MPEG2 (super Video CD) Help!

Jakester wrote on 7/12/2001, 3:56 PM

I am trying to render photo clips (JPG) to a 'video' in MPEG-2 format. I have been told to render as 480 x 480, which seems to work, except I lose the sound. Using the new plug-in, which sound and video settings should I use to make both work? Also what project settings (if applicable) should I start with? The rendering seems to take a REAL long time.

I start with 720x480 aspect ratio photos, and would like this to preserved when viewed through a DVD player.

Comments

wvg wrote on 7/14/2001, 12:27 PM

First off unless you have a DVD player capable of playing super VCD you may want to use MPEG-1 and select the Video VCD NTSC template. I've done projects like this several times and it is a multi step process. Your rendering is taking a long time because super VCD uses a much larger frame size. If the final destination is playing the created video off a DVD player or from VHS tape, these devices will decode the smaller frame size of MPEG-1 via their built-in hardware and you should not see that much of a loss in quality.

First it is faster if you first collect and prepair the still images you want on your slideshow in some graphic application like Photoshop. The key is to make them all the same size so aspect ratio isn't distored resulting in some images flatened or stretched. You may also find it faster to do hue, level, brightness, contrast adjustments while outside VideoFactory.

Next fire up VideoFactory and drop each of your JPG images on the timeline. Apply crossfades or desired transitions. You'll also want to adjust how long each image is shown. If you are going to use transitions a good starting point is between five and ten seconds for each image. Avoid using too many different transitions in the same project or varing the time various images appear on screen. Pick one or two transitions to avoid annoying the viewer and have each image appear for the same length of time.

Now add a sound track. Test finished project in VideoFactory, then render as MPEG-1 using the VideoCD NTSC template.

Burn a CD using software that can create a file capable of playing on a DVD player. For that you'll need Nero or EasyCD Creator. You can instead export to VHS tape or to a supported format used by your video camera.