After using up a solid amount of my Verbatim DVD-R's, I'm still coming up with way less than satisfactory quality. After downloading some episodes of a television series off of iTunes, I use a DRM-removal program, usually Wondershare Media Converter, to convert the DRM protected .m4v (actually .mp4 from what I hear) to a different format. Once this program has done its job, I use encoding/authoring software, usually TMPGenc Xpress or the TMPGenc DVD Authoring software, to encode the converted file into an NTSC DVD compliant format. However, after all of this, the video comes out choppy, and sometimes out of sync with the audio. The choppiness is more profound in scenes involving a lot of motion. I read that this had to do with the bitrate of the video, and whether or not it's encoded with CBR or VBR. However, I still received choppy or out of sync playback after cranking up the bitrate and setting it to 2 pass VBR. Is there a preferred or recommended format to output the DRM protected .m4v file to? Lately, I've been converting the protected files to .avi. I don't know if any one format would be better for this than the other, and the same goes for the audio format. Is there a DRM removal tool better than Wondershare Media Converter? I tried Tunebite, but I kept getting errors about it not being able to optimize the video quality. Also, is DVD authoring required? The Wondershare Media Converter program allows for the conversion of the protected .m4v to an NTSC .vob, but this is still choppy, and very noticable in fast paced scenes. Upon authoring the DVD, I seemed to achieve equal or lower results in terms of smooth playback and audio sync. So, ultimately, the question is: how do I achieve the best, smoothest playback on a dvd player from a DRM protected iTunes .m4v file? The files I'm removing the DRM from are usually no more than approx. 40 min in length, so I have plenty of room on the 4.7GB 16x Verbatim DVD-R's that I'm using. I'm burning with an HP DVD Writer 1260d, at the lowest possible write rate of 6x. My CPU is an Athlon64 x2 4800+. I'm also using windows XP. If any other info. is required, please ask.
If your DRM removal tool supports converting to a NTSC VOB, that would be the best option,but you say the quality is not good at all.If you can adjust the settings and get a decent result converting to a NTSC vob, then you can use a DVD authoring tool that will not re-encode DVD compliant material(your NTSC VOB), this way preserving some of the qaulity. DVD Flick or DVDStyler can do that. Best advice...forget the crappy DRM riddled iTunes, just get your videos from a different source, with no DRM and headaches... Converting the video twice will do nothing but butcher it.
Thanks for the reply. So, what you're saying is that authoring the .vob will keep most of the quality from the original .m4v? If there are choppy or jerky scenes in the .vob, then would those be cleared up or at least made less noticeable through authoring the .vob before burning to a dvd-r?
Every time you re-encode the video, you lose quality. If your DRM removal/converter tool outputs to an AVI,MP4, or anything other than a DVD compliant mpeg2, then you will have to encode one more time when you author the DVD, so you lose some quality again. If on the other hand you convert directly to a mpeg2 DVD compliant, then you don't have to re-encode when you author the DVD. No, if you have any choppiness/jerky video, you cannot fix it when you author the DVD. Did you try a different player?
I've only tried it on one standalone DVD player, otherwise I've used Nero's Showtime, Easy DVD Player and sometimes just windows media player. So the loss of quality from the DRM tool's conversion would result in the choppiness, and not because it was poorly converted by the tool? It was just my understanding that a loss of quality from encoding files would result in something other than making the video choppy, like the video wouldnt be as sharp or something. However, the DRM tool I use doesnt offer many options about how the files should be converted, such as 2-pass VBR. It only offers bitrate values for video and audio. Could this be a problem?
You are correct, the quality loss wouldn't be choppiness during playback. If it doesn't convert properly to NTSC mpeg2, try a different codec, maybe H.264, highest quality.
