Canon XL1 edited in Final Cut Pro Express/ Burned in IDVD. Not good enough results.

[Julio Laffont]

I'm working with my Canon XL1 in parties, Events, etc and editing in my new Imac 24 inch with Final Cut Express Pro. Usually I finish projects in 100 minutes length with 20 to 25 GB each. It's VERY IMPORTANT to make clear that Final cup Pro Express HD, do not includes Compressor..I don't have it..The mean point is : I need to make DVDS of 4.2 GB with files of 25 GB and show that in T.V screens of 52 /70 inch with HD 1080 with crystal clear quality. When I show the tape in the 52 inch from XL1 looks gorgeous, but in the DVD looks kind of blurry. I'm sure there is a method to burn a proper DVD. If Disney or any other Movie company can download movies that weighs hundreds of GB in one DVD of 4.2 GB for commercial use and have crystal clear quality, must be a method to have great results with 4.2 GB DVDS. If someone knows the proper settings in FCP EXPRESS Pro HD to export MiniDV tapes from XL1 or similar to 25 GB files and burn it in IDVD with Crystal clear results in a 52 inch plasma HD 1080, I will be very happy to read it.
Thanks for your answers.
Best Regards.

[Douglas Thigpen]

If you're looking for real quality, be prepared to pony up at least $500 or so for a good Mpeg2 encoder. However, your standards, as you are stating them, are unrealistic. If you want to display in 'crystal clear 1080 HD', start authoring your content in HD on Blu-Ray discs.

[Scott Barnhill]

I've been going back and forth with my project. I've tried DVD Studio Pro in FCS2 and IDVD 09. So far I'm happy with IDVD using the "Professional Quality" setting in "Project Settings". The 90 minute setting setting in DVDSP had a lot more image blur especially on text. I tried a "Sharpen" setting in DVDSP but still not good. I've read about a lot of people using DVDSP and are happy with it but I'm still scratching my head as to why I-DVD looks so much better. For one thing I haven't figured out how to make custom menus in I-DVD like you can in DVDSP.

My work flow so far, still fine tuning my 94 minute movie:
1. Edit using FCP6 and render sequences together
2. Add chapter marks.
3. Render out to "Quicktime Movie" no conversion with chapter marks checked.
4. Open I-DVD '09 and start "Magic DVD"
5. Drag the .mov file in the window and choose a theme.
6. Create movie.
7. Edit menu title text and sound
8. Set project settings to "Professional Quality"
9. Burn Disc

Thats it, now I just need to make my own themes to get rid of the Apple logo.
Chapter menus are done automatically as well.
I still need to look at DVDSP some more to see what I might be doing wrong. The main drawback I see with I-DVD is I don't think you can do too much more than 90 minutes on the Pro setting.

[Julio Laffont]

Hi . Yestarday night I finish the editing with my FCP pro express and everything was fine. The QTM was great, chapters in order, transfer to IDV smooth and clean, and at the end I checked again in IDV all the steps before burning and everything was perfect. So I burned the 90 minutes service with 5 chapters and I went to sleep. After 1 hour or so I had the master and just in case I check the DVD. And I went in panic. The QTM was perfect, The IDV master was perfect inside the computer, but the DVD master did all the 5 chapter but it didn't include the music of the last chapter. At 2 A.M I did the same operation again (I needed to deliver the thing today at 8A.M) and the same problem happens again. At 4 A.M I took the last chance: The track of ABBA (probably the computer don't like ABBA) that was in channel 3&4 was eliminated and replace for another track faded with the previous in channel 1&2. At 5 A.M finished all the operation and the master DVD was great. Everything was in its place. I wonder what happen with that track because I never saw such a weird problem like that.
Best Regards.

[Tony Davies-Patrick]

I have found that to maintain the highest possible quality from a 25fps 720/576 DV movie compressed to fit a single layer 4.7 GB DVD disc, the maximum length of the final 16:9 or 4:3 AVi footage needs to be no longer than 1-hour 10mins (this includes high quality sound track plus several layers of music), so try to always edit your clips down to approximately 1-hour. This provides added room for your final authoring menu text and opening sequence soundtrack etc., without the need for extra compression.

An Avi file of approximately 14GB should be your final video clip ready to converted to MPEG2 to fit the DVD disc. I've found that this converted 14GB file then becomes approximately 4.3Gb and fits perfectly in the 4.7GB space (note that a DVD disc rarely provides a full 4.7GB of quality space, so sometimes your maximum available space will only be 4.1Gb in which case you'll need to edit the original Avi footage slightly shorter. 1-hour 5mins is about perfect for a normal DVD-R disc that includes high quality sound & music tracks.

Edit entirely in Avi and do not convert to Mpeg2 at all until the final authoring and this avoids most mpeg artefacts appearing in the final master DVD-R.

My movies on DVD run for just over 2-hours total but I do not use Dual-layer discs or try to cram them onto a single DVD using multi mpeg compression. Instead, I split each movie into 2-parts (to maintain quality), with each DVD-R disc holding approximately 1-hour of high quality video (the master DVD-R discs are then given to a professional DVD production company and used to produce double-DVD packs for eventual sale).