P_l thanks for your clear and understandable description of what to do for the NTSC "correction" for the SVCD MPEG-2 template. I suppose I'll only know what to expect for PAL when I purchase it. UK-side MF costs £45.00. I presume I don't have to buy extra plugins - eg like the MPEG-2 for VF - so that I can make this package work.

Am I right in thinking that SVCD [MPEG-2] is palyable by most DVD players? I've been checking out at two major electrical retailers their DVD players with my VCDs. A very valuable experience!

I've got and have used Easy CD Creator Platinum. It's menu creation is a tad opaque. But it is pretty swift at burning VCDs - about 4 to 10 times faster than VF. How fast is MF?

Thanks again

Grazie

A smaller number of DVD players can play SVCD than VCD. I would recommend checking out the compatibility list over at vcdhelp.com

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers.php?DVDnameid=682&Search=Search&list=0#comments

... then making an SVCD and trying it out in the store on a model that interests you, just to be sure before you buy it. The page I gave you above shows the compatibility for the RCA model I have, which is inexpensive and plays SVCDs well, but you can use that compatibility guide to check out the specs on literally hundreds of models.
As for Ulead DVD MovieFactory's speed, it seems OK, certainly faster than TMPGEnc, but the annoying thing is that it only shows a progress bar, not a "time remaining" clock. Oh, and contrary to what you may have read, it comes with MPEG-2, so there's nothing else to buy.

Do you have any experience with the DVD capabilities that are built in to Ulead Video Studio 6 and how it compares to Ulead Movie Factory? I've obtained an upgrade path to Video Studio 6 that would bring its price down to the Movie Factory level.
Which do you think would be the better purchase if you have experience with both?
I already have VF and Pinnacle DV7 for editing, each with their own strengths and weaknesses for different projects. I'm mainly interested in gaining DVD capabilities, but would also use Video Studio 6 if it has any additional editing benefits.
Thanks in advance!

Well…. Success! So far so good.

I bought MovieFactory and installed it about 2 hours ago. I had a play with it and came up against the wishes of MF to keep selecting NTSC! I know that when I got to the install screen, when it asked for a country, it defaulted to UK. Soooooo… I thought that’ll do me. Thank you very much and good night. – But no.

I next uninstalled all of it and when I got to the same country select screen I “forced” the PAL business. And it yup it worked. I’ve produced a DVD on a really cheap CDR. That works on my pc’s DVD player. I have even chosen one of the “Cheesy” backdrops and, and the two “scenes” I selected to be part of the menu show up with the script I wrote AND are clickable – amazing! To think the hours and hours I suffered with Roxio ECDC – no contest.

Phew…. I am going to be a real bore now and do some other stuff. Oh yes I selected the High Quality DVD format to convert.

P_l thanks, truly thanks a lot. I need to produce a on DVD format some footage. I just need to convince myself it’ll worked on that DVD player. I suppose because I’ve created a DVD it should work – but it’ll probably be down to the “quality” of the media I use.

Yes I understand about the lack of timing information – the moving bar just doesn’t cut it.

Did you say there was an update patch to MF? I’ve got version 1.0.

Best regards

Grazie

OK Grazie here is my experience. I beat ULEAD to death trying to do Svcd's and I still find VF to render BETTER. ULEAD was faster, but had much more jerkyness in the SVCD, plus "pixelization" (Is that a word?, it should be these days) issues. I tried about 6 variations in ULEAD, something SF does NOT let you do for SVCD's. In my version I recall the stock SVCD option was correct? I did make a new one like P_l mentions, but it still did not seem as good as VF. I use ULEAD 100% of the time for Burning! As a burn tool it has been fast and reliable. That was worth the $$ alone. Nero was much higher priced, and ROxio? Well, some of us have Roxio wounds that have not healed yet :0 On the player? I have 2. The Pioneer Dv-444 and the DaeWoo.(6000 I think) The Daewoo plays about anything I give it, The Pioneer a little more touchy, but the pioneer does a surpurb job with MUSIC MP3's! It has a random which most units cant do with MP3's. the_ripper

Grazie,
First, get rid of those cheesy background pictures by selecting your own, which MF lets you do, as well as selecting your own background music (MP3s are supported).

