REPOST: Putting Screen Capture Movies on DVD

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

Good morning. I've been trying to create screen capture movies and
putting them onto DVD, and have run in to some difficulty.

I am using an old program called "CamStudio" (now known as "RoboForm" )
to create the screen capture movies, and have it set to capture full
screen at 800x600.

I then import the captured AVI file into Adobe Premiere Pro, making
certain to first change my project settings and create a custom
profile that uses the Microsoft Video 1 video codec, and set to
29.97fps, no fields, and @ 720x480.

I then scale the entire sequence so that the 800x600 movie fits
uniformly within the image and title safe areas of the 720x480 canvas
(so that the entire movie will be visible on a TV/NTSC display), ...
apply "Flicker Removal" to the sequence, do some slight color
correction (adjust black and white levels), and then apply my edits
and fade ins & outs at both the beginning and end.

Finally, I use the Adobe Media Encoder to export the entire sequence
as Progressive scan MPEG-2/DVD format. The resulting m2v and wav files
that I get are what I use to author the DVD with (using DVD
Architect).

The disc plays beautifully in both my PC's DVDRom drive as well as my
set-top DVD player. However, when viewing the DVD using my set-top
player, the text on the screen is very blurry and almost unreadable,
almost as though some kind of "ghosting" or doubling effect is
occuring. When playing the disc on my PC, on the other hand, I don't
see these artifacts, and the text isn't blurry at all.

I am already well educated in the differences between interlaced (tv)
and non-interlaced (PC monitor) displays, and about how text should be
a certain size when it's intended to be viewed on an NTSC display to
ensure readability. However .. I'm thinking surely, someone out there
has to be putting screen capture movies onto DVD without these kinds
problems, and I'd like to know what the secret is. I've created about
6 DVD coasters so far, and have been focusing mainly on color
correction as the culprit. But now I'm not so certain.

Can anyone here offer some advice on how I should go about this? Is
there a step I'm missing in the process, perhaps? Or do I simply need
to increase the size of my text? Or, ... is it possible that DVDs
which showcase screen capture movies really intended to be viewed only
on the PC?

Thanks in advance,
- yvan

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

Thanks for your response. I am using svideo to transfer the signal
from the set-top player to the tv, though I suspect that your last
point about the color resolution is the most likely scenario. So I
guess the synopsis is that screen capture material just doesn't
translate well to interlaced displays. Oh well. DVD-Rom it is then.
Thanks!

- yvan






> The video signal type (which you use for relaying the
> picture from your stand-alone DVD player to your tv set)
> will affect the end result a lot.
>
> Are you using RF signal? Composite video signal? S-video
> (Y/C)? Component (YPbPr)? RGB? As a general rule, you
> should be using at least s-video (Y/C) to get acceptable
> viewing quality for highly detailed "computer screenshot"
> type material. Composite video (both as a baseband signal
> and especially in the guise of an RF modulated signal)
> will always look quite bad.
>
> Also note that in the standard DVD MPEG-2 (4:2:0) format,
> the color resolution is only 1/4 of the luma resolution.
> Unlike on a computer screen, where each pixel has a
> distinct color (which can be changed independently of
> the neighboring pixels), on a DVD, each pixel only has
> a distinct brightness. The color information is smoothly
> spread out over the neighboring pixels, making some color
> combinations in tiny details blurry no matter what you
> try and do to fix it.