Solved Rough Text and Graphics

I use the Match Media option when setting up a new project. HD 1920 x 1080p 60fps is the source video. My projects always end up on both DVD and Blu-ray. I will generate two renders, one for each output format. The render option is Main Concept MPEG-2. (MS16 Suite).

My current finished project looks good on the Blu-ray disk, but the DVD is terribly disappointing concerning the text (titles) and motion graphics. I’m using a lot of script text which appears with jagged edges making it more difficult to read and ruining the effect of the script. And the graphics “wiggle” across the screen. Even panning across a jpg looks like the picture is under water when viewing the DVD. This certainly does not appear very professional. Is there something that can be done differently for DVD compared to Blu-ray?

Thank you.

There is not much you can really do, because this is the reason why DVD sucks, due to it being extreme low resolution compared to HD Blu-ray.

Make sure your DVDs are being rendered at 29.97 fps - don't convert 60 fps to 24 fps/25fps.

When you add text to DVD projects, you can't use fancy text that has a lot of curves.
You also need to be very careful about the colour combinations you use, otherwise it creates awful aliasing artefacts - example green/red should never be used!
The best way to improve text in DVD projects, is to add shadow effects, which create a separation from the background image.

To use Still Images in a DVD project, they need to be extremely high resolution to start with, and if you add any panning shots, they can't be moving too fast.

I'm sorry I can't be more helpful right now.
A lot of things are happening at the moment in Australia and I'm trying to get back into a routine of new content creation.

Regards
Derek

I've long given up producing DVDs from my 1080 videos for the reasons Derek mentions.

But I spent years playing around finding the way to get the best SD from HD. As have others from the multitude of items on the internet about the problem. I found it best not to render from the timeline as SD but to just export as Blu-ray and use this HD Bu-ray export file and convert it to SD. Basically it needs to be slightly softened before being downsized. Surprisingly I found (from a comment on the Vegas forum) that the easiest and best way was to use the Blu-ray file in a DVDA DVD project and let it recompress down to SD. Normally one is recommended not to let DVDA recompress video but this is one situation where it does a reasonable job. You need DVDA7 or an earlier Pro version which has the 'Crop and Adjust' facility with 'Match Output Aspect' to remove the narrow black pillarboxes which would otherwise occur. These arise because HD widescreen and SD widescreen aren't exactly the same shape. SD is slightly wider than true 16:9. I also select 'Reduce interlace flicker' in Media properties / General.

How do professional video production studios handle these problems that I am dealing with? Every purchased DVD looks, well, professional. There is no issue with fancy script fonts. There is no issue with the Ken Burns picture panning effect. There is no issue with lousy resolution.

Am I comparing apples to oranges here? Is it simply a matter of tens upon tens of thousands of dollars of processing equipment that comes from another planet? I wouldn't be surprised.

Yes Rob you've answered your question. They use very expensive software and much resources converting.

A few years ago I came across an article on converting HD to SD and the author used a total of I recall around eight software programmes to get from HD to SD!

Oh, what we can learn when things go wrong.

I just spent the last 2+ hours experimenting with 6 alternate render formats. I took the first 30 seconds of my project and rendered to formats I don't ever use. Then, I took those 6 new files and placed them on a blank MS16 timeline, one at a time, and rendered each of those files to the DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen as I normally would. Then taking those 6 and placing them back to back in DVDA to burn on to a DVD. The best DVD resolution came from Magix AVC/AAC MP4 - Internet HD 1080p 59.94 fps.

Now that I have found the best render format sequence, the next round will be experimenting with the Variable Bit Rate options of Maximum bps and Average bps, to get the highest quality and still fit on a DVD. I guess if I create too large of a rendered file, I can always go to the dual-layer DVDs to get the best quality.

I appreciate this forum. Thanks for the input.

Rob

But be careful with your bitrate as there's a max that DVD players will read. Especially important if you are burning discs to give others who may be using a variety of player models of varying ages.

My understanding is that 10 Mbps is the max for commercial pressed discs, and 8 Mbps for burnt discs. I always did mine at 7 Mbps Constant bitrate. I used constant as I found with using VBR that software would sometimes cut the bitrate in areas it thought viewers wouldn't notice, but I often did. But others swear by VBR so take your pick.