I was just watching DS6 today and noticed that the sound and picture quality are pretty god-damned spectactular! When I watch this the audio doesn't sound too low or high and the video doesn't have those weird lines when someone/thing moves.

I myself am trying to make a DVD (that'll no doubt fail in comparison to the majesticism of a Gang DVD) and I was wondering what the hell I was doin'wrong. I'm rendering my video in a DVD Architect NTSC Video Stream and I'm encoding my audio in AC3 (At 31dB, because 29 was too quiet) thinking that those would be the best choices, but I was wrong. I'm getting those lines in my video, and the audio seems loud..but only in terms of the base in people's voices/the music (the audio is probably because of the switch in dB.).....So mighty Gang Gods, (or anyone else who knows what I'm talking about and wants to contribute) what do you mighty Adonis’s suggest?

Well, you're on the right track with your settings. MPEG-2 DVD NTSC and AC3 are the default file formats for Architect. I would guess that the settings in your project need to be changed. Make sure all your audio levels are where you want them to be (usually between -12 and -6 db). If by "lines in the video" you're talking about an interlacing thing, go into your project properties and make sure you have the deinterlacing method set to something other than "none" (I haven't noticed a difference between the "blend" or "interpolate" settings, so either one). If you're movie's not too long, then the default MPEG-2 DVD NTSC bitrate settings should be just fine. If all else fails, I'd recommend exporting your project instead as a DVD NTSC avi file. Yes, it's much bigger than exporting an mpeg, but lately I've been using that for longer movies instead of MPEG-2 and letting Architect do the recompression for me. I think Architect recompresses avi's much nicer than mpegs (which are already a compressed format). This is what I did with the remastererd Shenmue DVD, which had much more than 2 hours of stuff on the disc yet still looked fine after recompression. Doin' Stuff 6 was in MPEG format, but split on 2 discs to avoid any recompression, so it still looked pretty nice.

So yeah, hope that helps.

-Mike

It sure did. Audio wise.

Video-wise I'm still getting some issues. Turns out I had the interlace option on "blend" the whole time, but whenever I enlarge the video in the preview window, I get those same lines whenever the an object moves, or the shot pans. Because of this, I wasn't sure if I would get those lines after rendering, so I decided to go with your suggestion of a DVD NTSC avi file...but all I could find was an .mpeg with the same name (minus the .avi). So here's my question, was that the avi file selection you were speaking of, or is it somewhere else entirely? I'm asking because I looked in all of the .avi templates and could not find that template. Would it be in an update?

Sorry, I get my templates mixed up. The avi template to use would be NTSC DV. Are these lines showing up on the final DVD or just on the file when you play it on your computer? Playing back an mpeg file usually looks like crap on your computer screen but looks fine on DVD.

-Mike

Ah...false alarm on my part. You were right. The lines were just showing up on my computer. The picture looks fantastic on both settings. I guess I'll stick with the MPEG-2 DVD NTSC template for now since the movie is only 38 minutes. You also mentioned something about bit rate settings in the DVD NTSC template?
How would one go about working with those if the need to ever arose?

The default bitrate is a VBR with a high end at 9.5 and the average at 6. This will give you great picture quality and will go onto DVD without any recompression from Architect until you start getting around the 1 1/2 hour mark. To change the settings, you can pick the DVD NTSC template and then hit the video tab. Usually you can put the high end as low as 5 and the average at 4 and still get decent picture quality. However, once you start getting up there in terms of length, that's when I find it's better not to try and guess at your bitrate settings, but instead just make an NTSC DV avi file and let Architect optimize the recompression settings for you.

-Mike

Ah...I see. That makes a lot of sense. Well, Mike, thanks a lot for all the help. Greatly appreciated!