The encoders they use are a lot more expensive than anything you or I could ever afford.
They also colour-correct on a shot by shot basis.
I was at a post house once and watched a file to tape transfer being done and was surprised to see how much attention is paid to doing this.
Last but not least, the source material they use is, for the most part, much higher quality than we can afford.
For example, I can almost guarantee that Paranormal Activity won't look any better than the work of a lot of folks here.

Mike

why are there so many religions / cars / etc.,

they all fulfil someone's need, (greed / ego / comfort / etc.,)

as mike points out, pro's use professional tools that don't come cheaply - if we all had the same (basic) tools, many of us would probably spend a great deal of time trying to refine a better tool - look at excalibur, vasst, peachrock, etc.,

that said, i've seen really interesting programs shot with a shoestring budget on vhs, and walked out of multimillion dollar hollywood productions. it's not necessarily the quality of production that counts - it's the content that really rules.

leslie

"...it's not necessarily the quality of production that counts."

BS. The thread is about how this person can make his DVD's look better. Shooting in the highest quality attainable is the first rule.

There are so many video formats because video contains so many pixels.

If you are like most folks here, you have never shot video that actually copies pixel for pixel. DV does not do that. HDV does not do that. AVCHD doesn't do that.

Try this experiment.

Open Vegas.
Go to Media Generators and drag the default Text to the timeline
Now render to Video for Windows with the template of default (uncompressed).
Look how big the file is.

Now render the same project as AVI with a template of NTSC DV. See how big that file is.

Now go and render it as MainConcept Mpeg-2 with a template of DVD NTSC video stream. See how big that file is.

Now go and render it as Windows Media Video v9 with a template of 256K video.

That is why there is so many video formats. Also that is the old formats. With HD video uncompressed would contain 4 times as many pixels.

And yes, this is a video issue, not a Vegas issue.

didn't really mean to wander off, but the topic is 'why so many...'

and, while i agree trying to make your production look as good as it can, it's not much use if your content is crap.....

There are so many different formats because everybody thinks they can create the next best "mousetrap". Each software developer/manufacturer tries to improve video files and shrink video sizes. But this does not just apply to digital video, there have been at least 20 different tape formats since I have worked in the business. (actually more after I counted them in my head) Each one different, each one having it's pluses and minuses. As long as there are people editing video, there will be people trying to make better video formats.

Dave T2

because of the marketplace

Because the Human Animal is full of itself in every way possible. This is from an deep seated insecurity that is triggered by Vanity and caused by the Infinite Cosmic Anxiety.

FishEyes!
That's frightening!
I'll go with the "mousetrap" explanation.
The Orville and Wilbur motivation.

Interesting. I guess why I was wondering is because I have to put something on DVD (Which isn't working out well. I have a thread in the DVD Architect forum.) I was used to rendering stuff to WMV because I didn't understand the concept really of retaining quality and I was used to WMV so thats what i put on DVDs. I didn't realize it had to be re-encoded to MPEG-2 anyway. I worked on my project and got it to a point where I really like how it looks in the preview but i rendered it to MPEG-2 and the contrast and color were slightly changed, for the worse in my opinion. I don't really know how pixels translate to storage space, but I guess I don't get why just because there are less pixels in order to save space, why the ratio of colors etc. has to change.