DV-->MPEG-2 Widescreen troubles

msfox99 wrote on 12/13/2007, 10:03 PM
I have a DV Widescreen project in MSP 8.0 that I am trying to render to MPEG-2 Widescreen, for importing into a non-Sony DVD authoring program. Every time I try to render, even though the project is set for widescreen, it will only render 4:3. Is there a way to render to 16x9 using the MPEG-2 encoder? (When I preview the project from withing Movie Studio, it shows as widescreen.)

Also, I tried rendering for a DVD Architect stream, and it doesn't seem to include the audio. Is this the way it is supposed to work? If so, how do you import the audio into DVD Architect.

Thanks.

Comments

Eugenia wrote on 12/13/2007, 11:24 PM
If you select the "DVD Architect NTSC DV Widescreen" template it does it fine. But it will have no audio. To get audio, you need to export it separately as AC3.

DVD Architect knows how to put A/V together correctly. But if you want to be using another DVD burning app, then it might not work well, or at all. In that case, there is nothing you can do, because Vegas doesn't allow for customization of the mpeg2 decoder on their Movie Studio apps.

You can easily do what you want on Vegas 8 Pro though. You select the standard 4:3 NTSC DVD template, you hit "custom", and on the "video" tab you change the aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9. But that will cost you $600.

Alternatively, you can just export in DVD Architect widescreen, then export in AC3, and then find a special utility on the net that will "mux" for you audio and video together, without re-encoding. It will only take moments to do the muxing. I am pretty sure there is such a utility, I just don't know where to find one.
Eugenia wrote on 12/14/2007, 12:10 AM
Ok, there are two ways to do the muxing, none of them bulletproof because they have never been tested with the kinds of files Vegas produces:

1. You buy the commercial version of TMPGEnc ($100).

2. You find a Linux machine and you install the mjpegtools ( http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net/ ) and the transcode utility ( http://www.transcoding.org ). Then, you do this in the command line:

transcode -i vegas.mpg -o output.m2v
mplex -f 9 -V -o output.vob output.m2v vegas.ac3

Then, you use that output.vob to burn a DVD. Good luck with this.
owlsroost wrote on 12/14/2007, 6:23 AM
Another possible way of getting a 16:9 MPEG-2 'program stream' file (one with both video and audio) :-

1. Render to a standard (4:3) MPEG-2 template with the 'do not letterbox' option TICKED. This should produce a file with 'tall and thin' video filling the frame when played.

2. Use this free tool - [url=http://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVDPatcher] - to patch the mpeg file to 16:9 aspect ratio (a quick process since it just involves modifying the MPEG stream header data). After this the file should play back correctly in widescreen format.

I suggest trying this with a short file first just to check the method and settings.....

Tony
ggrussell wrote on 12/14/2007, 6:33 AM
Use render as > Video for Windows (*.avi), tempate set at NTSC DV widescreen
Let the DVD authoring app encode to MPEG 2

Sony seems to think that everyone only uses DVDA. Although I see nothing wrong with customizing Vegas Studio to work well with their own DVDA, it's a bit short sited to think that users would want to use other apps for that.

As far as I'm concerned, Vegas Studio has a MAJOR bug when rendering widescreen. MSP doesn't render what shows in the preview at all and there is no preset for standard widescreen MPEG 2 muxed with audio.

Bought MSP mainly for capturing from my new Sony HC7 and DVDA. Looks like I won't be using MSP for any editing though.
4eyes wrote on 12/14/2007, 8:01 PM
ggrussell,
If you planned to use DVDA then you simply manually render to 2 elementary streams and use them in DVDA. 1 in widescreen & 1 audio track.
But from the editor if you goto File | Make Movie | Burn to DVD then "Check On" "Use WideScreen DVD Format" and render your project with elementary streams to your harddisk.
After it's done you can click on the box that says "Send to DVD Architect Studio", DVD Architect Studio is opened & your video & audio file is transferred to it.

Or, when making a dvd edit your footage in native HDV, render to a new HDV file & use that file in DVD Archtect Studio. The program does a pretty nice job of conversion to dvd.

ggrussell wrote on 12/15/2007, 7:42 AM
You're assuming that I plan to use MSP for my editing. I find it way too limited. In my last production which was a 4 min presentation, I used 12 video tracks which MSP can not do. I have used several video editors and MSP seems to be the ONLY one that wants to render to elementary streams. Even Adobe defaults to muxed files. It's difficult enough keeping track of video when you have several hundred clips to go through. I certainly don't want elementary streams.

MSP is too frustrating to use. I've done a few short tests and none of them rendered as it showed in the preview. But thanks for the suggestion.
Karl-K wrote on 2/13/2008, 7:41 PM
I too found the separate widescreen streams to be a major annoyance until someone else pointed out that you can use DVDA to create a simple one-movie project, insert the media, prepare it to a folder, and then use Movie Studio to Import the DVD folder back to an MPG. It takes almost no time at all since no conversion is required. I also do this so I can easily play back my finished DVD scenes on a media extender device. It will break up each scene into a separate MPG file. I find it a very handy feature. I have tried many different editing and authoring tools and I find the Sony/Sonic Foundry tools offer the best set of features for "hobbiests" who don't want to break the bank. IMHO anyway.