View Full Version : HDV to DVD What am I doing wrong?


Josh Green
May 8th, 2007, 01:55 PM
Hi all, I'm trying to get a 5 min HDV video onto a SD DVD with Final cut Studio, compressor, and dvdsp and I'm not having much luck. I've tried the Bonsai Method (http://www3.telus.net/bonsai/Step-by-Step.html) which works as long as there is no motion, and I've tried exporting the HDV footage to SD Uncompressed 10bit (i found that from a forum here) and bringing that into compressor and using the best DVD option 90 miin. The uncompressed footage looks terrible and incredibly strobey. I'm using bottom fields first in compressor and the rest of the settings are set to default. I'm using a Canon XHA1 shot in 60i too. Do I need to adjust field settings? Interlace footage? any help would be great thanks.

Hans Ledel
May 8th, 2007, 02:47 PM
Hi

I don´t use Compressor at all, I let DVD Studio do all of the encoding

This is how i do it.

1. I have a folder that I call "DVD Burn" on my harddrive.

2 I open a 1080 projekt in FCP and import my footage and put it on the timeline and do all my editing.

When I´m done I go to File-Export-Quicktime movie and there I use the default settings but I uncheck make movie Self-contained.

I save this quicktime reference movie in my "DVD Burn" folder.

When that is done I close FCP

3. Open DVD studio and make a SD projekt

These are my settings

Aspect ratio :16:9

Field order : Auto

Mode: Two Pass VBR

Bit rate : 6,3

Max Bit rate 7,9

Motion Estimation : Best

4 I import my "DVD Burn" folder and there I have my QuickTime reference movie

I drag that to the template and connect it and test it with Inspector


After that I just press Burn

Pretty simple way but it works

I hope this helps you

Cheers

Hans

Josh Green
May 8th, 2007, 03:47 PM
awesome. thanks Hans. I'll try it right now.

Neil Rostance
May 10th, 2007, 02:11 AM
Oooh this topic has been thrown around a lot. I would 100% suggest exporting as an un-compressed quicktime, and then letting compressor do all the work with it's DVD settings.

The main thing i do is not export straight to compressor though, have a full rez quicktime export first. I'm not sure why this workflow makes a difference, but it makes the DVD's look good.

Hope that helps,

Neil

Daniel Stevenson
May 12th, 2007, 01:45 AM
Another option is copy your sequence into a DV pal timeline and export your mpegs from that (it'll render as it compresses). Has worked several times for me.

Chris Hocking
May 21st, 2007, 11:02 PM
I'm having the same problems as you Josh. Someone has given me a whole heap of content edited in HDV, and now I have to put it to DVD.

What I normally do is down convert in camera from HDV to DV. I then simply export a "Quicktime Movie" and convert to MPEG-2 using Compressor. However, in this case, as the edit is in HDV, I can't do that.

I've tried exporting a "Quicktime Movie" and dragging that into Compressor using the "Best" preset, however I get a Quicktime with all those cool liney/wavey qualities. I've tried using Quicktime Conversion to a 10-bit Uncompressed file, but the problems are still there. I've tried dragging the HDV timeline into a new 10-bit Uncompressed timeline and exporting a Quicktime Movie, but again, no joy. I haven't tried copying the sequence to a DV PAL timeline as Daniel suggested.

When viewing the end result on a CRT TV, it does look OK - you don't really see the liney/wavey artifacts. However, if you view it on a PC/Mac, you do.

Hans method works - for a standard TV, but not for a Progressive Screen (at least from my experiences).

Anyone have a solution? As far as I can tell interlaced HDV is the devil.