Should Authoring Affect Video Quality?
 

I'm trying out Womble EasyDVD which is just DVD authoring software. One of the things I liked about the software is that it shows you what video files are going to be recoded and which ones are not going to be recoded. My plan was to send MPEG2 compliant videos from VideoReDo so nothing would need a recode. Everything seemed to be going as planned with nothing needing a recode. I used EasyDVD to author and burn the DVD. However the final DVD video quality does not match the output quality from VideoReDo. I've looked at the video using VLC on my computer and also using the DVD player on my TV and there is a noticeable drop in quality. The main problem is there are some kind of semi transparent "blotchy patches" that sort of come and go. It's especially noticeable on large light colored areas of the video. It almost has a pulsating effect.

I don't understand how the video quality can change if it's not recoded? Is this possible?

I have had an issue in the past with Womble MPEG Video Wizard re-encoding video when it shouldn't, and not notifying the user. You should still be able to tell based on CPU usage and how long it takes to create the DVD structure, if it's a long video.

They were very responsive to my query when I emailed them, and provided a fixed version shortly thereafter. I would suggest contacting them.

You might also want to upload sample before/after videos (MPEG files to a storage locker, not YouTube links) so we can see if there is any obvious reason that it is re-encoding the video. (You may also be able to tell from MediaInfo logs, for example if the GOPs are too long in the source.)

If a 4GB+ single-layer DVD takes longer than 15 minutes to author, something is wrong. It's a good tell-tale sign of re-encoding. So I'd be curious how long the authoring step is.

Did you ever figure this out?

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