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Question

GoPro HERO HD DVD quality

Oct 14, 2011 10:45PM PDT

I have an iMac with the newest iLife bundle. I have a time laps movie I created in iMovie from a GoPro Hero HD camera (the series of still photos add up to 54 seconds of video). When I play it back full screen in iMovie the picture quality is very crisp. However when I burn it to a DVD the disc playback has choppy video (audio is fine). Even the text I've added in iMovie is bitmap looking on the DVD.

Any idea what I might be doing wrong?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I've also sent this clip to youtube and while it isn't as clear as the original it is better than what plays back on the DVD.

http://youtu.be/WfQK1HBbycY

Thanks for any suggestions.

Discussion is locked

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Clarification Request
What settings were you using in iDVD?
Oct 16, 2011 12:04AM PDT

did you share directly from iMovie to iDVD?

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Answer
GoPro Hero DVD Quality
Oct 16, 2011 8:13AM PDT

I went directly to iDVD from iMovie & used the default settings.

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Answer
iDVD
Oct 16, 2011 10:38AM PDT

Been playing around with different setting this afternoon. I finally set the resolution a little lower (640x480), saved the movie as an m4v to the H.D. then opened iDVD and imported it. Burned it to a disc and it plays back great.

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Good Job!
Oct 16, 2011 9:53PM PDT

I hesitate to say this but, I was heading toward lower res or a re-encode

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Answer
iDVD quality
Jun 11, 2012 8:48AM PDT

There's two issues here:

1 - iDVD can only create SD (standard definition) video disks. What you can see in iMovie on your Mac's hi res monitor is way beyond the SD resolution of video DVDs.

2 - instead of using the Share ? iDVD menu option use the Share ? Media Browser option and then drag the movie from the Media Browser in iDVD into the iDVD menu being careful to avoid any drop zones. This will give you a better quality movie than the Share ? iDVD method.

Also follow this workflow in iDVD to help assure getting the best quality final product possible:

"Once you have the project as you want it save it as a disk image via the File ? Save as Disk Image menu option. This will separate the encoding process from the burn process.

To check the encoding mount the disk image and launch DVD Player and play it. If it plays OK with DVD Player the encoding was good.

Then burn to disk with Disk Utility or Toast at the slowest speed available (2x-4x) to assure the best burn quality. Always use top quality media: Verbatim, Maxell or Taiyo Yuden DVD-R are the most recommended in the Apple iDVD forum."