DVDA and Elementary streams

CrazyRussian wrote on 7/3/2003, 2:03 PM

I know DVDA does not accept elementary streams, I also know that you can render just video and just audio and DVDA will acccept that. What is the difference between rendering as elementary streams and simple audio/video streams?

Comments

bcbarnes wrote on 7/4/2003, 6:51 AM

Do you mean the quality difference, or the file format difference, or the workflow difference?

From a quality standpoint, there is no difference.

From a file format standpoint, elementary streams mean that each file contains only a single stream of data (either video or audio). If you take a bunch of (usually 2) streams and package them all together into a single file, and provide a header that describes each stream, then you have a "program stream", which is what DVDA uses. The data in the individual streams is the same, thus the quality is the same. It is simply a matter of packaging.

As for workflow, I guess that depends on the individual. Personally, I think it is a pain to have to keep both program streams (for DVDA) and elementary streams (for other DVD apps I use). I wish we could all agree...