Developing video in Camtasia 8 the burning a DVD

kalo924 wrote on 10/7/2013, 2:08 PM
Hello

this is my first project with DVDA. I am using version 5.0, build 161. I have a ton (363 GB) of space on this harddrive. Window 7, 64 bit. I previously have used other DVD software, several years ago. In other words, part of the problem this time is "more technology". Simpler was better for this user.

I am developing a 1.5 (or so) hour DVD. I have a number of Camtasia 8 pieces that I will connect with End Action.

I don't want a menu, just want it to autoplay (this seems to work if I choose Single Movie).

-should I render the Camtasia pieces as MP4 or something else? I want it to all fit on one DVD. I note that the output will be MP2. I did a sample DVD with just 8 min of content. It autoplayed and the quality was acceptable. I'm just wondering about space on the DVD. Fortunately, I'm developing in 800 x 600 and will render that size.
-one expert user said, "make a data disk" to hold tons of content. How do I do that?
-Instead of single movie, would Audio/Video compilation work better? All the synchronizing of the audio and photos, etc are happening in Camtasia 8, as I mentioned.

Any light you can shed on the best way to do this project will be helpful.

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 10/7/2013, 2:43 PM
Interesting if you are using Camtasia to do screen capture of what ? at what resolution. I believe many forum members have had problems with that format.

I myself gave up on that a long time ago- and use a better High Definition capture system of screen cap to go to an NLE and possibly a DVD or Blu-ray.

You really need to test a lot in small increments to notice what you are getting out of your project goals.
Steve Grisetti wrote on 10/8/2013, 7:26 AM
I would very much recommend against using raw video from Camtasia in DVD Architect. You're just setting yourself up for frustration.

Better to load AVIs from Camtasia into Vegas or Movie Studio and then output DVD-ready MPEGs to build your DVD. You're much less likely to see DVD Architect choke transcoding this way.

BTW, just so you are aware, DVDs are only 720x480 pixels resolution. So if you captured video from, say, a 1280x1080 resolution computer monitor, you final DVD is going to have greatly reduced resolution and a lot less details. That's just the nature of the beast.
kalo924 wrote on 10/8/2013, 10:59 AM
I'm not doing screen captures. It's a family genealogy project. Lots of photos and audio I have already recorded (we wrote a script) and music. Text titlers. I like camtasia for putting all the pieces together. And the zoom, pan etc.

When I did my experimental piece, I rendered MP4 in Camtasia (about an 8 min video) then brought that video into DVDA and burned the DVD. It was fine. I also tried to "attach" a second MP4 using end action. It seemed to work just fine.

Of course it is taking MP4 video and rerendering as MP2.
kalo924 wrote on 10/8/2013, 11:00 AM
Resolution 800x600 for my mother's old TV. The rest of us will live with the black bars.
kalo924 wrote on 10/8/2013, 11:02 AM
I guess my real question is going from MP4 to MP2... I haven't seen that it mattered much. For the old photos, they are fuzzy anyway.
videoITguy wrote on 10/8/2013, 12:32 PM
Don't use camtasia to do your edit assembly. Use a real NLE and you will get fantastic results.
kalo924 wrote on 10/9/2013, 1:16 AM
What is "NLE"?
vkmast wrote on 10/9/2013, 4:35 AM
NLE
kalo924 wrote on 10/10/2013, 6:46 AM
So Camtasia doesn't do non-destructive editing?

kalo924 wrote on 10/10/2013, 6:49 AM
What is "real NLE" if not Camtasia?

Camtasia also outputs an MP4 file (or AVI or lots of other formats) so why is MP4 from Vegas better? Isn't MP4 MP4?

Steve Mann wrote on 10/10/2013, 11:17 PM
MP4 is just the container. What's inside depends on which CODEC is used to create the video file.
musicvid10 wrote on 10/12/2013, 9:52 AM
"
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=12&MessageID=866336

kalo924 wrote on 10/14/2013, 5:38 AM
I read all the interesting information. So according to what I read, Camtasia 8 outputs MP4 files using the H.264 codec.

I have looked quite a bit to see if that codec is acceptable to DVD Architect 5. I have to assume it is, since I burned a couple DVDs and they worked in several DVD players.

So my question is, instead of rendering in MP4 in Camtasia, would DVD Architect 5 prefer I render in WMF or AVI? Uncompressed AVI is huge of course. What compression does DVDA prefer in the AVI categories?
videoITguy wrote on 10/14/2013, 9:48 AM
There are only two types of video files suitable for direct import into DVDArchPro for authoring.

From Sony VegasPro timeline - render as elementary video streams - these are the ones in desiginated in templates. You may use Sony MXF container of Mpeg2 as well. Those are the two types of video streams.

MP4 container, WMFcodec, and AVI containers are not suitable and will only cause degradation and very troublesome workflow.