Best quality

alfredsvideo wrote on 7/18/2003, 5:27 PM
Still trying to find out how to get the best end result with Architect. Am I assuming correct, that completely filling a disc with a 1 hour movie should result in "Best Quality"?
How do I choose differing qualities with Architect? It doesn't seem to matter what mbps I use, it is still allowing me to put nearly 2 hours on one disc. Why is this so?

Comments

rwizard wrote on 7/19/2003, 12:35 AM
The 'quality' of a finished dvd is determined by the bitrate you sample at when rendering out to mpeg 2. And whether or not the render is done with the bitrate set to constant or variable.

As far as I've been able to figure out, the highest possible safe bitate is constant at 8. Anything over that will apparently overwhelm some dvd players.

There is also an issue with the sampling rate of the audio. 192 is the lowest recommended, 224 is better.

Of course this all depends on the length of the program you want to put on dvd. If it is too large to fit on the disc, then the bitrate must be reduced or rendered as variable until it is below the max file size.

I think all of this should be determined when rendering out of Vegas. I personally don't trust DVDA enough at this point to accept its offers to 'fix' things.

Richard
kameronj wrote on 7/31/2003, 1:55 PM
"The 'quality' of a finished dvd is determined by the bitrate you sample at when rendering out to mpeg 2."

Not totally correct.

You can render a fantastic looking MPEG2 (from Vegas) - and still force DVDA to OPTIMIZE your disc to allow for more than 1 hour of video.

When you go to "Prepare" the DVD (just prior to burning)....go into Optimization. There will be a slider at the top of the screen that will allow you to lower some of the setting, thus making more room on the video.

I've have since run a test on the same 1 hour video.

Burned by the default - it looked great.
Optimized to about 50% - it looked pretty darn good
Optimized to the lowest setting - it looked like shit!!!

To be honest, the lowest setting looked like crap at full screen. But I bet you if I were doing a windowed menu approach to playing that same file (like on an "extra's" page)....it would look sweeeettt!!

That same file by the default - 4.1 GB
Optimized to about 50% - little over 2 GB
Optimized to the lowest setting - 243 MB

Hopefully this will answer your question.