[bonniescotland]

Hi,
Not sure if in right section, but here goes.
I have a quicktime movie that I think I used H.264 to compress to end up with a .mov file. It was HD (PAL though I'm not sure if PAL is still applicable for HD).

It looks good, text clear etc, so I then want to put it onto DVD, I take it into Toast and burn a copy but the DVD looks so so, text a bit blurry. It's passable to watch it just isn't the same good quality that my original mov file was.

In toast I tried burning as a DVD, then I also tried HD DVD both look the same so so quality.

Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Just in case this is relevant, the original footage was shot on HD camera 1920 x 1080, I edited it in FCP 7 then used H.264 to convert to quicktime mov, the size I set at 1920 x 1080.

I didn't use Compressor, only because I am a bit clueless how Compressor works. I actually used to have a bit of an understanding of how Compressor worked in my previous version but this one I am a bit confused by it, so I thought I would just bypass it, but perhaps I should try and use Compressor instead?

But one reason I wanted to use toast was because I have 2 short movies (only about 15 mins in total) that I wanted on the one DVD, so with toast I can have a basic menu, not sure if I can do that with Compressor.

This particular job isn't a big deal if the video quality isn't perfect, but I would like to know for future jobs I do.

[cgc]

You took HD video and put it on a DVD which is non-HD…quality degradation had to happen since NTSC/PAL doesn't have the resolution of HD.

[bonniescotland]

Thanks for the reply, I realise that DVD isn’t going to look as good as HD, but it’s just that the quality seems lower than that, because for instance the text is clear on my computer, but once I burn it to DVD using Toast it is a bit blurry, I had assumed (perhaps wrongly) that text should be equally clear regardless of whether it was HD or SD?

So that is why I thought it was a Toast problem, so I guess for me to check whether it is a toast problem or not is perhaps to use different DVD burning software, but Toast is the only one I know of that I can have a simple menu, I don’t want anything fancy I just want to be able to have 2 movies on the one DVD, I’m not sure how to do that with any other software.

Also the HD version I am viewing is is a .mov file that I’m watching on my macbook pro, I had actually thought that I wouldn’t get true HD viewing quality anyway on the computer either compared to watching it on a HD TV, but I’m a bit confused as to whether computers can have HD quality.

[cgc]

It's not a Toast problem. It's one of you taking video that's HD (e.g. 1920x1080) and not only lowering the resolution to DVD (e.g. 480P) but most likely compressing it as well. Both will lower quality.