DVD not good enough

Rick K wrote on 5/7/2005, 10:00 AM

I've had v4 or V5 for a couple of years. I video weddings, high school performances, corporate training on my 3 day weekends. Went to Spots training in Seattle which didn't add to my knowledge much so I feel somewhat confident. My machine's up to speed..mostly. But the more I look at my DVDs the less satisfied I am. Going back in the searches found some good info, set all parameters to high, set DVD burning to slowest, hey...no difference do I find. So I'm guessing somethings not right here. Maybe the capture? The results aren't horrible just not as good as I expect. Just push me a little. I'm willing to explore.

Back to post

Comments

B.Verlik wrote on 5/7/2005, 11:17 PM

jetdv, above, knows what he's talking about. I'd use his recommendations. Sorry about the "dodging" remark, but I was going nuts waiting for you to say what you used for your own settings.
I'm not nearly the professional that some are here, but I've already made DVDs that look as good as any I've seen. They look just the same as my original DV footage, which is only a Dig 8 cam, but still, it looks great.(I'm sure, under a microscope you can see the differences. I'm just talking about seeing it on TV.)
When you eventually do make your own Mpg2 custom settings, you can give them a 'title' and save them for future use, so you don't have to set them up each time. (the Icon to the right of the setting title.)

Randy Brown wrote on 5/8/2005, 6:43 AM

"Can we go back to that for a moment. Can't find backfocus in the manual. Is this an issue I missed? When you focus the XL1s and then zoom in, no matter how slow you zoom, it drifts out of focus. This has nothing to do with this posting. Just interested if there's a fix for this short of buying the manual lens."
The bad news is; you'll need to send it in to Canon to be recalibrated.
The good news is; if you bought it new, for $99 you can have this done as well as having the heads adjusted, cleaned and other necessary maintenance if you register it and join the XL1 club (free)

Bob said: I'm sure there's a forum somewhere just for XL1 owners, that'd be a good place to look for help too.
Here's the best one I've found. If someone knows of another please post a link.
Randy

johnmeyer wrote on 5/8/2005, 8:39 AM

a 31 instead of a 15.

Bingo!

As BB, jetdv and others have already said, the "Default" template uses impossibly stupid settings. I think Sony did it in order to get better reviews from the product from the bevy of stupid reviewers out there who do an MPEG-2 encode on the various competing products and then measure the encoding time with a stopwatch. With the quality setting set to 15, the encode time is MUCH faster, but the quality stinks. (My kids would use a stronger word).

Vegas 6 still insists on presenting you with the Default template as the initial choice after installation. The small bit of good news is that Sony fixed a minor bug in Vegas 5 which always insisted on going back to the Default template after you quit Vegas and then re-started. Thus, if you were a little tired and not paying attention, you would get this lousy quality the next time you encoded. Vegas 6 now remembers your MPEG-2 template selection across sessions.

It's these little things that make a big difference.

Rick K wrote on 5/8/2005, 11:29 AM

Many thanks guys for the good advice. I will do some experimenting myself today. Lots of things to consider including sending the XL1s to Canon.

Thanks again,
Rick

slacy wrote on 5/8/2005, 1:14 PM

I'll throw this in for the record. A few years back, I had crappy DVD playback that turned out to be a simple case of switching jacks on the back of my TV.

My original post.

--------
Man, you guys won't believe this (or maybe you will):

I swapped the inputs on the back of my TV, with my VX2000 going into Video 2 and the DVD player into Video 1. Now the pictures are roughly identical! The only visible difference in those video inputs is that Video 1 has an S-Video connection (in addition to red-yellow-white RCA connectors), but I wasn't using an S-Video cable in either case. Can someone explain that?
-----------

So, long story short, how you hook things up can make a difference. I'm not saying this is likely to be the solution for your problem, but it's worth ruling out.

Catwell wrote on 5/8/2005, 7:46 PM

Rick, You say you attended the VASST training in Seattle. If you are in the area please check this out.

http://seattle.vegasusergroups.org/

It is a fairly new organization, but the meetings are very helpful and you can find people who would be glad to help you. Bring some of your material to a meeting.

Or you can email me catwell AT blargDOTnet. I live in Seattle and would be willing to work with you. I am very pleased with the DVDs I get from my GL2 and Vegas.