I was comparing a dvd I made to the original & it looked great except for one difference. The burned DVD's colors seemed a little washed out compared to the original. I'm using the Main concept encoder with Vegas Video 3, Reel DVD, Pioneer A03 drive. Any suggestions?
We're taking a close look at this- can't say there's a bug at this time, but there is a noticeable level difference bewteen DV output and DVD output. Does any other setup you've used NOT do this?
It would be nice if compressed files (in your case, MPEG-2) matched the original source material perfectly, but that will never be the case with any transcoding operation. Can we get a closer match between external monitor DV and Mpeg-2 burned to DVD? That's what we're shooting for..."near perfect".
What I'd suggest is burning small test clips to DVD, and checking those on a real TV monitor (with a DVD player). If you feel you need to do some overall color correction to get the look you want, add video output filters to Vegas, and adjust the contrast and saturation as needed. Burn to DVD again and check on the TV again. Once you dial in the look you like, save the filter settings as presets and apply them when rendering MPEG-2 for DVDs. There's really no substitute for checking levels on the destination device. Emulation of any kind will never tell the truth.