Hey thanks ...but as I'm checking all my settings:
1) Should be NTSC DV (720x480, 29.970 fps) or the PAL equivalent. = OK
2) this could be the problem ... in the Make movie section I do not see where I have any choice over what size mpeg to create. I choose "Write your movie to a Video CD or CD-ROM" Then did dialog box gives me a format of MainConcept MPEG-1 (*.mpg)the Template: is VCD NTSC.
This creates a mpeg that is probably about 400 PX wide on my screen.

The final step in this set of dialog boxes does give me the option of writing to disk and I have been doing that.
Thanks so much for your help.
Lee

OK there’s your problem. VF does allow you to burn DVD’s so you won’t get a DVD option for making a CD. I also seem to remember that it also doesn’t do MPEG2 by default. (I’ve had it a while so I forgot it only does MPEG1 out of the box) This is an upgrade option for about $30. You would still need to buy DVD burning software after that to actually make the DVD and most DVD software already has an MPEG2 encoder.

Your best bet is to download a trial copy of Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2 (this is what I use). This will take the AVI output from VF and allow you to encode it to MPEG2 and burn a DVD with menus. See if you like the quality it gives before you buy.

~jr

Well I sure appriciate your help.
But man this is frustraiting. I spent the $30.00 with SF only to fing I could not change the burn settings to burn an mpeg2. Then downloaded Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2 ... 10 disks later I have yet to play one. Tried mpeg2 and the avi file both created with SF. If i choose create menu the DVD comes up on the screen, but I can't use any of the player controles to make it play. If i select use first clip as play video the DVD does not recognise it has a DVD disk to play. I de-selected "do not convert compliant MPEG files" and the DVD recognises it has a DVD .. it just does not recognise it has any tracks to play. My output settings record to disk DVD-Video ... disk burner tried both (ulead) and (NTI). Well I'll try again tomorrow....
Lee

Lee,

I agree this must be frustrating. Just hang in there. Let’s review what we know:

I now know that you have paid the $30 for the MPEG2 encoder for VF so that’s what I would suggest you use. Don’t worry about not being able to tweak the parameters. I have the $99 version and I found that the defaults are just fine and there’s no need to tweak anything to get good quality.

In VF use “Make Movie”->”Write your movie to file on your disk”. On the next dialog under Format: select MainConcept MPEG-2 (*.mpg). Under Template select DVD NTSC. Now click the Next button and it should make a DVD compliant MPEG2 file all ready to import into DVD Movie Factory 2.

Now lets talk about some things we still don’t know:

Does the DVD that you make play on you computer using WinDVD, PowerDVD or whatever DVD software that came with your DVD burner? If it does, then I would suspect it might be your stand-alone DVD player that’s at fault.

Does your DVD player support DVD-R, DVD-RW or whatever formats you’re burning to? Some of the older DVD players cannot play homemade DVD’s. You can check www.vcdhelp.com to see if your DVD player supports these formats. Have you every played a homemade DVD on this player before?

If, however, the DVD doesn’t play correctly on your PC, then I would suspect a problem with DVD MovieFactory 2 and we should continue with this problem over on the Ulead forums because its off-topic for here.

~jr

Ok thanks for hanging in there with me.
First I'm a real novis at this even though I am very proficent in other areas.
First I did not tell you I am trying to write ot a CD/R not a DVD/R. It was easy to see what I was doing wrong once I read a little. Somehow I expected Ulead's software to know I was trying to write DVD format to a CD/R and not give me that option. But all last night I was writing DVD format to a CD/R ... so no wonder the DVD stand alone did not see the file. So I did no my own follow your steps evcept wrote a SDVD and it plays, with one glitch, the sound sucked ... all chopy. So my next experiment is to delete the music track from VF ... write the file as an MPEG2 and then let Ulead produce the sound. I thought about making the whole thing as an uncompresed AVI, but I dont have the 16 gig on any of my 3 hard drives. What type of sound file do you work with in VF? Mp3? Wav? Mpeg2?
And another verry important question for you and my pocketbook. If I spend the $400.00 for a DVD burner, do you think I will see a signafiant quality increase from SDVD? Or more importantly will my protographic customers be happier?
Thanks,
Lee

Lee,

I feel like Sherlock Holmes unlocking a mystery. Each post uncovers a new piece of evidence. I think it was Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the Revolver! (...or was it Lee in MovieFactory with the CD/R?) ;-)

There actually is a format called miniDVD that will put 20 minutes of DVD quality on a CD/R but there are almost NO DVD players that can play it. It’s a format that never caught on. I bet this is what you are creating and why the software is letting you create it, but your DVD player won’t play it.

