Best Setting for 2 Hours DV on DVD

Hi all! Have an issue that's driving me nuts in Compressor 4.1.1.

I've been trying to get some nasty-looking aliasing I'm seeing off these DVDs I'm burning. Discs are 2 hours long. Length can't be changed, but the DVD exports I'm making shouldn't look as bad as they do. Exporting a Master File from Final Cut X, the footage looks perfectly good. It's something in my DVD settings I need to adjust, I imagine for the length, and I haven't found the trick yet. My Compressor DVD export settings are currently- Frame Size- Automatic, Pixel Aspect Ratio-Default, Frame Rate-Automatic, Field Order-Same as Source, Anamorphic-Auto 4:3, Encoding mode-2 pass VBR (Best), GOP Structure-IBBP, Automatically Select Bit Rate Checked, Quality: Resize filter-Best (Statistical Prediction), Retiming Quality-Best (Motion Compensated).

My current attempt to resolve my issue- I've checked Adaptive Details, and I've turned Anti-aliasing level up to 15, and Details level up to 10...currently processing... My video is just a low-motion talking head-shot, super long deposition I shot. I'm not quite confident regarding the Adapative Details checkbox, but think I'm getting on the right track with the Anti-aliasing level change. Total guess on the Details Level change.

Does anyone have a "Best Settings" for this 2 hour length of SD footage on a DVD? I'm shocked it looked as crappy as it does, and I'm hoping to not spend the rest of the weekend with trial and error attempts.

After a lot of trial and error, I decided to give Toast Titanium a go with a Master File export from FCX, and it did the job I'd been struggling with for too long. Compressor 4.1.1 has failed me miserably, and I have a whole bunch of new coasters w/my garbagey-looking video compression tests. I have been beaten. Toast as the hero is absolutely shocking to me since I haven't touched Toast in a very, very long time, but I think I'm gonna start putting it through some steps after this success. One thing I hate are the menus that are built in. There isn't anything very professional-looking. I know there's a way to make your own menu from a DYI I found online, but that seemed to be using an Adobe app, and I'm avoiding buying into the monthly/yearly subscription-based software they're pushing over there. If anyone has any Toast Titanium menus that are pre-made, or a DYI that is basic, easy and boring w/o bubbly-looking garbage, please let me know! I'd still love to know why 2 hours on a single layer disc would look so bad from Compressor. Even using a DL disc, I'd get a bunch a lil pop-up sparkly-looking artifacts appearing and then disappearing with discs from Compressor. I think the simplest solution for the future would be to try to fit less on a DVD, but when I can't help it, I'd love to figure out what's going on here. Should the quality fall-off between a disc running 1:40 to another that's 1:55 be so much that I can't stand looking at these lil nasties? What is Toast Titanium doing that Compressor isn't?

Bummer that your Compressor experience was so bad. Assuming that you were evaluating both the Compressor and Toast DVDs on a TV (and not your computer) I'm surprised Toast would be superior.

Two hours is pushing it for quality, but you should still be able to create a decent-looking DVD without the artifacts you describe. As a practical matter, assume that you can fit 4.2 to 4.3 GB on a single layer disk. Therefore, your data rate needs to be set a little under 5 Mb per second (note, that's bits – not bytes). (By way of comparison, Compressor's default rate is about 9 Mbps for shorter videos.) You can adjust this with the sliders if you want. You can also test whether you can better results with a CBR encode.

It wasn't clear to me whether your source file was high definition or SD. If it is HD, you are down-scaling so I would leave anti alias off. Also try Adaptive Details on and off to see which gives better results. Setting the Resize Filter to Best would also have been my suggestion – again assuming that you started out with HD material.

Russ

My source file was SD. I think part of the problem may be FCPX dealing with reds on top of the compression for the longer disc. It was a bright red sweater. Had a similar shoot the other day and kept the length down- result straight out out Final Cut X was a little blocky around the shoulder area- which is the same area it really struggled with the longer DVDs, but instead had little sparkly areas appear, disappear, appear elsewhere around the shoulders or top of the shoulders. Master files exported from FCX don't have this issue, nor does the original footage. I don't know what Toast Titanium 10 uses for their DVD creation, but it was certainly better & easier than any of the adjustments I made screwing around in Compressor or using FCX's DVD export.