Why isn't my DVD as clear and detailed as my original footage?

If you're using the proper workflow and a good video source, the quality of the DVD will be virtually identical to the original video.

The exceptions are:

1) High-def video. DVDs are standard definition 720x480 video. That's less than one-sixth the resolution of high-def video. So no DVD is going to look as clear, as high-resolution or as detailed as 1920x1080 video. This will be particularly obvious if you're viewing your DVD full-screen on your computer. Your computer monitor is many times the resolution of a DVD (or a standard definition TV set). So a DVD at full-screen is virtually always going to look fuzzy. And, depending on the software you use to play it on your computer, it may show interlacing or combing. This is because TVs are interlaced and computer monitors are not.

2) Photos are also reduced to 720x480 pixels. So no DVD is going to look as clear, as high-resolution or as detailed as your original photos. In fact, if you shoot your photos on even a 5 megapixel camera, your DVD will be nearly one-fifteenth the resolution.

We've addressed many of these issues at length on this forum. This is the nature of DVDs and has nothing to do with the software.

The real trick is addressing the term "quality" -- which posters use pretty generically. When people say the "quality is not near the original" are they talking about resolution, color, focus, exposure and lighting? On this forum we've done side-by-side comparisons of original footage with the DVD results. When both are at the same resolution, the results are virtually identical. (VLC Player does probably the best job of de-interlacing DVD video for computer playback.)

When compared side by side, a 640x480 screen capture of your original footage or photo should look almost identical to a de-interlaced screen capture of your DVD image at 640x480.