I'm having all kinds of trouble making a DVD

[Ethan Cooper]

for the heck of it, why not try turning on the frame controls in Compressor & running it through the way I said earlier. never know, might get lucky. I'm curious to see what'll happen.

[John Meeks]

I've been playing with the frame controls for about a week, I don't think there's a combination of settings I *haven't* tried.

I think it's a bug in the Apple DVD Player (or an interaction between the player and the Final Cut process, or maybe my video doesn't have enough motion for it to "lock on" to, or some subtle combination of these).

I'll be happy to send anyone a DVD who wants one, to see the problem for yourself.

[Ethan Cooper]

William,
How does that work? If I have a progressive MPEG file that's authored to a DVD what happens to it?

Now you've got me curious.

[Ethan Cooper]

Originally Posted by John Meeks

...an interaction between the player and the Final Cut process...

I'll go out on a limb here and say that's probably not it.

[John Meeks]

I'm not William, but I'll answer your question...

The software takes a single frame and splits it into two fields. It's like if you were recording with a SD camera set to a shutter speed of 1/30.

[John Meeks]

Originally Posted by Ethan Cooper

I'll go out on a limb here and say that's probably not it.

Well, can you explain why it *only* occurs when playing back on the Apple DVD player?

[Ethan Cooper]

Well, can you explain why it *only* occurs when playing back on the Apple DVD player?

cause *only* Apple's DVD Player sucks?

[John Meeks]

I've never had a problem using Apple's player to play commercial DVDs.

[Ethan Cooper]

Don't know man I'm at a loss here. I'd say it's about time to go have a beer & figure out how you're gonna distribute through the web. I'm sorry Steve Jobs hates you.

[John Meeks]

Thank you very much for your help, I really appreciate it. :-)

[Ethan Cooper]

I have a funny feeling I'll be dreaming about this one tonight. I can't seem to wrap my head around your problem. It's an odd one.

Have you tried contemplating it while wearing a tinfoil hat?

[John Meeks]

I think it may be because there's very little motion in my video, and the player is having trouble "locking on" to it.

[Ethan Cooper]

If that were the case shouldn't it be happening across the board & not just with Apple's DVD Player? I'm starting to now wonder if it's something to do with 60p being turned into 60i on the DVD. Of course I've got no solution to offer at this point since you've already tried the 60p to 30p stuff & it didn't work.

Know what, I'd probably just better leave this to someone smarter. I can't solve it & am now typing to hear myself type.

Good luck to you. Tinfoil hat still recommended & thanks for giving me another reason to leave the 60p for overcrank only. Oh, and I'm still sorry Steve Jobs hates you.

[John Meeks]

Hehe, maybe I should write Steve a nasty email. I hear he actually replies sometimes. xD

It could be that the auto-detect in Apple's player sucks more than others. I still have some experiments to try (but not tonight).

60p would be theoretically optimal for DVD if the software supported it correctly. It's good for interlaced output (which I've found works quite well but looks awful on computers). I don't think 1080i would necessarily help this specific problem.

What's your theory about 60p? I'm 32 by the way. But I have a specific eye problem (nystagmus) which causes me to see flickering much more than most people. For example, those LED christmas tree lights drive me up the wall.

[William Hohauser]

Please experiment with MpegStreamclip or VLC and see if the problem is repeated. Also experiment with playing the VideoTS file from the DVD directly from the hard drive with Apple DVD player. As I have said, it possibly a process in the computer that activates when the mouse hasn't been touched for 10 minutes that's causing a change in the playback.

Not everyone is going to play your DVD on a Mac, so consider testing on a PC and if the finished product is mainly meant for computer viewing you might also consider an h264 file which can retain the full HD quality of your work while taking up less space.

The DVD spec (which is old technology now) only allows 60i or 24p. 60p is beyond a DVD and must be converted to 60i which will create interlacing effects in motion. When shooting HD for DVD distribution, it pays to consider 30p as a shooting format. Many commercial movies are mastered to DVD in 24p and will never exhibit interlacing artifacts.