I have a lot of HDTV recordings I have to convert to regular DVD resolutions (720x480) because some people I give the disks to don't have Bluray or HDDVD players. But the PQ of the DVDs from converted HDTV(at 1080i) is a lot worse than that of commercial DVDs which are only 480p. I have already used highest bit rate such as 8.5mbps, but the DVDs still look bad, nothing like the commercial DVDs. I would think with the original content at 1080 the converted DVDs should be at least on par with the best of 480p stuff. So what is missing here?

Not gonna happen. Commercial DVD's are made from far superior resolution masters than relatively low resolution 1080i broadcasts. Also commerical DVD's are compressed using techniques that a DVD recorder cannot possibly mimic.

What type/brand of recorder are you using? Standalone, PC etc.
If using standalone units the PQ varies greatly between different brands. The DVD's I make recording off OTA WS HD is very near commercial DVD quality. I only use Panasonic standalone units.

I have a lot of HDTV recordings I have to convert to regular DVD resolutions (720x480) . . .I have to echo the previous questions. What do you mean by this? How did you make the HD recordings. Are they sitting in a cable/sat DVR? Are they TiVo HD files you transferred to your PC? Are you trying to play them from a blu-ray player into a recorder? You will have to answer the "what" before anyone can give a specific answer.

Not gonna happen. Commercial DVD's are made from far superior resolution masters than relatively low resolution 1080i broadcasts. Also commerical DVD's are compressed using techniques that a DVD recorder cannot possibly mimic.

If we take your explanation as fact, then MPEG2 to MPEG4 converted HD will also look worse than DVDs, which is not the case.

I have to echo the previous questions. What do you mean by this? How did you make the HD recordings. Are they sitting in a cable/sat DVR? Are they TiVo HD files you transferred to your PC? Are you trying to play them from a blu-ray player into a recorder? You will have to answer the "what" before anyone can give a specific answer.

I record the shows in PC and then author the HD recordings into DVD using Ulead MF or Sony Vages. No matter what software programs I use, the result seems to be equally poor.

Try VideoReDo TV Suite.

Thanks for the suggestion. In fact VideoRedo is my favorite editing software, I just wasn't aware it had authoring feature come out recently. I used the trial version last night and the result was indeed better than Ulead. It still had to do a lot of reencoding from 1080i to 480p which takes four hours and resulted in some stepping artifacts. I am going to play with it a little more and see if it can eliminate the artifacts.

Try VideoReDo TV Suite.
Does VRD TVS support two pass encoding? Having tried just about every program out there, SVCD2DVD consistently creates some of the highest quality SD DVDs from HD recordings.

I record the shows in PC and then author the HD recordings into DVD using Ulead MF or Sony Vages. No matter what software programs I use, the result seems to be equally poor.

I use the same method that jjeff uses -- that is, instead of capturing in a PC, I record to stand-alone DVD recorder (have both a Panasonic and Pioneer, and both are fine). The quality of the home-brew discs made from downconverted HD is quite excellent, and I am very fussy about PQ. With this method, you can create discs right on the recorder, or if you desire something a little more fancy, you can rip the disc to your PC, and then use some of the lossless MPEG editing software that's out there to chop it up, and then burn to disc. If you use the right tools, the entire process is lossless, so the final result is identical in quality to the original recording.

If we take your explanation as fact, then MPEG2 to MPEG4 converted HD will also look worse than DVDs, which is not the case.

? You are confused. What does my answer have to do with what you posted?
1080i converted to 480i on consumer gear is never going to match professional made 480i DVD's made from professionally prepared masters. MPEG-4 HD is another issue.

? You are confused. What does my answer have to do with what you posted?
1080i converted to 480i on consumer gear is never going to match professional made 480i DVD's made from professionally prepared masters. MPEG-4 HD is another issue.

While you are correct that commercial DVD's are made from much higher source materials, the final commercial DVD produced is dependant upon many factors including post-processing and bitrate. In addition, as you probably know, not all commerical DVD's are created with equal image quality. In many cases a homebrewed "superbit" SD-DVD created from an HD recording can often be of very high quality and equivalent to the commerical DVD.

In many cases a homebrewed "superbit" SD-DVD created from an HD recording can often be of very high quality and equivalent to the commerical DVD.

I totally agree. I always record my DVDs at the highest bit rate, and the results, while not equal to the best DVDs, is better than many of them. Bottom line is though, for the OP, if he/she is getting BAD quality, then something is wrong -- you should be able to get something that is quite good, very close to that of a high-quality commercial disc.

