Avoiding Recompression

sean@oregonsound.com wrote on 7/21/2007, 3:09 PM

I was preparing a piece to send to another studio for authoring along with other material, and the editor said in no uncertain terms she didn't want my 70 gig movie file. So I'm sending her mpeg-2 and ac-3 files made in Vegas 7. Any known issues with DVD Studio Pro not recognizing Sony compressed files and having to recompress them? How about the other way around? What have people experienced when authoring in DVDA using mpeg2 files created in other programs? Obviously it would always be safest to work from uncompressed files, but having to hand off or receive potentially huge files can be cumbersome, even today.

Comments

TOG62 wrote on 7/21/2007, 11:12 PM

I routinely render files in Serif MoviePlus as DVD-compliant mpeg2 video and LPCM audio and import into DVDAS. They work fine and never (so far) need re-compression.

Mike

MPM wrote on 7/25/2007, 5:03 PM

70 gig isn't that big now days, but ya gotta do what the boss/client says. ;-)

For DVDs as long as the vid's compliant it should work anywhere in any authoring software. One possible glitch -- most authoring software will expect a m2v file rather than the semi-muxed mpg video stream DVDA likes, so don't use the DVDA template.

For editing mpg2 is not necessarily a good choice. If it has to be mpg2 see if you can use all I frames -- more accurate at cuts/joins or wherever a frame has to be altered. Less CPU intensive as well so potentially faster working with it. Hi bit rate wmv can work the same way.

sean@oregonsound.com wrote on 7/25/2007, 8:22 PM

One possible glitch -- most authoring software will expect a m2v file rather than the semi-muxed mpg video stream DVDA likes, so don't use the DVDA template

Interesting. I've never worked with m2v. I'm waiting for a callback from the editor I sent Vegas-created MPG2 and AC-3 files to this week to see how DVD Studio Pro handled them.

What does "semi-muxed" mean?