Why does the video look like this

[MattG]

I have some footage on my computer that was ripped from a DVD MPEG Streamclip (legitimately -- it's something we own). It is in Raw DV format.

Scenario #1: I take the footage and I export it to a Quicktime Movie (h264) using Quicktime Pro. The video looks clean, smooth, and looks pretty good when I burn it to a DVD in Toast.

Scenario #2: I take the footage and dump it straight into Toast, and burn a DVD. The video has a lot of jagged edges (like around logos and text) and does not look smooth at all.

With #2, I'm suspecting it has something to do with interlacing, but I'm not sure. What can I do about this? I would think using the Raw DV would be preferable, since it's 'untouched', full resolution and not converted into another format like it was with the h264, but it seems like the opposite is true. What am I doing wrong? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[ftaok]

DV is an interlaced format.

Apparently, when you converted from DV to h264 using QT Pro, there was some deinterlacing and perhaps anti-aliasing going on. When you dumped the DV right into Toast, it sounds like no deinterlacing and/or anti-aliasing took place.

Another possibility is that the conversion from DV to h264 dropped you down to 24p ... then burning to DVD left it at 24p with the proper markers to output it at 24p with compatible hardware (i.e. progressive scan DVD player, upconverting DVD player).

In either of these scenarios, it seems as the extra conversion step didn't degrade the video quality enough to be discernable. In a perfect world, you could dump the DV video into Toast and allow Toast to convert to MPEG-2 while also deinterlacing and anti-aliasing, and perhaps converting to 24p.

 

[spice weasel]

Do you have the disc with the original video? If so, why go from DVD to DV to DVD/mpeg2? Why not just rip the disc and burn a UDF in Toast?

 

[MattG]

Do you have the disc with the original video? If so, why go from DVD to DV to DVD/mpeg2? Why not just rip the disc and burn a UDF in Toast?

I'm chopping it up a bit..not copying the entire disc. Regardless this is just an example, I want to know in general why it looks like this.

 

[bigbossbmb]

de-interlacing and overall smoothing by going to h.264 first... I tend to rip DVD footage as DVCPro50 instead of DV so that I retain more information by going from 4:2:0 (dvd) to 4:2:2 (dvcpro50) instead of 4:1:1 (dv).

because there was an original degradation during the first edit going to DVD... going back and forth from different chroma samplings with make most text and gfx look pretty awful.