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DVD looks horrible on LED flatscreen

Thanks for any help on this. Have been making DVD's w/ DVDSP for years... always looking great on computer and various players. Just tested on a Samsung LED 40" and it looks horrible, unwatchable, pixelated, blurry. Unfortunately, this is where the DVD will be screened. Have tried various TV settings and can't figure out the problem. Have a deadline for viewing and I'm in a bit of a panic...any advice appreciated. Thank you!

Posted on Oct 26, 2012 9:57 PM

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24 replies

Oct 27, 2012 6:52 AM in response to Rylie

Rylie wrote:


Have been making DVD's w/ DVDSP for years... always looking great on computer and various players.


Since you have DVD authoring experience, I assume it's not as likely that it's an encoding problem. But I would consider whether the kind of content – background, movement, lighting was unusually challenging compared to past DVDs you've made. Or whether your source file's video format is different than you usually work with. And if your source is HD, you may be able to improve your results by adjusting the settings in frame controls.


Also; as a quick test, try taking a short representative section of of your movie and burning a DVD through Compressor – bypassing DVD Studio Pro.


Is the player one that you've successfully used before? It may be poor scaling from the player. If you can change those settings, test whether that makes a difference. If it doesn't and you can swap out the player for something you have previously good results with, try substituting that.


Good luck.


Russ

Oct 27, 2012 11:32 AM in response to Russ H

Hi Russ.


Thanks so much for your response. I'm shooting 1920x1080 30p on a Canon DSLR. I've been shooting this format and encoding the same way for a long time. This particular project is fairly basic. It's a three camera workout DVD, with outdoor natural light plus HMI and very smooth jib moves.


This is just the first time I've looked at the DVD on this new flatscreen. Previously I had only seen it on my computer, a stand-alone, portable DVD player, or an older television connected to a DVD player. Obviously, the quality was never amazing, as it was downsized to SD, but there was no pixelation or stair-stepping.


So I'm shocked to see how this looks on this TV. I've gone through all the TV settings to see if it's something I can adjust on that end. The DVD player that's connected to it is older, so I thought I could maybe adjust some settings there, but haven't figured it out. When I play commercially made DVD's they look fine, so I figured the devices can't be the problem.


Here's the recipe I've been using, that's worked for me. But maybe it needs some tweaking. I am so appreciative of your help and would welcome any advice.

Thanks again.





Description: Fits up to 90 minutes of video with Dolby Digital audio at 192 Kbps or 60 minutes with AIFF audio on a DVD-5

File Extension: m2v

Estimated size: 1.23 GB

Type: MPEG-2 video elementary stream

Usage:SD DVD

Video Encoder

Format: M2V

Width and Height: Automatic

Selected: 720 x 480

Pixel aspect ratio: NTSC CCIR 601/DV (16:9)

Crop: None

Padding: None

Frame rate: (100% of source)

Selected: 29.97

Frame Controls Automatically selected:

Retiming: (Fast) Nearest Frame

Resize Filter: Linear Filter

Deinterlace Filter: Fast (Line Averaging)

Adaptive Details: On

Antialias: 0

Detail Level: 0

Field Output: Same as Source

Start timecode from source

Aspect ratio: Automatic

Selected 16:9

Field dominance: Automatic:

Selected Top first

Average bit rate: 5.5 (Mbps)

2 Pass VBR enabled

Maximum bit rate: 7.2 (Mbps)

High quality

Better motion estimation

Closed GOP Size: 12, Structure: IBBP

DVD Studio Pro meta-data enabled

Oct 27, 2012 11:45 AM in response to Rylie

There are some HD consumer screens that poorly display SD material. They are optimized for HD and the SD display is a poor step-child. I have a Panasonic that also poorly displays SD material. Stair-stepped edges, etc.


One thing you might try is to connect to the monitor via analog RGB connectors instead of HDMI. My Panasonic shows a slight improvement when using the analog input.


If this is for a major presentation, you may want to consider a different method of display.


MtD

Oct 27, 2012 11:56 AM in response to Rylie

1) What Michael said about the Resize filter is important.


2) I think your bit rate could be bumped up to perhaps 7.0 Mbps average.


3) Again, try having Compressor create the disk directly, using the default settings (also setting the Resize Filter to best).


BTW, are you able to test one of your previous DVD's on this Samsung? (And just to say, on my Sony LED, DVDs made from HD video look good.)


Russ

Oct 27, 2012 12:05 PM in response to Russ H

For some reason, way back when, I did a Larry Jordan webinar and he recommended using "better." Don't remember exactly why...maybe he said it was more stable. But nonetheless that's why I've been doing it that way. I will go ahead and make that change to "best."


I will also "up" the average bit rate to 7.0Mbps.


I have never made a DVD directly from compressor...will look into how to do that and give it a try.


The DVD player is connected by RCA...doesn't have HDMI connection options.


Thanks again!

Oct 27, 2012 2:06 PM in response to Michael Grenadier

Hi Michael.


Agreed. I was suggesting it as a way to get a better sense of whether it was an encode-related issue or A/V equipment-related. The Compressor>Create DVD template method certainly isn't better than DVDSP; rather, it's Spartan-like method that I've found gives pretty decent results on a predictable basis and it's default bit-rate setting is quite high for HD material.


Russ

Oct 27, 2012 2:34 PM in response to Rylie

Made the DVD through Compressor. No change. Tried "better" for resize and upped the bit rate. No change. Tried some other DVD's that I have made this way and they look ok on this TV...not great, but not these semi blurred, stair-steppy images.


I played this DVD on my old set-up and it looks fine. Washed out colors, but clear image. So I can't figure out why this particular one, which of course is deadline material, looks so bad. I will try to reconnect tv through component, but I guess I need to go back to my original sequence and settings to see if something's amiss there.


So frustrating!

Oct 27, 2012 5:36 PM in response to Rylie

If the other DVD's look decent, I'd tend to downplay the idea that equipment and/or connectionss are the problem.


Can you isolate what's different between the problem DVD and the earlier ones? (A different frame rate, or resolution or codec?)


(Meaning, comparing the the videos used as source files.)

Russ


Message was edited by: Russ H

Oct 27, 2012 6:56 PM in response to Russ H

Actually upon closer inspection the previous DVD's do not look very good either. The older one's I looked at were better lit and this one is all shot outdoors so is not as forgiving.


I did go ahead and purchase a component cable, but that didn't make a difference.


The only other thing I can think of is creating a higher quality QT file by exporting my timeline out to ProRes HQ from LT. I'm trying that now. But when I try to use the 7.0 as the average bit rate, it moves the max to 8.3. I'm getting an error from DVSP saying that bitrate is too high.

DVD looks horrible on LED flatscreen

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