Best DVD settings

[DWaldie]

When creating a DVD what are the best settings to get the highest quality results?

[Ken Berry]

Presuming your original video is good quality, then in order to maintain that quality in a DVD, your need to use a high bitrate -- 8000 kbps should do it. But then another question arises: how long is your project? If you use the high quality 8000 bitrate setting, you will only be able to burn about 1 hour of mpeg-2 to a single layer DVD, or a few minutes more if your use Dolby Audio.

If your project is closer to 90 minutes, then you need to reduce the bitrate (and thus quality) to around 6000 kbps -- though the quality should still be pretty good.

If you are determined to squeeze a 2 hour project onto DVD, then the bitrate will need to drop to around 4000 kbps. And the quality at that rate will be no better than VHS tape.

[DWaldie]

I'd be happy doing disk 1 and disk 2 if I had two hours of recording. To be clear; to set the bit rate I go to settings>project properties>edit>compression and make the changes there? Or do I need to fiddle with the settings on the "share" section?

[Ken Berry]

If you use the default DVD settings, then I think you will find it is automatically set to 8000 kbps. Then, when you do your editing you simply choose Share > Same as Project Settings to produce a DVD-compatible mpeg-2 using those default settings. Otherwise, you change the project properties as you suggest, or else make a new template with the properties you are after. That way the new template will appear at the bottom of the Share dropdown menu so you can use it for future projects as well.

[jparnold]

You can also squeeze more onto a single layer DVD if rendering using 2 pass variable max 8000kbps (rather than constant 8000)- I would imagine that the resulting video quality will be the same (as constant 8000). You would need to create a new 'movie template' via 'Make movie templates manager' and then select that template when creating the video by clicking on change MPEG settings.

I use 2 pass variable (sometimes together with Dolby sound instead of LPCM) when my final video is say greater than 70 minutes to fit it onto a standard 4.7 DVD.

[lilu_hotty]

if u create DVD for sale -dont use more then 8000kbps as some of the dvd players will not be able to read it! it includes the sound, so all together max 8000kbps - if its going to be for sale!

2 pass maybe good but for sure takes much more time...