Best Video Export Format for DVD?

[smartabletonuser]

I have an HD video that I've edited in Live. The video is beautiful in Live but every export format I try is significantly lossy. I don't see the 'current settings' option for QuickTime when I choose that option.

Any video codec experts out there who can recommend some decent settings for building a DVD?

thanks!

[john doe by choice]

I've never tried to do any video editing in Live, I've always heard the video export was inconsistent from person to person, and I use Final Cut Pro, myself.

I will say that you may want to email ableton to see if owning quicktime pro would allow you to export h.264 files from Live - if so, that's what I would recommend, as it allows for beautiful footage that is compressed but doesn't look it.

[Ajbbklyn]

Live relies on the video codecs that reside on your computer. If the codecs aren't there, the export option from Live won't be there either. My workflow is such that I only export audio from Live:

1) I first work on editing the video using my Avid Liquid system and then export a DV-AVI file.
2) I bring the AVI file into Quicktime Pro and create a .mov "work print" file for use in Live (minimum quality settings are OK)
3) Import the QT file to Live and work on the audio - music and/or additional efx.
4) Export audio as 48kHZ/16 bit WAV or AIFF (depends on whether PC or Mac) and then bring it back into Liquid. (Mac users would be using Final Cut)
5) Mix the music/efx from the WAV file with whatever dialogue or other tracks in Liquid.
6) Export as either AVI or MPEG-2 for burning to DVD

Of course this workflow does not contemplate warping video in Live. That would necessitate exporting video from Live. Some flavor of AVI - I'm not sure of the exact HD codec. Or, you can export as an MPEG-2, which is for standard definition DVD.

[smartabletonuser]

Thanks for the responses. I have QT Pro and all of its available codecs.

h264 is looking really good. On my (amateur) level, I cannot see any serious quality compromises with the h.264 compression.

The thing is that I still need to put it in iDVD and it will make a MPEG 2 out of it, correct? So is there a format I can export from Live with that is better than h.264 for this purpose?

What is the difference between .avi and h264? Based on what I am doing, would one be preferable over the other?

[3dot...]

I have an HD video that I've edited in Live. The video is beautiful in Live but every export format I try is significantly lossy. I don't see the 'current settings' option for QuickTime when I choose that option.

Any video codec experts out there who can recommend some decent settings for building a DVD?

thanks!

..if you're making a DVD .. it's converted to mpeg-2 and the audio is seperated

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_Video

..if you have a good video editor.. (vegas/finalcut/avid)..
you should export at the desired resolution according to the desired frame-rate...

the last thing you want after rendering is a lengthy and un-controllable conversion to DVD..

cheers from TLV !

[gpvillamil]

The video will be encoded to MPEG2 for recording on the DVD. So you want to minimize loss of quality prior to that.

A good option is to use one of the lossless codecs for export, and then let iDVD handle the conversion to MPEG2.

Animation and PhotoJPEG codecs are both essentially lossless at 100% quality, give those a try.

If you have Final Cut installed, then you probably have the ProRes 422 codec installed, which is even better, really lovely.

I have an HD video that I've edited in Live. The video is beautiful in Live but every export format I try is significantly lossy. I don't see the 'current settings' option for QuickTime when I choose that option.

Any video codec experts out there who can recommend some decent settings for building a DVD?

thanks!

[john doe by choice]

I have to say that I would recommend against Animation codec or PhotoJPEG - yes, they add no compression, which is fine in some circumstances, but they also make for HUGE files (I'm not toally sure about PhotoJPEG, but Animation codec makes just massive files, and insanely huge rendering times). The nice thing about H.264 is that it compresses but isn't lossy (sorta like FLAC or AAC for audio), and you can tell it to de-interlace on the way out, which makes the footage nice for any purpose. Once you burn it to a DVD, the playback is smooth, even if it's been converted to MPEG-2. I will say that IDVD is notorious for giving "bad burns" on DVD's (I've seen lots of nice footage go to shit when burned in IDVD) - Toast would be a better program, or you could even use Disk Utility if you aren't worried about menus or chapters.

[JuanSOLO]

If I were you I'd go to a video Forum to ask about these kinds of things. Even though you are using Ableton, you'll get better more informed answers on sites dedicated to your question.

Some of the above answers are good information and others are not.

Your questions are more about codecs, Quicktime, DVD stuff.

Try:
http://www.creativecow.net/
http://www.videocopilot.net/

or Just search best quicktime Codec for making DVD. Something like that.
Personally for DVD I would want my export lossless, HUGH file SIZE.
For projecting Video using Ableton. PHOTOjpeg is by far the best option, small size high quality, easy for Ableton to handle the playback


Sony Vegas has a 30trial version with a shit ton of codecs. It's definately worth investigating.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro

Killer Codec and preset Tutorial for posting HD to YouTube or Vimeo using Vegas.
http://torley.com/optimized-sony-vegas- ... youtube-hd