Poor DVD Quality in Premiere Elements 15 on Mac

[Steven Marx]

Ultimately several questions here, but I'll start with the background. I still need to make professional looking DVDs, but since "upgrading" to MacOX Sierra both iDVD and DVD Studio Pro have stopped working. After looking at several pieces of software noticed Premiere Elements mentioned, and have been working with the trial version the last couple of days. It can more or less do what I want (main movie with chapters and extra movies as additional content/DVD extras), not great, but workable. So that's good, and it actually does export, which is where iDVD & DVDSP failed.

Issues

1. The quality of the video using the limited Disc options is very poor. I'm shooting HD but exporting for DVD widescreen (720x480). I have a pretty full disc (300 mb free) so I understand some compression will occur. Also, I've been doing this a long time, since before HD, so I know what to expect from DVD quality video.

So how do I know the quality is poor? Before stumbling upon Elements, I "upgraded" my Toast to the latest version (also 15 I think, weird), despite what EVERYONE said. Their MyDVD thingy can do what I want but fails on export like iDVD & DVDSP, but using Toast itself I can make a really basic DVD, with the chapters and extra content. The menus look like crap, but the quality of the actual video is far superior to what I'm getting from Elements, so I know it can be done.

I believe I've fiddled with all the disc settings I can, and there aren't many, to get the best quality, but wondering if there's anything I might be missing

2. So, the next question is, is there any way to use the Devices tab to export a DVD image for later burning, maintaining all the DVD features and possibly getting higher quality video because there are more options. I've tried several different custom settings, but nothing's given me an output file I can burn to DVD with the chapters, etc. Am I missing something here?

3. I don't think this is it, but will the video be better if I actually buy the program instead of using the trial? When playing the video on my DVD player I can see around the watermark enough to know that the quality is in fact poor, so it's not the watermark affecting me, just wondering if that might help, though I suspect not.

Thanks for reading and any help you can give me.

[Steve Grisetti]

You can output your movie for authoring in another program by selecting Export & Share/Devices/Computer 720x480 and outputting to the MPEG-PS.  This will output your movie only of course and will not include your DVD markers or menus. Those are elements you will add in your DVD authoring program.

Beyond that, I've always gotten virtually as good as the original quality from my DVDs (except, of course, for being standard resolution instead of high-def), so I can't speak for your quality issues. But this should be true for you too, assuming your project settings match your video specs.

When you added your first clip to your timeline, did you see a yellow orange "render" line along the top of the timeline, above this first clip? If you do, then the program has not properly set up its setting to match your video specs and you will need to do so manually if you want the best quality and performance.

[Steven Marx]

I do see that line, but don't see how I can adjust the settings. If I go to Edit ->Project Settings everything's grayed out. At least, everything that seems like it would be significant. I don't need to render the work area do I for better export quality? In fact I thought I read something saying not to do that. I at least feel like progress might be being made here, so thanks for the help. Attaching screen shots of my grayed out settings panels.

The only other thing I can think of is that two of the clips are at 60fps instead of 30 (ok, 29.97, etc.). Not sure why, apparently I captured them that way and now FCPX won't let me adjust those properties. The main movie is 29.97, and that's the one I'm really concerned about the quality.

Thanks again,

Steve

P.S. Oh, and the exporting for dvd authoring in another program won't work, I'm trying Elements because none of the other DVD authoring programs on the Mac are working for me under Sierra. Seriously investigating rolling my iMac back to El Capitan where things still worked.

[Steve Grisetti]

What model of camcorder is your video coming from and what is the resolution, frame rate and format of the video?