[MacDV] Re: Digital Video Quality

[Erica Sadun]

>I took the advice and sent a portion of a soccer game back to DV 
>tape from iMovie. The image was just a good as the original. Thanks 
>for the help there. As Erica pointed out the more the motion, the 
>poorer quality the DVD image. I guess that I was expecting near 
>commercial DVD quality from my own iDVD/Toast projects. Alas, that 
>appears to be the proverbial "pipe dream". If I send the movie right 
>to iDVD from iMovie, will I get the best image possible?

No. It all depends on the bitrate, which sets the quality of the DVD.
Unfortunately, some players (particularly those on computers) cannot
play the best quality DVDs with high bitrates. Commercial DVDs often
use lower bitrates, but they use professional compressionists and
excellent quality material so the noise is kept low and the quality
(even compressed) remains excellent.

>  Does DVD-R media matter?

No.

See www.dvdrhelp.com for player compatibility.

>Do I need to keep a copy of the original on DV Tape for future use 
>(as in further edit sessions, I do not want or have the room to keep 
>my projects on my drive)?

I recommend it.

>Was kinda hoping the the DVD would become the new archive as well, 
>but I guess poor image quality and the fact that I do not know how 
>to record my DVDs back to my computer makes that a no-go. Oh, my 
>poor little head is just so full of questions <smile>.

Recordable DVDs are not archival. You may want to search the
list archives for my earlier rants on the subject.

Expect a DVD-R to play back on only about 80-90% of US DVD players.
Expect 20-30% of your DVD-Rs to fail within a decade or less,
particularly if you bend them in any way.

-- Erica