? You are confused. What does my answer have to do with what you posted?
1080i converted to 480i on consumer gear is never going to match professional made 480i DVD's made from professionally prepared masters. MPEG-4 HD is another issue.

No, it has everything to do with it:

Not gonna happen. Commercial DVD's are made from far superior resolution masters than relatively low resolution 1080i broadcasts. Also commerical DVD's are compressed using techniques that a DVD recorder cannot possibly mimic.


1) As others has posted, they can get great results

2) If you need 2k or 4k master for a "professional prepared" 480i DVD and "low resolution 1080i" cannot replicate that, then a HD MPEG2 to HD MPEG4 re-encode by HBO, Cinemax, Starz, Directv, Dish or your local cable company will look worse than a 480i Professionally prepared DVD in your food chain.

I have a Dish Network 622 HD DVR. I record HD shows to my Philips 3505 DVD burner using the s-video output of the DVR. These widescreen DVDs are pretty near commercial DVD quality. I burn them in 1 hour or 2 hour DVD mode. The Philips 3505 I got from Wal Mart for $169.

Rick R

thanks for suggestions. The reasons I do the PC route are to snip out all the commercials, and get the original version in HD. I don't think there is DVD recorder that auto skips the commercials. And I am not aware there is a device that records HD shows on a disk. Maybe someday when BD disks are 15c/each like the DVDs we will have something like that.

I have a Dish Network 622 HD DVR. I record HD shows to my Philips 3505 DVD burner using the s-video output of the DVR. These widescreen DVDs are pretty near commercial DVD quality. I burn them in 1 hour or 2 hour DVD mode. The Philips 3505 I got from Wal Mart for $169.

Rick R

i did the same thing for 3+ years with a c'cast sa8000hd dvr into a tosh dr2 and/or pan. es-15 (via s video) and when played back on my newish onkyo hd805 (hdmi) with reon vp thru my hd pj onto my 108" screen, they look great.
they also looked great played on my pan s77 hdmi player for the last 3 years.

I decided to burn the opening ceremony of the olympics to a DVD in 4 hour mode. I observed that 4 hour mode is a significant decrease in quality from 1 or 2 hour mode. I should have burned 2 DVDs in 2 hour mode instead.

Rick R

Since my Philips 3505 DVD burner is connected into my AV receiver I can copy any medium to the DVD burner. I use it to copy VHS to DVD for example.

I previously tried to read VHS tapes into my media center edition PC and then burn DVDs on my PC. The DVD encoding quality was so poor that I only tried this a couple of times. The DVD encoder in the Philips 3505 DVD burner is vastly superior to any I have found for the PC.

I have also used my AV connection and DVD burner to copy from DVHS to DVD. It all works kind of neat.

Rick R

It is quite easy to create near HD Quality on standard DVD-R's.

The key is that the DVD-R spec allows bit rates up to 9600kbps, even though most DVD's are in the 4000kbps range.
HD OTA programs may be at 19,200kbps if only one HD channel is broadcast but that drops to 12,000kbps if three SD channels are added. Satellite and Cable Companies compress these OTA signals and lower the bitrate even more. So practically speaking DVD-R can hold most of the HD bit rate. It is well known that the bit rate is far more important than the resolution so the reduction from 1920x1080 or 1280x720 to 720x640 has little impact on the quality (unless you put your nose against the screen).

The trick is that at 9600kbps, a DVD-R will only hold about 1 hour of video, so you must limit your recordings to that length. That meeans 2 DVD's or a DL for a movie, or 1 for a TV show.

On my PC, I record HD OTA .ts files using the On-Air GT, as well as download .mkv and .mp4 AVC files.
The AVC files can easily be converted to .mpg files at full bitrate using AnyVidoConverter or ffmpeg if you want to edit them with tools such as the great but overlooked Womble MPEG Video Wizard .. a dumb name for a great MPEG Editor... and any of them (.ts,.mkv,.mp4,.mpg) can be turned into a DVD using ConvertXtoDVD (along with Subtitles) which will fit the source onto the DVD-R. If the source is an hour or less and >= 9600 kbps it will create an outstanding DVD which is indistinguishable from the original HD program.

I have done many PBS HD specials this way, and just completed my Opening Ceremonies DVD (after converting ia 3.5 hour 5gig .mkv AVC to an 11 gig .mpg and editing it down to 73 minutes before burnng) which when played on my 50" SD projection TV is outstanding, and on my 2 sons 43 & 46 HD LCD's is equal or better than their Cable HD quality.