OK. If you’re doing these for your customers then SVCD is right out of the question. There is a large percentage of DVD players that will play DVD/R, a smaller percentage of then will play VCD and a much smaller percentage of those that play SVCD. So you’re looking at major compatibility headaches with your customers if you give them SVCD’s. The chances of them having a DVD player that will play SVCD’s is not that great. The interesting part is that the more expensive the DVD player the less likely it will play VCD and SVCD. Isn’t that weird? The cheap $89 DVD players play them just fine. The $400 players don’t. Go figure.

The sound problem you’re having is probably caused by the SVCD audio bitrate being too high for your DVD player. I don’t know if you can tweak this in VF but try and set the audio bitrate lower. Since I have the $99 MPEG2 encoder I can do this in VF. The $30 encoder might give you some control over this, I just don’t know. You can definitely change this in MovieFactory2. The default is 224. Try and take it down to 192 and see if that helps. My Pioneer DVR-343 stand-alone DVD player has no problem with SVCD’s from MovieFactory2 but I checked www.vcdhelp.com before I bought it and made sure it played VCD’s and SVCD’s without a problem first. That was my only criteria in buying a DVD player since I didn’t have a DVD burner at the time I bought it.

I now have a Pioneer DVR-A03 burner that I paid $384 a year ago and the brand new Pioneer A05 (4x) is only $299 at VideoGuys and at GoRoyalPC (where I bought mine) it’s only $275. So they are nowhere near $400 anymore. Shop around. The Pioneer comes with MyDVD 4 software so you wouldn’t have to buy DVD MovieFactory 2, although I personally thing DVD MovieFactory 2 is a lot better but that’s just my opinion. MyDVD 4 doesn’t let you set chapter points on files (AVI or MPEG) which makes it undesirable for me but you are doing slide shows so it might not affect you.

If you’re in business and want to give your clients video on a disk, I would definitely invest in a DVD burner and make that disk a DVD. You can charge $25 per extra DVD copy and make your money back in no time.

Now through all this I’ve assumed that you’re doing transitions between still pictures and perhaps some panning and zooming in VF. If you’re not, you might want to try making a VCD Slideshow in MovieFactory2. The results will be very high quality on VCD but that’s because there is no motion in the pictures and the slides do hard cuts between them. This is something else you could offer your customers. In MovieFactory2, just select VCD and then Add Slideshow and drop a few pictures on and burn. This is how I make slideshows of all my everyday personal digital photos and I’m quite happy with the results. It only takes a few minutes to do. Try it and see.

~jr

Ahhh Yes Mr. (~jr) Holmes. It does remind me of a little adventure my great great uncle on my grandmothers side (the honorable John H. Watson, M.D.) put to pen recounting by memory time spent with one Sherluck Holmes (the editors liked the name Sherlock better .. and it stuck)called the Adventure of the Dancing Men.
A long story, but in any event, I'm glad you were here to help. I'm off to purchase a DVD burner, which I hope will end this little problem. I have learned allot and if I have problems you will hear from me again.
Thanks,
Lee

>The interesting part is that the more expensive the DVD player the less likely it will play VCD and SVCD.

To say nothing of compatibility with CD-R & CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R etc.! And why? Elementary my dear Watson; the cheap, Far-Eastern DVD players, use mass produced PC components, designed to read anything. That and the fact that the Far-Eastern market doesn't like being being dictated to by Hollywood (notice how many of these don't support region coding, Macrovision or RCE).

Ian G.

I want to thank you all and esp ~jr. and the SF forum. With the DVD Burner (I purchased one that does both + and -) Sucess was achived. Looks and sounds great ... now back to work...
Lee