This is an interesting article describing the manufacturing process of a DVD.
<<As we entered the production department, Garrett introduced me to Image's Director of Production, Frank Hall, who was eager to illustrate Image's commitment to quality. As Frank explained, their DVD work began with two titles - Robocop and Silence of the Lambs. "DVD is much different than laser in terms of mastering and production demands," Frank explained. "It's trickier." At the heart of the difference, is the compression. Often times, a film or video element that would look terrific on laser, cannot always be easily compressed for DVD. Each candidate element must be examined very closely for potential problems. Precisely because of the cleaner, more detailed image provided by the format, subtle picture flaws in a master tape tend to call more attention to themselves on DVD. Frank led me into a small video bay, where a technician was examining a piece of video for potential DVD use. As the tape played (shot-on-video footage of a tropical beach), Frank and the technician pointed out flaws that would cause trouble for DVD's MPEG-2 compression. The culprit here was digital video noise reduction. Often times, an editor will use digital noise reduction to clean up footage in post-production. This can help to keep edges sharp in brighter areas of the picture. But MPEG-2 will hang up on this, and actually add noise to the image. The effect is similar to watching a DVD on your TV at home, with the sharpness control set too high.
Perhaps the biggest problem when mastering a DVD, is finding original elements good enough to be used for the format. "DVD loves fully digital elements, clean of noise, grain and soft images," Frank tells me. In fact, the best DVDs are produced by using a Digital Betacam or D1 master tape obtained from a new High Definition film transfer. Unfortunately, most older films and catalog titles aren't available from the studios at this level of quality. Film transfers older than about 8 years just aren't up to snuff. Very few, if any, are anamorphic. And the master tapes available tend to be older recordings, on partially or completely analog formats. If the title is big enough, and is sure to sell many thousands of copies on DVD, the studio might be willing to spend the money needed to produce a new anamorphic transfer (anywhere between $10,000 and $40,000 per title). But for many smaller titles, this just isn't an economically feasible option.>>
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