Mpeg file(720*575,PAL) OK, not from DVD-player
 

The last weeks I've been trying to get a normal looking DVD from my HD material. The downconvert process looks ok. This downconverted file looks OK when playing from my computer directly to my 32" HD-TV, and they also looks ok on my computer monitors.

After finishing movie on DVD, the result looks OK(just a LITTLE soft) on my TV from my computer DVD-player sent through a monitor cable. But when playing this movie on the main DVD-player sent to my TV through scart-cable it looks rather bad; and badlier than any DVD-video made from my of old VHS-movies. It's not worth looking at at all. This Sony DVD-player is great in use with any other "normal" SD-DVD-movie I've made, and also with other DVD materials I've tried.

My question is why I'm getting this bad result when playing this DVD om my Sony DVD-player but not when playing from the DVD-player in my computer . I've also tried this finished DVD on a DVD-player in a computer-store with the same bad result. Why does this happen?

What is your mpeg’s bit rate?

If the bit rate is too high, your ~3GHz multi-core CPU maybe fast enough to decode it and display it on your monitor, but a 200MHz CPU in your player may choke on it.
This is just one of many possibilities.

Rob

I'm rendering my MPEG-file with a datarate from 6000 kbits/sec to 8000 kbits/sec. This has been my normal bit rate for years.

The bad DVD-movie looks like it's made of many "layers" and in "3D"; really bad.

Sounds like you may have screwed up the field order.

When you describe it like that, I agree with Ervin.

Thanks for the replies.

Ervin answers "Sounds like you may have screwed up the field order". Where does this happen, and what can I do to fix this?

I've tried again and again to get a better movie on DVD. The same result from two camcorders, a Canon XHA1 and Canon HF10. But it seems like the result is ok from DVD-players played on older TV in 4:3 format, but not on HD-TV in 16:9. These "older TV" are 28" , so the difference from these ones to a 32" HD-TV should NOT be so big. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong here.

HDV is UFF (upper field first), DV is LFF (lower field first), DVD is UFF again... so lots of places to make mistakes. Some editors/encoders will set this for you automatically while in others you need to make the choice manually (some MPEG2 encoders will even have you choose the field order for both the source file and the resulting file).

Found the problem. I've tried two DVD-players on my LC-DTV. From both of them the movies are rather bad. My DVD-players are both SD DVD players and not HD DVD-players. Between my player and my LCD-TV I have a scart cable. My TV is a 32" Sony Bravia LCD. Have tried this on a few other LCD-TV's with the same result.

It's not only my home made DVD that are so bad. Have bought a few movies on DVD, and all of them has a bad picture on my TV.

My experience:
1: My movies looks great sent from DVD to non HD TV.
2: Sent from my computer to my LCD-TV the picture looks great.
3: A "normal" DVD-player(SD) can't give a good picture on a HD-TV.

This tells me that you really need a HD DVD-player (Blu-Ray) to view a good looking DVD-movie on a HD LCD-TV.

In my experience, this is not true. I have a 56" Samsung HDTV. Connected to that is a Panasonic DVD recorder and a Samsung BD player. SD DVDs look identical played from either source.

Perhaps if you describe your encoding workflow and settings it might give us some indication where things might be going wrong.

Thanks again for the replies.

Until now I've used a Sony DVD-NS410 DVD-player connected to my Sony HD-ready 32" LCD-TV through scart cables. The quality here was really bad. Yesterday I connected a Panasonic DVD/HDD recorder(DVD-44OH) to my TV through component cables(red/greeb/blue) and the result was quite different. Not top quality but not far from.

If I had a SD DVD-player/Blu-Ray player with HDMI connection to my TV it should be better I think.

And again, thanks for the answers here...

I'm afraid you're going through an adjustment time we all went through when we switched to an HD TV - we expect the picture to be perfect when viewed from very close. Well, let's not forget about upscaling!

This is what I would do to be sure your player/tv combo works fine: take a factory DVD that you know was looking very good on your old SD tv and watch that FROM A DISTANCE of about 5 times the diagonal of your screen. I bet it looks identical if not better than your SD television set, no matter wether you go SCART or component. HDMI should be about the same as component. Once you know what a good DVD should look like, then compare that to your own production.

I have some SD DVDs I play on a 3 year old SD Philips DVD player via HDMI, and the picture is breathtaking from 5-6 meters on my 57" (1.44 meter) diagonal HD set, doesn't even compare to what it used to be on my 36" CRT SD set.