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Why do the DVD’s you hire from the video store look so good?

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scott william

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Why do the DVD’s you hire from the video store look so good? Is it the hardware the studios use to compress their films?

Has anyone created a DVD of Red one footage that is as good as say 'knowing' will look when it’s released on DVD? Or is printing to film the only way of retaining full quality in a small enough file to fit on DVD?
 
They look good because of superior encoding carefully done with the best professional encoding software/hardware -- with multiple passes and special attention given to individual scenes with motion and very careful bit budgeting so the extra bits go in the right places. Sometimes there is even within frame encoding tweks.

Also almost bigger budget films are replicated on DVD 9's for the most part -- where as "home" or small studio burns are for the most part on DVD 5's with about half the total bit budget.

Also the higher quality you start with, the higher you'll end up with as a general rule.

Of course I don't know what you're comparison is -- I presume DVDs you've made yourself. And of course recordings made on stand-alone DVD recorders are pretty compromised as they have to do it on the fly.
 
That is correct. Proprietary hardware encoders, a lot of talent, and excellent source material that has been properly mastered.

The answer to your question is yes! Just proves that the key is in the mastering and encoding of the footage. That's why Knowing will look better than footage done in Compressor.
 
just out of curiousity, if i wanted one of these dvd's done for me how much would it cost and who would i see?
 
They also look good because they were color timed by professionals in million-dollar suites. There is a reason that good Colorists make 6 figure salaries.

Unfortunately an all-digital workflow makes people think they can do it themselves when they should really go to the pros.
 
Brent J. Craig said:
They also look good because they were color timed by professionals in million-dollar suites. There is a reason that good Colorists make 6 figure salaries.

Unfortunately an all-digital workflow makes people think they can do it themselves when they should really go to the pros.
Click to expand...

I think EXACTLY the same.

-Frank
 
The blank DVD's you can buy to use are half the size of the blank
DVD's they use.
 
J Davis said:
The blank DVD's you can buy to use are half the size of the blank
DVD's they use.
Click to expand...

Yes, but I really think that unless you are trying to cram lots of footage, the quality of the encode has nothing to do with the size of the disc.

Or can one actually encode a better looking music video or TVC on a DL disc than on a single one?

-Frank
 
Brent J. Craig said:
They also look good because they were color timed by professionals in million-dollar suites. There is a reason that good Colorists make 6 figure salaries.

Unfortunately an all-digital workflow makes people think they can do it themselves when they should really go to the pros.
Click to expand...


This is 95% of the difference, the other 5% is a hardware decoder.
 
J Davis said:
The blank DVD's you can buy to use are half the size of the blank
DVD's they use.
Click to expand...

Er... No. You can buy blank DVD-9's (DVD|DL).

It all comes down to compression software and other tools. It doesn't matter how amazing your original looks, it's going to look like crap when you run it through Compressor or Adobe M.E. compared to what a good digital processing house can do.

When you need a pro product, you need to use pro people and tools. The answers are all right here in this thread and it's a combination of most everything that has been mentioned thus far. Good colorists. Good source material. Good encoding and authoring. It's entirely possible to author studio DVDs with DVD Studio Pro and Encore -- many in fact do get authored that way. But no major studio is going to use the companion compression engines. They typically use Sony's MPEG tools or Scenarist with all the bells and whistle add-ons, some custom software out there, etc..
 
Exactly as Jeff said. And yes, you can "self-author" for DVD 9s with various lowbudget tools like Compressor or Adobe ME -- and on something feature length say, that will allow you a higher base bit rate if you go to a DVD 9 -- which will help a little -- but in no way will that extra bit rate make up for or rival the result in a professionally massaged, color-corrected, encoded product being replicated (not burned) onto a DVD 9.
 
Just so you have an idea of how complex and specialized that work is, there is even a title for people who do that kind of work, I believe they are called "Compressionist".

Is this right?

-Frank
 
Can anyone recommend a good place to have this done? I have been working on a animated feature for the past 4 years (hoping it will be done next year) and would like the DVD or Blu-Ray professional encoded- but I am very uncertain of a good place that won't cost a fortune...
 
Lots of interesting info on this thread.

SD DVD
1. WHV is using a Toshiba encoder. They may have a Cinemacraft as well.
2. Technicolor was using a Minerva for may years. Many older Disney and Pixar titles were done using this crappy HW encoder. These days they are using the Cinemacraft MPEG2 encoder
3. Many Fox, Paramount and Universal titles are done by Deluxe. They have the old, but excellent, Panasonic encoder. Its a PC with a HW card in it. They also have the Cinemacraft.

Blu-ray
1. PHL has their own AVC encoder. Its SW running on a parallel enviroment
2. Technicolor has the Thomson Tiger AVC encoder. SW run in parallel
3. Deluxe has Cinemacraft and Sony AVC encoders and the Microsoft VC-1 encoder. The latest Sony and Cinemacraft are on a single multicore box.
4. GDMX (WHV) has the Microsoft VC-1 encoder. SW run in parallel.
5. Some people also have Sonic Cinevision. This uses the same MainConcept SDK that Adobe uses.
6. Giant Interactive has the Microsoft VC-1 encoder and the Cinemacraft AVC encoder.
7. One K has the Microsoft VC-1 encoder. They have the Sonic AVC encoder.
8. Sony (CTHV) has the Sony and Cinemacraft AVC encoders.

Blank DVD-Rs (RW, +/-, etc...) and replicated DVDs are available in SL and DL. Same for BD.

All of these encoders support re-encoding on a scene-by-scene basis.

A professional Blu-ray disc that uses BD-J often starts around 50k to author and encode. Many of your A titles are in the hundreds of thousands.

A great facility, which authored my disc, is Giant Interactive. Jay, who used to work for One K, is a great guy. He has been authoring DVD since 1997. His team authored and encoded all of the New Line titles on Blu-ray before WHV integrated New Line.
 
best encoders

best encoders

most mpeg2 encoders-such as the standard apple mpeg2 encoder in compressor use a 4.2.0 colorspace which loses some of the info.
try encoder that give you a 4.2.2 colorspace. As Episode from Telestream or also check out :
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/cinema_craft_encoder.html
 
This inexpensive solution was mentioned on another thread as providing great results:

http://www.omni-cinemacraft.com/products_cinemacraft_encodermp.shtml

Cinema Craft Encoder MP for Final Cut Pro/Compressor Mac - $795

Uses same High quality encoding engine from CCXtream – Hollywood titles
*This encoder engine inside CCE-MP was used, until now, only for the Cinema Craft Xtream "on-line" high end system that set the bench mark quality Standard for Hollywood DVD titles
This DVD standard for Hollywood quality MPEG-2 is now available for the Mac
CCE-MP allows Final Cut Studio 2 users to encode their content to world class high-quality MPEG-2 files for DVD authoring without changing their workflow
Multi-Pass Encoding (up to 99)
VMPE - Virtual Multi-Pass Encoding * Exclusive Cinema Craft feature
Performs multiple "on memory" passes (between 2 and 8) during each pass
AAGS - Advanced Adaptive GOP Structure – Optimizes for the best quantize matrix and GOP Structure of each GOP
AAQM – Advanced Adaptive Quantize Matrix
Fast
Easy to use

-michael zaletel
(shooter)
 
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