Re: DVD quality videos - how to question

Do you color correct all your footage while viewing on an external monitor? This is the only to judge the quality of your video.

You are right you can get good results from Prosumer DV cameras, not hollywood level but good results.

More general things

If your DV footage is noisy, your DVD encodes will be noisier, m2v encoding doesn't do well with noise at all. If you are just looking at the computer screen when editing you are not looking at the real quality of the footage.

Footage that has been color corrected, Blacks lowered, mids raised, highlights within broadcast safe, it will compress better.

Always use ac3 audio instead of wav or PCM, that gives you 1.3 Mbps to go towards the video.

While m2v while never be as high quality as any editing codec there should not be that big of a drop.

You should be really specific about your workflow and settings and maybe someone that is using the same software as you can give you specific tips.