after only a few trials using info I gathered here - God Bless this forum.

I shot in 1080i 24P but my friend was also working in PAL hence the PAL suggestions below which I can't personally vouch for. BTW - I had virtually no graphics other than titles.

1. Edit in EX1 Native Sequence, PAL or NTSC -- Go to "Sequence Settings >Render Control>Codec>Apple ProRes 422 (HDV XDCAM HD/EX only)."

2 ADD FLICKER FILTER TO CLIPS AS DESIRED. ( My buddy tried this not me but said it added a a slight softening which he liked . I didn't use it and I believe my stuff was shot at "0" detail.)

3. Export to Compressor from FCP (I rendered first) or to Quicktime for self-contained movie if you prefer.

4. In Compressor Pick Destination and Settings

5. Select "MPEG-2" file -- Go to Inspector click "Encoder" icon and when "Quality" tab appears, choose bit rates, "Two pass VBR Best" ( I chose average 6.6 and max 7.9) At bottom of window select "Motion Estimation Better." (I read there was a glitch in setting Motion Estimator BEST that produced bad DVD's - don't know if this is still true.)

HERE IS THE TRICK

6. Still in Inspector window select "Frame Controls" icon. Select icon to turn Frame Controls "On." "Resize Filter "Best. CHANGE "Output Fields to "Progressive" Leave deinterlace to Fast (Line averaging), and "Adaptive Details" box checked. Leave other settings as is.

Be prepared for long renders.


7. Proceed to make DVD in DVDSP

Thanks to all contributors on this subject. It has been a fascinating discussion and I've learned some very important things.

Leonard is spot on with his solution. Works for me! :)

Dave Morrison and Leonard Levy - i hope you found the holy grail...i have a feeling you did with that frame controls option. if not, there will be an imac on the front lawn tonight. why would they have that option? "oh you want GOOD QUALITY?!...you have to click this secretly-embedded box." why would they do that. there are too many settings man!

what i learned, and maybe this won't help anyone...just an fyi you might be able to use. when i first got the mac this summer i edited HD in imove09 and selected share with DVD (iDVD.) man, did it look bad! pixelated! i searched forums. what i found by reading and experimenting is that, for some reason, it just doesn't work well by doing the share to DVD. my family said it was fine (but what do they know...they aren't editors...hehe.) i knew i could make it better! it had to be! so what i did was export a hi rez QT HD file from imovie. i then imported that into iDVD....iDVD did the encoding and it looks GREAT! somewhere in the SHARE option, something gets messed up.

so, from what i have seen, it is best to export to a hi-rez (i use H.264: outstanding) QT file and then bring that in to compressor (if you're going to use compressor.) this cuts down on encoding time by hours!

bringing timeline right from FCP7 into compressor 90 min. encode took about 12 hours to complete with my imac core 2, 3.06 processor, 4 gigs ram.

exporting timeline to hi - rez 1920 HD H.264 QT self-contained movie took 4 hours. then i brought that into compressor and it took about 2 hours. so a total of 6 hours compared to 12 going right from timeline. the biggest reason is that going from timeline to compressor, compressor will read EACH AND EVERY FRAME! going from QT file imported into compressor, compressor just compresses the entire movie as a whole...no difference between the 2 in quality.

here's a question, what setting do you guys set to for widescreen? obviously we're filming in HD widescreen...what option do you select for 16.9? do you leave it blank? i can't remember the options but there are 3.... something letterbox...maintain letterbox.... i guess just leave it all blank? i want to fill the flat panel widescreen tv and if someone has 4.3, i want letterbox. i did select letterbox and my final QT movie was squashed....a square. no nice widescreen. that was 4 hours encoding wasted.

hope this helps anyone.

steve

Why are you exporting to H.264?

That's an extremely compressed codec. You should be exporting to ProRes. Probably 422 I understand to be is. HQ is a much bigger file and I'm told the difference can't be seen in EX material but that's just hearsay for me.

I will try exporting first if that's faster.

RE: 16:9 in compressor I just choose "16:9"

In DVDSP2 I chose "16:9 Letterbox". I don't know what that means really. Does it mean it will choose according to the TV itself. On my LCD it went full widescreen. I didn't check on my 4:3 TV but if it doesn't letterbox there I'll post it.

Hey Leonard, I use H.264 because it looks awesome. When I was editing on my pc-system with premiere pro CS4, i decided to try the encode with H.264 because I heard great things...that's what you want to use for blu-ray, from what I read. so i tried it. 14 hours later on a quad core, i burned it to blu ray and OH MAN!!!! IT WAS OUTSTANDING!! there is a difference between H.264 and mpeg2. right then i vowed to never use mpeg2 again! it's a garbage codec compared to H.264. I have dropped the H.264 right into iDVD to make an SD DVD and it works great! iDVD encodes it right down. The look with H.264 is really clean and very sharp. my HD footage looks like the original but it takes a little longer to encode (not so long on the mac...almost 1/2 the time...which is another reason i'm switching to mac.)

then i read about H.422 and wonder now what the difference is between that and H.264... more reading. i'm trying to stay away from mpeg2 at all costs after what i saw with the H.264. now, i know DVD uses mpeg2 and that's fine but the source has to be hi rez QT or H.264. there are so many options.

for now what i'm doing is exporting to H.264 so i have a really nice master file for my archives. if i want an SD DVD i will drop it into iDVD since DVD studio pro has issues and won't take the H.264, and then i will also have that file for blu ray work if needed.

DVD HELP - if you have the space, what i would do is what i outlined above.
just capture and edit in final cut pro and then export from FCP timeline...file, export, quicktime. one thing to remember...when you do an export, from what i noticed, make sure you place the arrow at the beginning of the timeline...it will export from where this is. maybe i'm wrong but i accidentally had it at the end and i just exported the last 10 seconds of a 45 minute timeline. from what i saw, it will export from where that arrow is on the timeline for scrubbing.

i'm not in front of the mac right now but select project settings, etc etc. make sure you check the box that says highest quality and then select the video tab (under options) and choose your resolution. i always select what i shot and edit in... 1920X1080....probably overkill but i want the highest even though tvs are 1080 max.

once you have this hi rez QT file i would import it into iDVD and use that instead of DVD studio pro. DVD studio pro has issues and there are too many settings and i just don't have the time to figure out it's encrypted workflow. so drop the QT file into iDVD and let iDVD make an SD disc (iDVD will encode and make sure you set settings for BEST in iDVD.) this works great for me with no pixelation and iDVD is more fun to use as well. i know other artists on this site will give you workflows for DVD studio pro but there are too many hidden options to make sure it works well....as i am finding out. so to turn out something great and fun and fast, do what i said. in the meantime i am still looking into the DVD studio pro settings to get it to work that way....because i can't let this technology beat me...although i'm at my wits end.

Steve