When I buy a Hollywood Movie DVD - the quality is fantastic - why are my DVDs so bad?

k993802 · #1 (**permalink**) 03-26-2007, 12:46 AM

Hi,

If possible, could someone be kind enough to explain the following to me:

When I buy a DVD movie such as mission impossible 3, why is the quality of the picture amazing, where my DVDs are no where near as good once transcoded?

To give you the background - I'm an amateur video editor - basically my wife and I edit our holiday movies etc.

We record using nothing special, a Sony DCR-HC42E MiniDV camcorder.

There is however, a significant difference between the original video quality recorded and the completed 'transcoded' DVD video version (mpeg2?)

'It must be the settings' I hear you cry! Well I've been using Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 for a couple of years now (I have an Athlon XP CPU - so no SSE2 - therefore no Premiere Pro 2! - yet!) and I have tried so many settings including pushing the quality setting to full, setting the video target rate at 8.0 ish etc etc.

For completeness of information, I am of course setting up the project as a DV Widescreen PAL project as that is what I record in.

So in summary, is it that movies are recorded in resolutions far in excess of what I'm recording in, therefore when the video is transcoded, any loss of detail is not visable?
Or are there further optimal setting in Premiere Pro 1.5 that I'm just missing?

Oh and don't get me wrong, the video that is being outputted to DVD is great - its just that its not as good as the original caputered recording (avi).

Thanks in advance everyone.

James

Alan Mills · #2 (**permalink**) 03-26-2007, 10:31 AM

probably the main difference in quality is down to the fact that a high budget movie like MI3 has better cinemtography than your holiday movie. Don't know about you but I don't take a 60 person movie crew with me on my holidays

Lighting angles sound, lens quality etc etc all have a bearing on quality.

However, if you're saying that the original capture AVI from your camcorder is much better than that of your final export then it is quite simply down to encoding settings. What else is there?

If your workflow has you rendering and exsporting and than taking that export as a new source for rendering and exporting again then you can get degradation then but I suspect it's all down to export settings. No silver bullet here I'm afraid. You've just got to play and find the right combination of settings project by project.

k993802 · #3 (**permalink**) 03-28-2007, 09:21 PM

Thanks for the reply!

I'm sure my wife wouldn't appreciate a 60 man film crew following us about on our holidays!!

Actually, she'd probably love it! lol!

I know what you mean about playing with settings - The original, .avi that I capture into Adobe Premiere Pro is excellent quality - and yes indeedy, I'll have to play with the export/transcode settings.

Thanks for confirming that there isn't some sort of golden setting that I'm missing out on!

Oh and I've been looking at this forum for months - love it - Thanks for your comments.

James

DHbiker · #4 (**permalink**) 03-28-2007, 10:15 PM

And of course your camera cost a fraction of what the cameras in Mission Impossible 3 cost.

Alan Mills · #5 (**permalink**) 03-29-2007, 02:34 PM

And by the way. I really don't think we should be advocating "Mission Impossible 3" as a defintive reference movie should we?

k993802 · #6 (**permalink**) 03-29-2007, 04:15 PM

lol! I agree, Mission Impossible 3 definatly shouldn't be a definative reference! It was however the first 'Hollywood blockbuster' movie that came to mind when writing the string (which is worrying!)

Ok, I'm going to adapt my question a bit because I'd still love to know if anyone has an answer for it:

Notwithstanding that my little MiniDV camcorder is what it is, the image recorded and captured into Adobe Premiere Pro is of an excellent quality (yes yes its not a professional 3ccd etc camcorder). However, when I push all of the quality and kb/s or mb/s rates bars to the max in the 'export to DVD' function of Adobe Premiere Pro, my PC comes back after a little bit of processing with an error message about rates being too high or maybe system resources not being sufficient etc etc.

Ok, I understand that I'm not giving anyone here any specific information and appreciate that until you have some, there's little that you can offer in help terms, but has anyone else out there managed to get a post transcoded DVD that is almost identical to the 'captured' avi quality?

