MPEG encoding for DVD burning

chewbonkay wrote on 8/27/2001, 4:12 PM
A question about MPEG 2 encoding. I have been experimenting with burning home movies to my Pioneer A03 DVD-RW using MyDVD with files created in Video Factory 2.0. I run a pass through from VHS home movies through my Sony digital camcorder into Video Factory via Video Capture and Firewire. I then perform minor edits (no filters applied. crossfades, add music etc.), and render to .mpg using the "NTSC DVD Better" template. (I tried some custom settings but didn't seem to improve quality much). I'm running Win98SE on a P3-700 mHz with 192MB RAM. My latest creation - a 13 minute .avi took 2 hours 20 minutes to render to MPEG-2 (again I'm using the DVD Better template). After some tweaking I was able to get MyDVD to import the file and successfully burned the DVD. I was able to view the DVD on my Pioneer set top player and found the video was slightly below the source quality (is this normal?) and the colors seemed a bit washed out. Overall though, I was relatively satisfied with the result but always looking to improve. I'm a relative newbie but trying to be a quick learn.

My questions are:
1. How's that for render time?? Should I look for a faster/better encoder?
2. Picture quality - should I expect the MPEG2 to be a slight downgrade from the source video?
3. Color - I read recently on this forum that the Ligos engine has problems with color filters. Is there any way I can keep my colors from washing out?

Any help, especially on the MPEG encoder, is greatly appreciated.

Comments

wvg wrote on 8/27/2001, 4:38 PM
1. How's that for render time? Should I look for a faster/better encoder?

I'd say fairly typical time. Processing time is relative to your processor speed as well as the actual encoding process who's time can vary greatly depending on what codec is used.

2. Picture quality - should I expect the MPEG2 to be a slight downgrade from the source video?

Probably a little, if your source was high quality DV from a camera. While VF comes with many templates and a good assortment of codecs, there's nothing stopping you from using third party codecs. I have not really tested them much yet, however first tests of the following two codecs look promising.

The Lead MCMP/MJPEG and the PICVideo lossless JPEG codes.

http://www.leadtools.com/home2/CodecStart.htm
http://www.jpg.com/video/mjpeg.htm

3. Color - I read recently on this forum that the Ligos engine has problems with color filters. Is there any way I can keep my colors from washing out?

I haven't noticed any washout, but most of my source files I've worked on so far in VF are in MPEG format and were already washed out so VF only made them much better. There is a problem if you use the HSL filer directly on a MPEG source file. The work around is to first save any souce file to AVI, then apply the filtering, do your edits, etc., save as AVI, then as the last step render to MPEG again if that's the end file type you wish.

pking wrote on 8/27/2001, 4:38 PM
If you were viewing the finished DVD on a DVD to standard TV setup, the color discrepancy could be a result of not using the Broadcast Colors filter. Read about that in the manual and I beleive that might that problem. I rendered a six minute MPEG2 movie last week and it took about 20 minutes.

We are all salivating to get that DVD burner, so tell us, is it great? I'm hoping that SF will include a Make Movie script for that device in VV 3.0.
chewbonkay wrote on 8/27/2001, 9:50 PM
Thanks everyone for the tips, again much appreciated.

PKING, with the broadcast color filter, will that slow down my rendering? Also, you rendered a 6 minute video in 20 minutes?! That sounds lightning! How fast is your system and what codec were you using?

As for the A03 - yeah, it's really cool to be able to burn to DVD. I just installed it last week so I haven't had too much time to play with it yet. I picked up a DVD-RW that I've used 4 or 5 times for different DVD tests. Sure beats making coasters every time! I had a mysterious "Unspecified DVD Write error" this morning (for the first time) that came towards the end of a burn session, but I promptly erased the disk and tried again. No problems on the second burn. So to this point the drive is 4-for-5 on flawless burns. This morning's test DVD has a main menu with three separate sub-menus totalling about 17 minutes of footage. What I like most right now is being able to create buttons linked to chapters within a video. The worst part is the burn time, but I knew that coming into it so it's hard to be disappointed.

