Bad Video After Compressing for DVD
 

I am trying to finish a project I did for a friend that I shot on my XL2. I shot in 24p mode (16:9) without the advanced pull down. I then captured the footage into a 48 Khz DV-NTSC timeline for editing. After editing/color correction I have tried exporting to compressor with bad results. I'm just using the standard "Best DVD 16:9" setting and modifying from there.

The footage looks way too soft, the colors off, lots of artifacting and interlacing issues on all my still pictures. What gives? I've tried exporting as a QT reference file and then bringing it in to Compressor. I've also tried exporting directly to Compressor. I've tried various quality settings within Compressor from 1-pass CBR to 2-pass VBR with varying success. But in all cases the footage looks much worse than when I had it in my time line. I'm relatively new to all this and feel like there are just way too many variables for me to figure this out. Can anyone recommend some tips on cleaning up the footage?

Paul:

I don't work on the Mac side, so have no idea specifically what is at issue, but, this sounds a lot like what happens when I make a mistake when working with 24p material with pull down removed, and I leave deinterlace or remove pull down activated in the render process.

The pictures can be an issue because you haven't imported them close to the pixel resolution of the project. I would resize them to fit the project maximum rez....

Post some screen-grabs of your video, from the FCP timeline (before) and from the DVD playing on your Mac at actual size (after). Choose some of the "bad" spots. That would allow people to try and help you with this.

Will do. I'm at work now but when I get home tonight I'll post some screen shots.

OK, so I think I figured out most of my issues except one. For some reason when I take save a frame as a still image I get this weird interlacing (attached). I've tried saving in multiple formats but can't seem to fix it. Anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong? Thanks in advance for your help

This is interlaced footage Paul. When I shoot on my XL2, every time I use either reverse telecine in Cinema Tools or JES de-interlacer to get rid of this interlace junk. Search the forum for De-Interlacing and you'll get tons of threads.

If all you want to do is take a screenshot just hit Control-Shift-3.

No interlacing, I promise. :P

-C

Thanks Christopher. Funny you mention reverse telecine. I am editing a new project in which my videographer shot with the advanced pulldown option (XL2). I ran the reverse telecine process and added the clips to a 23.98 timeline. I like it much better. It just seems like it's much "cleaner" footage to work with. It's an extra step but seems well worth it. Guess it's a lesson learned for a newbe like me.