I now see that the new Hauppage PVR, will give me an AVC .ts file from a HD Cable or Sat STB. Using a sample file on the web, I used the above technique to make an SD DVD-R from it at 9600kbps, so now I can get my HD source from everywhere, and play it on any standard DVD player.

It is well known that the bit rate is far more important than the resolution so the reduction from 1920x1080 or 1280x720 to 720x640 has little impact on the quality (unless you put your nose against the screen). [...] If the source is an hour or less and >= 9600 kbps it will create an outstanding DVD which is indistinguishable from the original HD program.

I would disagree with those statements. I've never heard that is is "well known" that bit rate is far more important that resolution. Granted, it IS important, but if you reduce 1920x1080 down to 720x480 (never heard of 720x640 ... what format is that?), you are going from an HD resolution to SD, and no increase in bit rate can offset that.

Consider that in the professional world, SD is usually sent around the plant uncompressed, which is 270 Mb/s. That's not a typo -- 270 Mb/s for SD. And nobody looking at that would mistake it for HD. The bit rate is very high and there are zero compression artifacts, but the resolution is not there.

9.6 Mb/s can produce a very nice looking SD DVD, but say that it is "indistinguishable from the original HD program" is simply not true. Then again, quality is in the eye of the beholder.

The bit rate is very high and there are zero compression artifacts, but the resolution is not there.But it's probably easier on the eyes, brain and stomach to watch than if the resolution was there, but the bit-rate was very low. :cool:

I would disagree with those statements. I've never heard that is is "well known" that bit rate is far more important that resolution. Granted, it IS important, but if you reduce 1920x1080 down to 720x480 (never heard of 720x640 ... what format is that?), you are going from an HD resolution to SD, and no increase in bit rate can offset that.

Consider that in the professional world, SD is usually sent around the plant uncompressed, which is 270 Mb/s. That's not a typo -- 270 Mb/s for SD. And nobody looking at that would mistake it for HD. The bit rate is very high and there are zero compression artifacts, but the resolution is not there.

9.6 Mb/s can produce a very nice looking SD DVD, but say that it is "indistinguishable from the original HD program" is simply not true. Then again, quality is in the eye of the beholder.


yes if you output 480p, but 720x480 resolutions with high bit rates will upscale beautifully to 720/1080p and look very HD like.

lets put it this way. I'd rather watc a 480i dvd with high bit rate upscaled to 720p than a apple itunes "HD 720p with a 4mbits bit rate".

You guys are kind of veering off onto another topic. I completely agree that I would rather watch artifact-free SD over HD that is completely trashed because of insufficient bit rate -- my disagreement was with the statement that with a high enough bit rate, SD can look "indistinguishable" from HD.

I routinely deal with uncompressed SD (270 Mb/s) and upconvert that (using multi-kilobuck professional upconverters) to 1280x720 (uncompressed) -- it looks pretty good, but HD it is not.

You guys are kind of veering off onto another topic. I completely agree that I would rather watch artifact-free SD over HD that is completely trashed because of insufficient bit rate -- my disagreement was with the statement that with a high enough bit rate, SD can look "indistinguishable" from HD.

I routinely deal with uncompressed SD (270 Mb/s) and upconvert that (using multi-kilobuck professional upconverters) to 1280x720 (uncompressed) -- it looks pretty good, but HD it is not.

maybe it simply looks "indistnquishable" to most people because they simply don't sit close enough to their displays or have large enough displays to appreciate the resolution gains of HD.

none the less, yes I agree with you. Upscaled DVD is not HD but it can come pretty close taking into account the average joe sixpacks viewing situation.

Upscaled DVD is not HD but it can come pretty close taking into account the average joe sixpacks viewing situation.If by "upscaled DVD" you mean a commercially encoded DVD of a theatrical release, then I would more than agree. I have an Oppo 981HD feeding a 50" Panasonic plasma. The PQ is so close to HD that I have no interest or plans in investing in blu-ray.

As others have pointed out, you won't be able to match the pros because the broadcast HD bitrate is at least 10X lower then what the pros are using to create DVDs.

You will have better results by using a pro MPEG2 encoder. The consumer stuff, esp the ones built into DVD burning apps are pretty poor.

I have been using Cleaner with 2-pass VBR to archive some of my HD stuff on DVD and the results are pretty good.

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/Cleaner_65_techspecs_Americas.pdf