HDV sourced footage looks great edited in FCP, turns to crap when going to DVD Studio Pro
by Alex Stanton
on
Jul 4, 2009 at 10:59:27 am
Hi All,
I am working as an editor for a small production company and am quite new to the game.
At the moment we need HDV 1080i (sony fx1e) projects edited onto FCP and put onto DVD. Sadly whilst looking amazing on FCP, the projects on DVD look shocking! My job is on the line and would really appreciate some help.
I am editing on FCP (latest version) Sequence preset HDV - 1080i50, Capture preset HDV, DCP - HDV firewire. Then exporting to compressor and using DVD best quality for 90 mins. Then onto DVD studio Pro to burn but the quality seems to have completely gone when finally put onto DVD. (DVD studio pro preferences - general - resolution 1280 x 720p display mode, 16:9 letterbox. Project - dvd standard-SD DVD, video standard PAL (from the UK) encoding field order - auto, mode - two pass VBR, bit rate = 21.0 mbps, max bit rate = 27.0 mbps, motion estimation = best. - method background encoding.
If someone can help me it would be most appreciated! Thanks for reading.
Re: HDV sourced footage looks great edited in FCP, turns to crap when going to DVD Studio Pro by John Fishback on Jul 4, 2009 at 4:20:54 pm
It's not clear if you are sending the project to Compressor from FCP, or exporting a self-contained or ref Quicktime which is my preferred method. Second thing is the data rate of 21mbps. That's way too high for a DVD (sounds like a program stream). The max spec (video + audio) for DVD is around 10mbps and most people rarely exceed 7mbps since a too-high data will choke certain players. Also use ac3 for your audio instead of aiff as it has a lower audio data rate with virtually the same quality.
John
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Re: HDV sourced footage looks great edited in FCP, turns to crap when going to DVD Studio Pro by Jaap Verdenius on Jul 4, 2009 at 4:50:34 pm
Alex, if you are encoding with Compressor the encoding settings in DVDSP are irrelevant.
You can open your m2v file in Quicktime Player and see if it is as bad as on the dvd. Then you can figure out where things go wrong.
Re: HDV sourced footage looks great edited in FCP, turns to crap when going to DVD Studio Pro by Michael Sacci on Jul 4, 2009 at 9:34:32 pm
You are listing HD prefs above, make sure you are making an HD DVD.
Now if you want the BEST quality from FCP timeline, EXPORT>Using Compressor, in compressor the preset CBR if your bitrate can be over 6 Mbps (you don't list the length), make sure the framerate is the same as the sequence and the field order is the same as the FCP timeline, even if it is Upper in FCP, it needs to be Upper in Compressor. Make the audio ac3 (do a search for proper ac3 settings).
You can do a 5 min test if you like.
This method will give you the best image quality but it will take the longest and it ties up FCP and Compressor for the entire process, but it is worth it.
Re: HDV sourced footage looks great edited in FCP, turns to crap when going to DVD Studio Pro by Aubrey Hays on Sep 20, 2009 at 4:19:12 pm
I just discovered the use of CBR when exporting self-contained movies from FCP. My original footage was 720p/60p, and after having experimented with at least 10 different export settings, I found the CBR. I was having some serious issues with exporting the VBR stuff, even on multi-pass setting @ 6.7/7.2. I couldn't figure out why, but I was getting this intermittent pulsing halfway through my timelines where the whole frame was pixelating. It was like the system was getting tired of analyzing the movement, and was just letting quality crap out for a frame here and a frame there, but I noticed it right away. My settings are actually using progressive @24p and CBR. I didn't use 24p until my last shot, and since it looks best, I think I'm sticking to it.