I have had to spend a little time on the Sonic forum (MyDVD came bundled) but all things considered being able to burn DVD's in a weekend's time is pretty good progress.
pking wrote on 8/28/2001, 6:36 PM
I think I may have led you astray. The Broadcast Colors filter is in Vegas Video. Quoting the VV manual, "Computer monitors typically display more than 16 million colors, while NTSC TV can only display somewhere around 2 million colors." Since it is an added effect, I'm sure it must add some time to the render process, but I couldn't begin to guess how much.

As for the render time, the only thing I can think of that might have made it go fast for me was that I'm VERY fastidious about turning off EVERYTHING that the computer doesn't need access to while editing video. I bought one of those Dummy books about digital video editing awhile back and the two things I got out of it were to get a dedicated hard drive for video and to only edit video when you're editing video. I only had 10 or 12 effects added to the 25 video clips and only 3sound files in my movie. I thought the 20 minutes was a long time, but considering I'm on a Dell 866 P3, I guess from your reaction that I did well.
chewbonkay wrote on 8/29/2001, 9:35 AM
pking, I don't mean to drive this issue into the ground. But, on your mpeg render, what template were you using? Your speed is so fast that I wonder if perhaps you were using the NTSC Video CD template? My 13 minute video took 2 hours 20 minutes and I've been told that's about average! I used the NTSC DVD-Better template. I'm on a Dell P3-700. After a quick test of shutting everything down, I tried a small 30 second video. My speed did increase but not that much. I'm waiting on an 80GB drive that I will use solely for video but for now I'm using a 30GB 7200 drive as both my application and media drive (C:\). I know a no-no, but I wanted to run some tests before the 80GB arrived.

As for the Broadcast Colors filter. After poking around a bit I realized that you were probably talking about VV and not VF. Still good to know, if/when I decide to step up to VV. Thanks again.
pking wrote on 8/29/2001, 10:51 AM
I'm certain I was using the NTSC DVD Better template, because when I sent the CD to a friend, they had to download SirenXP to view it. I didn't realize at the time that rendering to the NTSC DVD Better template used the Ligos codec, and that codec (or presumably another MPEG2 codec) must be available at the other end to view the rendered product on a computer. I subsequently re-rendered the video as a VCD, but was quite displeased with the blockiness in that format. I'm jamming up my hard-drive with the project until I can purchase a DVD burner so I can save this project at what I consider adequate quality. Yes I know I could print back to tape, but I think I might need to tweak it one more time before I burn to DVD. ;) Of course as fun as VF and VV are to use, I might tweak it continuously given enough HD space.
steveh wrote on 8/29/2001, 1:54 PM
You might want to give svcd a try - follow wvg's instructions in the "Making a SVCD disk step by step" post. I downloaded the trial software and it worked like a charm - much better quality than a regular vcd...
pking wrote on 8/29/2001, 8:50 PM
I read his post with great interest. That's the type of posts we need more of: tutorials, testimonials, and tribulations. Less tempest and trumpeting.

My problem with the SVCD format is it's lack of universal support in set-top DVD players. I want to use a format that I can guarantee will be around for awhile, and SVCD doesn't seem to have a large base of support. If you use the sort capability in www.vcdhelp.com to find DVD players with SVCD capability, the list is amazingly constant considering the growing number of new DVD players entered in their database weekly. My little home movies aren't that good, but I want to be able to extract them from the format I save them in when conversion time rolls around 10-15 years from now (any guess what will replace DVD as the movie standard?).
chewbonkay wrote on 8/30/2001, 5:56 AM
I'm not sure what will replace DVD but I take comfort in knowing that whatever it is (God, knows it's already on someone's warehouse shelf!) it will be backwards compatible with DVD.

Probably the best thing to do would be to capture it as an .avi, edit and render as uncompressed, but given the file size that would be next to impossible. Do you have a DVD burner? What about a digital camcorder? While those tapes aren't infinite, they are definitely safer than VHS or film.