Exporting RED One Footage to SD DVD

Moon Drop Studios wrote on 8/6/2009, 6:23 AM
I just finished editing a music video I directed which was shot on the RED. Well editing raw 4k was frustrating but the video turned out GREAT!!!

I have been having a problem finding the correct settings to export to DVD. All of the DVD's I make look awful. I am not sure if it is the way I am rendering the project or my settings with the DVD.

I have been setting the time line to 4k and rendering as an uncompressed .avi file (.avi defaults)

The .avi file is 6Gb and when it is compressed in DVD Architect to MPEG-2, the file size goes to 125 MB. That looks like MAJOR compression.

So I read the forums and saw that I should render as an MPEG-2 and I did. I tried to change the settings to get it to its best look and then the file size was 98 MB.

Is there any way I can get this footage to look a lot better? Any help would be great. At the moment AI have to leave so i am now short on details. Please let me know if more info on my end is needed. Thanks

-Michael Vallier-
mvallier@anytekproductions.com
www.anytekproductions.com

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 8/6/2009, 6:35 AM
Did you try the standard NTSC DVD Architect widescreen video stream template for video and then render the audio separate as Digital Dolbly AC3? This is what I use for my HD footage and it looks great on DVD. I don't tweak anything... just use the standard template.

~jr
farss wrote on 8/6/2009, 6:51 AM
As this is a music video I'm assuming it isn't more than a few minutes long. Surely 8Mbps CBR for vision and 48Khz 16bit PCM audio is the way to go for best quality?

Also as it hasn't been mentioned, render at Best.

One other issue that could cause grief. The RED has a lot of resolution and you can get too much resolution into your interlaced SD leading to line twitter. Adding a tiny amount (0.001 to 0.003) of GB vertical only can wrangle this problem.

Bob.
john-beale wrote on 8/6/2009, 8:00 AM
There are many different ways video can look awful, caused by different things which have different remedial actions. Can you be more specific?

For example:
fuzzy (poor downconversion, or too high expectations of SD display),
jittery (too sharp/high detail esp. on interlaced TV),
blocky on fast motion (low bitrate MPEG2),
bright detail washed out (16-235 levels clipping problem),
low contrast, milky blacks (gamma or dark levels problem) etc.
Patryk Rebisz wrote on 8/6/2009, 1:09 PM
What farss said, plus make sure you use the DVD 24 NTSC template (rather than the standard DVD NTSC) -- assuming you shot at 24fps (or to be more exact 23.976).