Poor Dvd Quality

[Bren Mac]

I am using toast 11.1 on a Retina Mac Book Pro (2.4 Ghz Intel Core 7 - 8 Gig of Ram using OSX 10.8.4) and when I burn using standard DVD settings from HD quality Video (H.264 / AVC 1920 x 1080 60 FPS MPEG-4) or iMovie output the results are far from clear. I have the quality set to best and I am burning it to the apple external drive. The output I used to get form iDVD was far superior both in video quality and smoothness of photo transitions. Is there a better setting that I should be using?

 

The BlueRay output is fantistic, but this is not an option for my typical use. I feel like the encoding process is poor using this program that was reccomended by many people. The only reason for purchasing this program was because my new mac did not come with iDVD

 

Any thoughts?

[tsantee]

If you have iDVD on an older Mac you can move it over to the new one. It still works even though Apple doesn't support it any more.

 

As for using Toast, I've found that the best quality is achieved by first converting the video to 16:9 standard definition and then using that video for Toast to encode to a video DVD. An easy way to do this is using the Video Files setting in Toast's convert window and choosing the DV 16:9 preset for conversion. You can do a sample to see if the quality of the conversion is acceptable. This way Toast's MPEG 2 encoder only has to encode the video and not rescale it as well.

 

Let me know if this gets the quality to an acceptable level. As you are probably aware, view the standard-def video at actual size and not full screen to evaluate its quality.

[Bren Mac]

Digital Guru - thanks for the response, I tried enoding the way you described above and the quality to the level I need. Should I be looking to a 3rd party encoder and if so will they cut down the degradation?

[tsantee]

Digital Guru - thanks for the response, I tried enoding the way you described above and the quality to the level I need. Should I be looking to a 3rd party encoder and if so will they cut down the degradation?

Toast is a consumer-level product. If you want I professional-level mpeg 2 encoder I suggest BitVice from Innobits. They have a demo you can download. I don't know if the degradation you're seeing is the effect of rescaling HD video to SD video or the lack of professional quality in Toast's encoder. If BitVice solves the problem then you know the answer.

[Bren Mac]

I'll give it a try - thanks for the suggestions

[edbeta]

I use Apple Compressor 4 with great results for DVD Creation , Pictures and Sound are excellent but Menu Creation Limited to Chapters Markers on a Very Basic Template.

Apple Compressor can Burn DVD and Blu-Ray discs but Toast 11 provide better burn speed control and more friendly with the many burners models than Apple Compressor.

[mlp52]

I too have a MacBook Pro with Retina display. I've wasted several days and about 20 dvd's trying to get a good quality picture on my burned dvd. I've tried converting it to 16:9 DV and that didn't make a difference either. They're all extremely degraded in quality. I'm trying to make a standard (?) dvd to be played on a regular dvd player.

[d_deweywright]

Keep in mind that a standard DVD produces output that is 720x480 (standard def). And if you are scaling that up to fill a Hi-Def TV, without any upscaling to smooth edges, a standard def image does look pretty rough.

[mlp52]

Keep in mind that a standard DVD produces output that is 720x480 (standard def). And if you are scaling that up to fill a Hi-Def TV, without any upscaling to smooth edges, a standard def image does look pretty rough.

 

How does one "upscale to smooth the edges"?

[d_deweywright]

One needs something like an upscaling DVD or BluRay player. There are probably HD TVs that do it also.