Ques: how to improve DVD quality

[agent86]

I typically create my DVDs from DirecTV Tivo input thru a Canopus ADVC-100 using iMovieHD and iDVD5.

I'm sort of fine with the quality I get since most of the movies I do are either old TV shows from my youth (Thunderbirds are Go!) or just old movies, most of which are black and white. Although some I have to edit since they go beyond the 2 hour limit of regular DVDs.

However, I'm in the process of designing a DVD Jukebox which will basically be a Mac and a bunch of hard drives loaded with my DVDs as "DVD" files. So I'm looking to see what are the best settings I can do to improve the quality since I won't have the DVD 4.7GB limit.

I understand I need to get DVD Studio Pro if I want to produce in AC3 for surround sound, but I'm also curious if there are any special settings that the program can do to improve the video quality. And therefore worth the purchase versus just using iDVD5.

 

[Lacero]

DVD Studio Pro comes with Compressor. You'll need this in addition with A.Pack to compress your files for DVD. Use Compressor with a average bit rate of 4.5MBps 2-pass VBR. That should give you the best quality possible.

 

[LethalWolfe]

What how much HDD space are you gonna have? If you aren't going to worry about making them fit on a DVD have you thought about using a better codec than DVD quality MPEG-2? Also, if all you are looking for is getting a better image (one that doesn't have to fit on a DVD) have you looked at just getting a compression program? No sense of buying DVDSP if all you are really looking for is a better encoder than iDVD.

Of course you always have to consider your source. You are taking a compressed signal from DirecTV, compressing it again into DV format, then compressing that into DVD quality MPEG-2. I have no idea what your results look like now, but the improvement may not be worth the price.

Heck, if you have the HDD space I'd just leave'em in DV format.


Lethal

 

[sigamy]

What how much HDD space are you gonna have? If you aren't going to worry about making them fit on a DVD have you thought about using a better codec than DVD quality MPEG-2? Also, if all you are looking for is getting a better image (one that doesn't have to fit on a DVD) have you looked at just getting a compression program? No sense of buying DVDSP if all you are really looking for is a better encoder than iDVD.

Of course you always have to consider your source. You are taking a compressed signal from DirecTV, compressing it again into DV format, then compressing that into DVD quality MPEG-2. I have no idea what your results look like now, but the improvement may not be worth the price.

Heck, if you have the HDD space I'd just leave'em in DV format.


Lethal

Exactly. First thing to try is to purchase QuickTime 7 Pro and try out converting the full DV into MPEG4 with the new H.264 codec. If you are playing the video from a Mac, there is no need to create DVD-like output.