Help with optimising a DVD project.

Kraznet_UK wrote on 6/11/2011, 3:12 PM

Hi there,
I'm trying to create some DVD's of my Samplitude tutorials with the view of releasing them. But so far I've been very disappointed with the quality. This isn't a criticism of Vegas Pro I hope you realise. I've experimented with quite a few different authoring software's and the quality is always poor. Maybe there's a secret. I don't know about. All my tutorials were created created using Camtasia Recorder, which uses the TSSC AVI codec. I'm using a resolution of 1920x1080x24 @25 fps. Vegas Pro recognises it as Upper Field First although I'll be honest I don't really know what that means. I have some earlier ones which are 1280x1024 as well which will go on a separate DVD. Maybe it's just because the lower resolution of DVDs is not up to giving good definition. Although I recently bought the King's Speech on DVD and the quality of that seemed pretty good. I've experimented pre-rendering on the timeline using the DVD Architect Pal widescreen setting but it keeps defaulting to Lower Field First. It looks terrible - out of focus with smeared colours. I must have gone through a dozen DVDs good-quality Tao Yuden ones and they all look terrible. Maybe I'm expecting too much. Ideally I'd prefer to put them on Blu-ray but I did a survey and very few users - 3% had Blu-ray players. If anyone could enlighten me with how to make high-quality DVDs I will be forever grateful.

Thanks in anticipation
Kraznet

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 6/11/2011, 3:27 PM

When you go from 1920x1080 HD to 720x576 SD (in your case), you have already lost 80% of your image information. And that is before any transcoding or compression losses take place. Much of what you are asking about is just math.

That being said, getting the best SD from HD has been explored on this forum for some time, the thread linked below providing the most recent discussion and experiments on the topic.

Interlaced HD to DVD AGAIN - some test renders

But don't try to compare The King's Speech DVD to your Vegas encode. The lenses, equipment and encoders used to do that cost a lot more than many of us will make in our lifetimes. If you are looking for a better MPEG-2 encoder, Cinemacraft is a good place to start.

Kraznet_UK wrote on 6/11/2011, 4:15 PM

Thanks for your help. I'm afraid that topic is a bit over my head. I have another look in the morning when I feel fresher. It looks like Cinemacraft is the way to go but at just under $1000. There's no way I can afford that. I think I might have to rethink my whole scheme about putting out DVDs.

Thanks again
Kraznet

sodbuster-ca wrote on 6/11/2011, 5:57 PM

kraznet,

Where did you get your expanding concentric circles (indicating left mouse clicks) & arrows from?

Nice Tutorials, by the way.

johnmeyer wrote on 6/11/2011, 8:32 PM

Vegas and DVD Architect are capable of producing as good a DVD as just about anything (although there are some manual tweaks that can be done with high-end encoders that help with things like smoke, transitions, strobe lights, and other similar tough encoding situations). Your encoding challenge is mostly about sharpness, Assuming that you are starting with PAL Widescreen DVD Architect template when rendering to MPEG-2 in Vegas, and that you don't change anything except for average bitrate, and also assuming that you don't use an average bitrate below 6,000,000 bps, you should be getting a good encode.

One thing you could try is to put the sharpen fX on the output bus and set it to zero. This will provide minimal sharpening, but might make your output look better.

musicvid10 wrote on 6/11/2011, 8:36 PM

In addition to what John just said, I recommend raising the minimum bitrate to 2,000,000, if you have fades and crossfade transitions, in order to minimize blocking artifacts.

NickHope wrote on 6/11/2011, 9:44 PM

It looks like Cinemacraft is the way to go but at just under $1000. There's no way I can afford that.

Cinemacraft Basic shares the amazing speed and quality of the more expensive version and is (was) something like $80 but I can't find it on any of the distributor sites today. Looks like it's been discontinued, which is sad. If you really want it then I would contact them and see if it's still available.

Kraznet_UK wrote on 6/11/2011, 10:15 PM

Hi there,

>Where did you get your expanding concentric circles (indicating left >mouse clicks) & arrows from?
>Nice Tutorials, by the way.

