Copy Video Clip To A Dvd Means Lowering The Quality?

[Mamamia]

We had a family event shot by a professional videographer. I got the DVD and a Flash drive from him. There is a significant difference in the quality, the Flash drive has the same clips at a much higher resolution (I guess one can call it HD), but some of the files there are over 8 GB each, some just over 4. The DVD is OK, but far lower in resolution.

 

I used Toast 11 with the HD plug-in, trying to copy one file per disk, but neither the 8 GB nor the 4 GB files can play on neither my iMac (I need to launch Quick Player, and am getting audio, but garbled, pixelated video) nor on my DVD player (getting an "error" message).

 

Isn't there a way to have DVD copies made from the Flash drive? Or is this plug-in made only for Blue-Ray players?

 

Thanks.

[d_deweywright]

...So regular DVD players you connect to your HDTV do not really play HD, only Blue-Ray does?

That's true. Some DVD players will "upsample" to an HDTV but that doesn't provide any more real resolution to the image, it just feeds a signal to the HDTV in a HD format that doesn't have to be upsampled by the television. Remember, the DVD format definition came about before the advent of HD, so it's really just a digital version of what was available on analog devices like VHS.

[Mamamia]

Thanks for all your help, guys. Now, at least I know what's the story about Blur-Ray...

[prl]

... Now, at least I know what's the story about Blur-Ray...

Typo made me smile

[d_deweywright]

Typo made me smile

Yep... good catch.

[tsantee]

A video DVD is standard definition and the video on the flash drive is high definition. You can use the Blu-ray plugin to create a high definition DVD which is a Blu-ray video burned to regular DVD media. In order to play a Blu-ray video burned to DVD media you can use Roxio Video Player on your Mac (which is accessed via the Extras menu in Toast). To play a Blu-ray video burned to DVD media on your TV you need to use a Blu-ray video disc player.

 

You also can see if Toast can give you a better-looking standard-def video DVD. Choose DVD video as the format in the Toast Video window and add the HD video from the flash drive. Choose Best quality and click the burn button to see if Toast's encoding looks better than the one you received.

[Mamamia]

Thanks for the reply. So this plug-in is for Blue-Ray players only... Hmmm... Yes, I did select "Best" from the quality options. The result is just OK, but watching it from the Flash drive one can clearly notice the difference....

[DaveTX]

I shot 1080p video with my DSLR. The Blu-ray videos (Blu-ray disks and HD DVD) I burned using Toast 11 look great. The DVD videos I burned from the same 1080p source look pretty crummy. The resampling process does not appear to work well. Given that the "best" setting led to crummy DVD video I shudder to think what the DVDs would look like if I selected one of the lesser settings.

[tsantee]

I'll just note that the standard DVD doesn't look bad when viewed at actual size. However, people generally view this enlarged to full screen either on their computers or HDTV's which is like zooming a photo to about three times its actual size. In addition there is the interlacing. So it is what it is and that isn't entirely Toast's fault.

[Mamamia]

Yes, but I still don't know why the plug-in would work only for Blue-Ray players, and is not compatible with regular DVD players.... The difference in quality is noticeable enough to make me disappointed. I was able to watch the video on Toast's Roxio Video Player (it pauses every few seconds, but I guess that's between the Mac and the program), and the quality difference is quite noticeable, compared to not using the HD plug-in, just copy at the "best" setting.... I would expect an HD plug-in that would be compatible with regular DVD players, which are still the majority used, I think.

[d_deweywright]

I think the problem is that you're thinking DVD is HD quality, it's not. DVD quality Standard Def, which is 720x480 pixels only. That's the DVD standard and no HD plug-in will or can change that. If you take a 1080 HD input video, and make a DVD, it will be resampled down to 720x480. HD and DVD do not go together unless you're making a special AVCHD disc, which requires a Blu-Ray player to play back.

 

So, in answer to your topic question, if you are starting with HD video, and creating a video DVD to be played back on a DVD player, then yes, it means you will be lowering the quality.

 

Hopefully that helps.

[Mamamia]

...So regular DVD players you connect to your HDTV do not really play HD, only Blue-Ray does?

[bimicher]

...So regular DVD players you connect to your HDTV do not really play HD, only Blue-Ray does?

 

Only BlueRay players can play HD video