Posted by Richard Lane on 09/10/06 04:20

Doc wrote:
> I find that a 1-hour DVD from DV initial footage looks good. However, at 2
> hours, the image quality takes a very noticeable hit. I just put together a
> DVD of highlights from America's Got Talent and it came to just about two
> hours. The raw clips are either intially captured directly to my Dig8
> camcorder and dumped into the computer, or done via pass-through from a VCR.
> The initial tv signal is off the antenna, but NBC comes in very strong here,
> so the intial image quality is decent.
>
> Authoring with Pinnacle Studio 9. The initial files look good, but on a 2
> hour DVD, the footage takes on a dull look, loss of resolution, a lot of
> noticeable pixelation artifacts in the darker areas in the background etc.
>
> Do you think what I'm experiencing is a shortcoming in the rendering
> capabilities of Pinnacle, a shortcoming with DV or is it just unrealistic to
> expect to retain a significant amount of resolution at 2 hours? I tried
> rendering some of the same footage as mpeg2 with Ulead DVD studio but that
> actually seems to look worse when converted to a test DVD.
>
> I just popped in a commercially made DVD of a modern movie. The film is
> right at 90 minutes, with maybe another 5 - 10 mins of preview trailers for
> other movies. Different uinverse as far as quality of the image. I realize
> it's better source footage to begin with, can there be a major difference in
> the rendering of the footage? Bug issues aside (I fortunately haven't had
> any so far under XP) how well regarded or not are the rendering capabilities
> of Pinnacle Studio?
>
> I keep hearing about TEMPGenc, do you feel I would get a significant boost
> in image quality using it to render the mpeg files and then render those
> under Pinnacle?
>
>
I found that 2hrs on a single layer DVD, source Sony TRV 950, (can't
remember the consequent bit rate) resulted in ~ VHS quality, 1hr gave
good quality but not enough room for lead in and lead out. Perhaps
PowerDirector 5 which compresses low BW portions would give the best of
both worlds.
Dick

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