The picture and sound quality obtainable from a DVD depend to a great extent on the quality of the original capturing, or encoding of the material.

DVD-Video uses MPEG-2, the same international standard video encoding system used for Digital Television.

As with any media the quality of the original master material, and the way in which it is transferred, is of vital importance. Using poor quality source material inevitably gives disappointing results.

Where possible, we encode from professional quality master tapes, such as Digital Betacam, or transcode directly from high-quality media files.

For DVD, we use the internationally-acclaimed CinemaCraft-SP encoder to produce a high-quality MPEG-2 image file after capturing it uncompressed directly from your master material.

We do not recommend using non-broadcast video formats, such as VHS, U-Matic, Video-8, or DV for authoring DVD's. Many common desktop authoring systems use DV-Video, imported into a computer, where they are converted to MPEG-2 using in-built software encoding. The various DV-Video formats (Mini-DV, DVC-Pro, DV-Cam etc) are compressed video formats, designed for domestic or semi-professional use. Authoring DVD's from this material may not produce satisfactory results.

For Blu-ray tiles, we usually work from uncompressed HD files, with resolutions up to 1080, although other HD source formats can also be used. We can also produce a standard DVD from the Blu-ray project, eliminating the need for authoring a separate DVD title. For Blu-ray, we use MPEG-2 HD, although Blu-ray Video can support other formats.

Sound for DVD-Video usually uses Dolby Digital. This can be mono, stereo, Dolby Surround, or 5.1 surround. We can encode to any of these formats, depending on the nature of your master material. A DVD can run up to eight audio streams, all of which can be anything up to 5.1.

DVD can also use uncompressed PCM digital sound, in mono or stereo.

Blu-ray discs can use many audio formats, but Dolby Digital and PCM are common.