Got a transfer project in for a client. The transfer was 5 VHS tapes. The person had a another company transfer their 8 mm films to video tape years ago and to save money they used the EP setting so most of the tapes are very long (3.5 hours) and very grainy to say the least. I have transferred all the tapes to my computer using the capture function on Adobe Premier and a Black Magic 4K card for the transfers. The tapes look "OK" on the monitors but if I attempt to put them on DVD they look really really bad due to the compression necessary for burning DVDs. Suggestions or ideas? Thanks in advance.

Unless DVD is really necessary I would deliver the files on USB flash or Hard Drive.

I am not any expert on this and have no answer for you, but find it interesting that DVD compression makes an EP-VHS look any worse!

For my own curiosity, I'd be interested in your workflow, and if you are authoring for 2-layer or single layer DVD. Ideally, you could post some clips (Youtube?)

I.E.
-you capture in 4k, what codec?
-looks "good" after editing in Premiere, all in 4k?
-Premiere used for DVD authoring?
-do you burn a real DVD and watch it? Or an image file?
-did you try making standard definition video files? Maybe ask if the client would take files instead of DVDs.Burned DVDs may not last very long anyway, unless Milleniata.

Unlikely I'd have any answers for you, but am curious.

If the source material is grainy and jittery the compression struggles to encode all of that extra noise and the result is poor, because the limited bitrate has to be allocated for that instead of the actual signal.
Try to persuade the client not to use DVD. He will face the same problem now in the near future again.
As david said, a high bitrate mp4 at 1080 resolution is the most universal format right now.
Most surviving DVD players actually have USB ports that can read mp4 from a flash drive, and of course all modern TVs

Thanks for the suggestion. I will contact the client to see if she is OK with a flash drive. Thanks again. This forum has some AMAZING people on it...

Talked to the client yesterday and she is good with the material being put on a hard drive. Thanks again for the suggestions.