DVDA5 FLICKER - HAS SONY SOLVED IT?

jazzmaster wrote on 10/21/2008, 9:11 PM
I've searched the database and find that many people have, or had, the same problem that I'm no facing--I render in Pro8 to .avi and then make a DVD of it in DVDA5 and play the DVD back and it flickers all the way. A ruined DVD and hours wasted.

I stretched dout the .avi in the DVDA5 time line to its fullest extent and found groups of 2 and 3 black frames. These don't show up when the timeline is played--no flicker--but they are, I believe, the cause of the flicker.

What is it about bringing an .avi file into DVDA5 that causes this? Has Sony a solution for it? And if not, why not? This is ludicrous!
Does anyone have a solution for this? I read where someone rendered from Pro8 to MPEG-2, but I don't call that a solution, that's a workaround.

Anyone?

Comments

ushere wrote on 10/21/2008, 9:49 PM
not sure why you're bringing an avi into dvda? better to render out from t/l using whichever format you want, plus ac3.

leslie
jazzmaster wrote on 10/21/2008, 10:42 PM
What's t/l?
I've always rendered to .avi in Pro8 to take it into DVA5? Doesn't everyone?
MRe wrote on 10/21/2008, 11:26 PM
t/l == timeline in Vegas

I hava also always first rendered AVI's in Vegas and then imported those to DVDA which I have used to make the mpeg-streams. AC3 I have rendered in Vegas.

Why this?

1. I need AVI in the first place in order to store the master back to tape
2. I use DVDA to decide how much compression is needed in order to fit the material to DVD. Otherwise I should use external calculators to define the bitrate.

The biggest drawback of this approach is that for some reason DVDA render is a way slower than in Vegas.

Haven't done anything in DVDA5 yet so I cannot confirm your findings.
PeterWright wrote on 10/21/2008, 11:39 PM
The main reason most would render to MPEG2 with Vegas is that there are a lot more options related to changing bitrate, vbr or cbr, two pass encoding etc. You can use a bitrate calculator to work out the best way to fit a given duration onto a DVD.

And of course you can render an avi too if you need to go out to tape.
farss wrote on 10/21/2008, 11:45 PM
"I've always rendered to .avi in Pro8 to take it into DVA5? Doesn't everyone? "

Almost no one. It'd probably be better if DVDA prevented you from doing it. Using DVDA to encode gives you no control over how the encoding is done. No choice of 1 or 2 passes etc.
I've NEVER used DVDA to encode the video. If it's anything like the quality of how it encodes menus I'm very glad I haven't.

If you need to work out what bitrate to encode at you can use Bitcalc.

Also depending on your source and if you're in PAL or NTSC land encoding to DV first and then to mpeg-2 causes significant loss of image quality. Not so bad in PAL land, pretty bad in NTSC land.

Bob.
jazzmaster wrote on 10/22/2008, 12:08 AM
The point is: rendering my timeline to .avi and taking that into DVDA5 is the way I have been doing it since DVDA1, 2, 3, 4, and 4.5! Why now, all of a sudden, do I get FLICKER!!! on DVDA5 doing the same thing I have always done? That's my question. Why are there black frames inserted in my clip just because I take into the DVDA5 timeline? They weren't there on the Pro8 timeline!

Sure, I can render to MPEG-2, or whatever, but first I'd like to know why .avi files FLICKER in DVDA5?
farss wrote on 10/22/2008, 12:28 AM
Have you tried ripping the DVD back into Vegas and see if there are black frames in it?

Problem is "flicker" is a pretty general term. Inserting black frames certainly creates flicker but interlace line twitter is also described by many as flicker.

Bob.