[bubbleup]

I am making a simple DVD, using iDVD 6. I am using the stock themes, just plugging in slideshows exported/shared from iPhoto, and basic menus.

When I burn the DVD, and playback on iMac the quality is somewhat poor, the pictures are wavy, and the text on the menus are not as sharp as it appears during project creation. The slideshows look fine in QuickTime, so, it seems my problem is during the burn or encoding process. I have the video encoding pref. set to best quality.

Any ideas or suggestions ?

[frizz]

Try it on a TV. Your computer screen is much higher resolution then a DVD that may be why is doesnt look as good.

[AWR]

Bump.

Searching before posting a new thread, I found this one which kind of relates to my question.

I have been exporting iPhoto slideshows to iDVD and, as one would suspect, burning DVDs. In the Preferences menu I have chosen 'best quality' over 'performance' (not that that has made a perceptible difference).

I wish I was more satified with the result; rather, I wish the result was better. Crystal clear 3MB photos are reasonably grainy whether playing on my iMac or TV.

What's going on here? Where is the quality going? Could I improve the results of such a task by doing something differently?

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Merci.

[solinari6]

Originally Posted by AWR I wish I was more satified with the result; rather, I wish the result was better. Crystal clear 3MB photos are reasonably grainy whether playing on my iMac or TV.

What resolution are your pictures before you add them into iDVD? I would think that in order to playback on a normal TV, the pictures would need to be resized to standard television resolution (which is pretty small). That might be why the pics look crappy.

[AWR]

Originally Posted by solinari6 What resolution are your pictures before you add them into iDVD? I would think that in order to playback on a normal TV, the pictures would need to be resized to standard television resolution (which is pretty small). That might be why the pics look crappy.

2848 x 2136 (is that what you mean by resolution).

But I wonder if that's it because at that size they are very nice on the 20" iMac display.

Thanks for the idea.

[omem]

I'm having the same problem. I set "best quality" in the preferences but still get worse quality than when creating the project. Much worse on the TV than on my iMac. I have a 42'' widescreen plasma and the quality of the DVD is awful. Very pixelated on the menus and on the slideshows, plus the menus get all weird. The thinner text is almost impossible to understand...

[Brad]

Standard-definition NTSC television has only 525 vertical lines, of which only 480 are visible. That's an effective resolution of roughly 640x480 no matter how large the screen is.

Does that help put this into perspective?

[omem]

Originally Posted by Brad Standard-definition NTSC television has only 525 vertical lines, of which only 480 are visible. That's an effective resolution of roughly 640x480 no matter how large the screen is. Does that help put this into perspective?

Ok, thanks for that but my TV is PAL which has 625 vertical lines.

I'd like to know how to make the DVD look at least decent on a TV. What's the use of an easy to use app such as iDVD if the result is this? Other DVDs look great on that TV so these should too.

Did you ever make a project on iDVD? Were you happy with the results?

[Engine Joe]

Originally Posted by omem Did you ever make a project on iDVD? Were you happy with the results?

Yes and yes. I'm sorry I can't be helpful, but I can't think of why you'd have a problem. In my experience, what I put in is what I get out... well, that isn't exactly true, of course, because of the compression to MPEG-2 and to TV resolution. But in terms of what I can actually see - it looks equivalent on a TV.