Glad you like the tutorials. The expanding concentric circles for mouse clicks is part of the Camtasia Recorder feature which can be enabled when doing screen recording. The arrows. I use are from a program called Xara Designer Pro 6 which is an underrated graphics program . Camtasia Studio also comes with a lot of these callouts but I stopped using it is to produce videos with because I found it got very laggy with projects over 10 min. As soon as I started adding transitions and effects everything got out of sync. So I have been using Magix Vdeo Pro X3 since then, which does the job well. However it doesn't have the ability to add closed captions. So I'm now importing my projects into Vegas Pro . It's been a case of juggling between several programs including Sequoia.I started using Vegas at version 3 originally I think, and took advantage of upgrading to version 10.
Cheers
Kraznet

Kraznet_UK wrote on 6/11/2011, 10:23 PM

Hi John

>Vegas and DVD Architect are capable of producing as good a DVD as >just about anything (although there are some manual tweaks that can be >done with high-end encoders that help with things like smoke, >transitions, strobe lights, and other similar tough encoding situations). >Your encoding challenge is mostly about sharpness, Assuming that you >are starting with PAL Widescreen DVD Architect template when >rendering to MPEG-2 in Vegas, and that you don't change anything >except for average bitrate, and also assuming that you don't use an >average bitrate below 6,000,000 bps, you should be getting a good >encode.

Yes it's definitely sharpness. I'm looking for . I will try that setting

>One thing you could try is to put the sharpen fX on the output bus and >set it to zero. This will provide minimal sharpening, but might make your >output look better.
Thanks for that tip, I'll give it a go.

Regards
Kraznet

sodbuster-ca wrote on 6/12/2011, 10:00 AM

"The expanding concentric circles for mouse clicks is part of the Camtasia Recorder feature which can be enabled when doing screen recording.

I was looking for an easy way to add animated highlight indications for football/sports highlight videos. Simple animations via keyframing in Vegas is relatively easy but something complex like expanding concentric circles would be very time cosuming in Vegas. Guess I'll keep looking.

Thanks.

bsuratt wrote on 6/12/2011, 6:55 PM

If it is possible you should output from Camtasia at SD specs, 720x480 (or PAL SD specs) since it is for DVD. The downscaling from HD to SD creates some problems that you may be able to avoid by creating SD directly from Camtasia.

i6pwr wrote on 6/12/2011, 9:07 PM

<One thing you could try is to put the sharpen fX on the output bus and set it to zero>

I wanted to add to this if I may....does it matter which box you choose, ie, medium, light or heavy when setting to "0" or is the effect the same? Are you referring to Sharpen or Unsharp Mask?

I feel my XR500 needs just a very slight push in the sharpening dept.

johnmeyer wrote on 6/12/2011, 9:24 PM

Sharpen.

Kraznet_UK wrote on 6/13/2011, 4:36 AM

The problem with that is that I made the tutorials for YouTube and user download originally so everything was done at either 1280x1024 at first and then 1920x1080 later on.But I think I see what your saying. If I produced the tutorials at PAL SD Spec from source the quality would be better. I guess you mean capturing the video at that spec, although it would mean working an a much smaller workspace when doing the actual tutorials.

Kraznet

Kraznet_UK wrote on 6/13/2011, 7:49 AM

Nick Hope Wrote:
>Cinemacraft Basic shares the amazing speed and quality of the more >expensive version and is (was) something like $80 but I can't find it on >any of the distributor sites today. Looks like it's been discontinued, which >is sad. If you really want it then I would contact them and see if it's still >available.

I found a trial of Cinemacraft basic V 2.70but when I try to load up an AVI in standalone mode I get a message saying "Frame Size not supported. Supported frame size is up to 720x576"

Regards
Kraznet

bsuratt wrote on 6/13/2011, 8:17 AM

Not familiar with how Camtasia works but can you open your original Camtasia project and then select to create an output file at SD spec? (Check this file for quality.) If so you will avoid any further downscaling in Vegas when going to DVD.

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