If so, i'd be interested in hearing what setting you use for your setup of PC - hmmm and your PC Spec too.

What I'm getting at is the question of - what do I need (hardware/software settings) to go from my MiniDV camcorder, to DVD with no or little identifyable loss in quality/sharpness etc? - they do it for hollywood movies, so what do they use and what is available for me to use if their kit is £50k SGi stuff...?

For information, I have nothing remotely special as a PC:

CPU: AMD XP 2800+
Memory: 1.5GB Crucial 400Mhz bus (i think its MHz?)
Video: Ati X700 128MB AGP
HDDs:
40GB PATA 7200rpm as OS/Apps HDD
2 x 300GB Seagate SATA (used for storing editing files etc)
1 x 250GB Music/Photos drive

I think thats all of significance. I'm sure you'll let me know if i've missed anything vital!

Thanks in advance!

PS I capture the video from my MiniDV camcorder onto Adobe, then edit it (cut it up, delete out all of the drivel, speed bits up, slow others down, add a few music backing tracks) in the same adobe premiere pro project, pulling in digital camera pictures and adding text, render it and then export it to DVD. All within Adobe Premiere Pro.

Alan Mills · #7 (**permalink**) 03-29-2007, 04:24 PM

Originally Posted by k993802

lol! I agree, Mission Impossible 3 definatly shouldn't be a definative reference! It was however the first 'Hollywood blockbuster' movie that came to mind when writing the string (which is worrying!)

Very!

Originally Posted by k993802

I capture the video from my MiniDV camcorder onto Adobe, then edit it (cut it up, delete out all of the drivel, speed bits up, slow others down, add a few music backing tracks) in the same adobe premiere pro project, pulling in digital camera pictures and adding text, render it and then export it to DVD. All within Adobe Premiere Pro.

I'm no officianado on bitrates and ultimate levels in quality but I wonder if your main issue is that you are making your DVD from Premier Pro. Which version do you have? V1 or 1.5 where allyou can do is make a 'plau immediately' DVD of your timeline. I;ve never used this and always made DVDs in Encore and so go through an 'export to MPEG2' stage in my workflow. I wonder ifthe encoding process for the 'quick and easy' DVD option is different.

Try exporting your timeline from Premier pro as MPEG2 and playing that back on your PC screen. Do you have more encoding settings available in the Adobe media encoder than you say previously?

Just thinking out loud now.

bone · #8 (**permalink**) 04-25-2007, 04:26 PM

couple of possibilities
Could it have anything to do with your dvd player tv setup
are you using mpeg 2 or 4 (is your camcorder using mpeg 4 for example)

oh! an professional film/ tv producers use a system called avid synphony,
which uses its own format.

Chapman Photography · #9 (**permalink**) 04-25-2007, 04:35 PM

Originally Posted by bone

couple of possibilities
Could it have anything to do with your dvd player tv setup
are you using mpeg 2 or 4 (is your camcorder using mpeg 4 for example)

oh! an professional film/ tv producers use a system called avid synphony,
which uses its own format.

avid synphony, Actully uses most formats SD and HD

TRIS147 · #10 (**permalink**) 04-25-2007, 06:50 PM

asked a mate the same question today....(didnt mention MI3 tho

).....
basically he had this to say...(im no expert,quite the contrary so please dont hold me to any of this, but it may help)

do only editing in premiere, no color correction.....
when rendering,...european=lower fields first, usa=upper field first, interlace turned off.....and of course uncompressed..if you shoot on dv then choose dv avi as file format

bring finished avi into after effects and play with color correction....export with interlace off....now you have your master...get the boris fx packs and the majik bullett set..kinda makes it like film apparently...

not sure about best way of making a dvd but do it as a seperate process and interlace if its for tv, but dont if its for pc......

im a newbee myself so maybe ill be corrected on some of this...

hope that helps..