Help, please! DVD Studio pro Encoding is coming out very light!

[Nate Chai]

Hey all,

So I tried to burn my first dvd, well actually two. One I burned and IDVD and the other in DVD studio pro 2. I had no idea how to do it but read the instructions for both and followed my dvd tutorial I bough for $99.

My movies are coming out really light. My move I shot is very dark, a lot of shadows, dark environments, shadows on faces. In FPC 3 it looks great (I spent a lot of time color correcting it.) On VHS it looks great but when I burn to dvd all the blacks become washed out and some of the scenes where you are only supposed to see the outlines of the background are now all visible in a washed out horrible look.

Am I doing something wrong? I used the 2 pass system in FPC 3 (which looks better than IDVD, as expected) and in IDVD I just dragged it in. I'm a beginner, so I'm assuming I'm doing something? It's only a 14 minute film, so the video file is pretty small. Should I be encoding in dvd studio pro? Is there some setting that is making it lighter?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks

[Rob Lohman]

I'm thinking you are changing the IRE floor somewhere. If you
shot with a floor of 0 and then encode at 7.5 your movie will
get lighter. Did you play with any "broadcast safe" stuff?

[Jeff Donald]

There is a preference settng in FCP about Super White DV. Is it checked or unchecked?

[Jake Russell]

The QT encoder shifts the colours. So basically all apple encoders will(incl.Compressor) make you're movie lighter. You'll need another encoder. I'd get your hands on BitVice if you can, there is a demo too I think,

http://www.innobits.se

Jake

[Jeff Donald]

Yes there is a slight increase in brightness with the Apple compressor software (most scenes I don't even notice it). But that would not account for the extreme shift in brightness and contrast that Nate is seeing. I think you have a setting or default set wrong. Apple has a DVD list that you can post to. Some very knowledgeable pro users and beta testers on the list. You can also search their archives for an answer.

[Jake Russell]

Yep do what Jeff says I guess but worth trying the BitVice demo just to see. I only say that as many people have been on the dvdsp & fcpro (apple)boards over the last 1-2 yrs saying just this and another encoder sorted the issue. Maybe not in your case but might be worth checking so you can tick it off of the list.

Good luck & maybe come back and post the answer when you find it,

Jake

[Nate Chai]

Thanks for the suggestions. It's definitely not the "super white setting" I double checked.

I also checked the m2v movie against the final cut pro movie and it is a little bit lighter but nothing close to the what I see on the burnt DVD, so I guess I'm narrowing it down to something happening in the burning process within DVD studio pro 2. I have no idea what, but I’ll keep looking and check the apple website.

Thanks for the advice.

[Andrew Hogan]

In DVDSP Preferences are you set to NTSC or Pal. I made this mistakes once in iDVD. After setting the preferences it said "your next project will be in PAL and I assumed it meant my current and all subsequent DVD projects would be in PAL, but i was wrong.