I have been trying to make a DVD based on computer audio and video files. The overall quality is not great, but when the source and edited files are viewed on my iMac (this one's 21.5 inch) the results are just about satisfactory - considering ....
I made a DVD and viewed it on my large TV using two different players - one a Sony Blu Ray, the other an Oppo. The perceived quality goes down quite a lot - which is probably not a fault of the equipment. Trying to show a poor quality DVD on a large TV just doesn't work too well. What might work well enough on a smaller screen, or seem good on a device such as an iPad can look dreadful when blown up to a larger size.
Another thing I noticed though was the audio. The audio in the source is PCM, but somehow when the DVD was made it was converted to Dobly AC3. I'm not sure why as I couldn't find any settings in my software to do this, or force this, or indeed to suppress such conversion. I looked up the details of DVD and audio, and found this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video which shows that there are more audio formats possible than I imagined.
I used the trial of Final Cut Pro X to make the edited version of the source files, and Toast DVD to burn the DVD, as FCPX hit a problem which seems to be well enough known when burning (or trying to burn) DVDs. That problem manifests itself as a "stuck at 66%" message, and the burning simply stalls. Using an external burner program gets the DVD, but somewhere in the process the audio was converted to Dolby.
Since the audio tracks on some of the material are perhaps the best bits of the whole enterprise, it is a slight concern that the conversion to Dolby formats is taking place. It doesn't seem to be mandatory for DVDs.
I made a DVD and viewed it on my large TV using two different players - one a Sony Blu Ray, the other an Oppo. The perceived quality goes down quite a lot - which is probably not a fault of the equipment. Trying to show a poor quality DVD on a large TV just doesn't work too well. What might work well enough on a smaller screen, or seem good on a device such as an iPad can look dreadful when blown up to a larger size.
Another thing I noticed though was the audio. The audio in the source is PCM, but somehow when the DVD was made it was converted to Dobly AC3. I'm not sure why as I couldn't find any settings in my software to do this, or force this, or indeed to suppress such conversion. I looked up the details of DVD and audio, and found this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video which shows that there are more audio formats possible than I imagined.
The audio data on a DVD movie can be PCM, DTS, MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2), or Dolby Digital (AC-3) format.
Since the audio tracks on some of the material are perhaps the best bits of the whole enterprise, it is a slight concern that the conversion to Dolby formats is taking place. It doesn't seem to be mandatory for DVDs.
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