Attention DVD burner owners--How does it look?

rwsjr wrote on 3/27/2002, 11:10 AM

I have been using VV3 since late November and have been very pleased. I capture video with a Canopus ADVC-100 and my Hi-8 RCA camcorder. In my judgement, the captures from the ADVC-100 are close to perfect (that is, no dicernable loss in quality from the orignial source). I also do not observe a discernable loss of quality from the original source when I print back to tape. I am saving all of my files in the Main Concept mpeg 2 DVD format and archiving them on CD-ROM until I get a DVD burner. Plan to move over some old VHS tapes as well.

Here's my question--what are my videos going to look like when I burn them on DVD? Am I going to be disappointed when I start burning DVDs? I doubt that I will purchase additional burning software than whatever comes with the DVD burner I buy. However, I test drove the Ulead DVD Factory to see how it works and would consider purchasing that software.

My requirment is simple--I want the videos to be as close to the same quality as the original Hi-8 source as possible. I don't expect the videos to look better than the Hi-8 source just because they are on DVD. I'm pleased with the appearance of the mpeg 2 videos when I watch them on my computer. Will I be disappointed?

Thanks.

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vonhosen wrote on 5/27/2002, 8:22 AM

I've been trying the new version of DVD Complete.
I made a DVD from a 75mins .avi exported from VV3. Encoded VBR avg bitrate of 7.0Mbs multpilexed (including MPEG-1 layer II audio at 224Kbs). The built in encoder is from Ligos (whether it is the new muted ver 2.0 or not can't tell you)

Quality of encode was startling (better than I could reporoduce from same .avi with TMPGEnc or MainConcept & quicker than both)

Chapter points were a breeze to do ( I made 10) & no pause at them during playback.
FFwd on my player at x30 speed no problems.

Burned on TDK & Apple media using the built in (Prassi) burn engine. Can't highly praise this program enough to any home video enthuasiast.

It will hold your hand with wizards if you want or let you go it alone (including menu & sleeve cover design)

Where can you get ?
www.dazzle.com for $99 , download only at this time supposedly in stores soon.

JumboTech wrote on 5/27/2002, 6:57 PM

At that VBR, how much room did you have left on the disc after your video?

Does that prog come in a trial like the Ulead ones do?

Thanks.

Al

vonhosen wrote on 5/27/2002, 7:17 PM

At that VBR I was pretty close to filling disc.
To make sure that all is OK I use the following equation to determine bitrate available to me. I'm just throwing rates & times in to give you an idea. (I was using MPEG-1 layer II audio which was same bitrate as if using AC-3 at 224kbs)
The safe useable limits I am showing for the space available for video/audio is after I have deducted a small amount for menus, headroom etc.

DVD: 36096 Mbits of safe useable space
Space for AC3 audio (at 192 Kbit/s)= (number of seconds in your video*192)/1024
e.g. audio for 2 hours, (7200*192)/1024 = 1350 Mbits
Remaining space can be allocated for video, 36096-1350 = 34746 Mbits
For 2 hour project: video data rate = remaining space/number of seconds in your video
e.g. 34746/7200 = 4.825 Mbit/s
If using PCM audio, substitute 1600 in place of 192 in the audio calculation.

Since it’s easier to calculate the minutes, rather than the seconds, here’s the formula:

For AC3 audio:

(36096-(((Length of Video in Minutes*60)*192)/1024))/(Length of Video in Minutes*60)

For PCM audio:

(36096-(((Length of Video in Minutes*60)*1600)/1024))/(Length of Video in Minutes*60)

(You have the option with program of .mp2 (compressed) or .wav (uncompressed) audio for your project, but not AC-3 that is only in DVDit PE or higher end software.)

There is a demo available but it will only limit you to DVD projects about 5 mins in length. You can however get a feel for the interface etc.
Avaialble at www.dazzle.com

haydenj wrote on 7/5/2002, 11:39 AM

I found that the MYDVD 3.5 that came with my HP 200i drive will not work with Video Vegas 3c and I am getting a error message saying invalid media when it tries to burn to the DVD. I tried many diferent files from Video Vegas with different audio sampling rates and none of them will work with MyDVD. If I tell MyDVD to strip off the audio part MyDVD works just fine. It seems that MyDVD is very picky on what video files it will accept. Another thing about MyDVD that I did not like is the size of overhead files that it creates to make the DVD menus and others editable at a latter date without redoing the whole DVD. I like some of the new features of the coming version 4 but at this point I am not sure that the product is going to be stable enough for me.
I have no problems with Ulead Movie Factory.

rwsjr wrote on 7/5/2002, 2:20 PM

I'll answer my own question. I have had a Pioneer DVR-A04 since mid June:

The default bitrate on the Main Concept DVD template was inadequate. I am finding the video to be much better with a mimimum bitrate of 6,200,0000 and maximum of 8,000,000. I did not experiement much with this, but the results were much improved. Coming from Hi-8 and watching on a 36" TV, there is some pixelation, but not much. This could be an issue with lighting because the footage shot outside looks much better. I am recapturing and re-editing all my video. With Windows XP and NTFS file system, capturing and re-editing is much easier than before because I can work with an entire tape at a time.

Cyberlink Director Pro came with the drive. The disc wizard software seems to make better looking video than Ulead DVD Movie Factory, but Cyberlink has been very buggy and seems to require more space than Ulead for the same content. I just bought a copy of DVD Movie Factory and will author menus with this software. However, I will use the Cyberlink to do slide shows with pictures taken from my digital camera.

jpresley wrote on 7/5/2002, 2:43 PM

Great!
Using VV3.0c, Ulead MovieFactory and Nero with a hp 200i I have found authoring DVD's easy and the quality is excellent with the default values of VV rendering of mpeg 2 files to +rw and +r.
The VV files were authored and rendered to a separate directory. MovieFactory imported the files without conversion. The dvd menu and buttons were created and files were saved to hd without burning a dvd in MovieFactory. Nero copied and burned the data directory to the dvd and the result was outstanding.
jpresley