Also, if you are burning DVD files onto a CD, you are in fact making a miniDVD format, which may give you some playback compatibility problems:

http://www.vcdhelp.com/minidvd.htm

Finally, if, like the_ripper, you prefer VF's encoding, then import that into MF to then author and burn. Experiment and see what you like best. Have fun!

BTW, I'm glad you succeeded in beating it into doing PAL:)


soundguy63, I'm not 100% sure about this, but I think I remember reading the VS plug-in is essentially the same as MF.

Thanks for the advice. Yup, I guessed as much about the backgrounds. I suppose I can pull in my own bmp/jpg etc creations?

Is there an upgrade to version 1.0 to 1.2? I've had a cursory scan at the MF site and can't see one. I'll email their Support site for their views on the matter.

SO THAT's what a miniDVD is! I didn't know that, thanks. I'll check out the vcdhelp site - thanks for that.

On the VF to MF options, obviously this means I can convert my newly edited DV-AVIs in VF and then convert using VF to create an mpg then import that into MF.

Okay, in your opinion and experience with MF, what's the optimum setting in VF for these mpegs? I suppose what I'm after and saying, what is the maximum "footage:time" for maximum quality - without, at present, having to pay out the current DVD recoding/writing box, to get a full blown DVD. Althought the prices are dropping - just read of a DVD recorder for less than 600GBp - at present, in the UK, they are still a little expensive and the agreed formats have still not settled down. So p_l: P_lease give me a clue for your recipe for SVCD/VCD template.

On the "having fun" front, I created in VF a small "Starter Film" for MF consisting of a Scrolling credit information "crawl", informing the viewer that if they can see what they are reading then all is well and the rest of the DVD should work; this was set against a looping colourful screen texture; all this was sat against one of VF's Cool Jazz tunes that came with my VF pacakge.

Is there a way to change the fonts and formating for the "text" used on the preset Menus? I guess I could make a jpg with the text created elsewhere and "pre-postion" this so that it marries up with the location of the preset menu boxes - what do you think? Oh another thought, I know the menu background can't be animated, but do you think an animated GIF would do it? Only a thought... but if it's possble, woah!

VF and MF what a Killer Kouple!

Grazie

I haven't played around so much myself with customizing templates; I've mostly been using their preset ones, with the notable exception of the corrected SVCD template I describe above. But you can make your own templates if you wish by going into the Toolbox/Toolbox Menu and setting the specs you want for your own templates. You just might want to check out what your player can handle in terms of higher bitrates (XVCD/XSVCD)first over at vcdhelp.com's DVD player compatibility guide.

I've also felt limited by MF's text options, but your idea of making a background picture of your text and positioning it sounds good. You'd probably have to make it JPG or BMP though, because as far as I can see, GIFs (animated or not) don't seem to be supported, though I haven't tried it out myself just to check. Pity, that could have been a cool trick.

http://www.ulead.com/dmf/dmf_featurebenefit.pdf

I've just rendered an 8 minute AVI clip using MF SVCD - it took 53 minutes. Is this what I can expect? The clip was directly captured into MF.

Also I'm still searching for the Holy Grail of quality for an SVCD. Still a bit "blocky". I'm a PAL user.

The render time sounds about right, though I've never really timed a render exactly. I usually just leave and come back later. For me it's like doing the laundry; I don't sit there watching it progress, timer in hand.

As for better SVCD quality, try making an XSVCD (MPEG2) template with a frame size of 720x576 (for PAL) or 720x480 (for NTSC) and a bitrate as high as the compatibilty guide at vcdhelp.com says your stand-alone player can handle, with the caveat that the guide, based on user reports, may not be 100% accurate.

Thanks p_l.

Nope I don't sit there with a timer, but I've taken the attitude with this NLE & DVD authoring lark to keep records of what I do. Thanks for the format suggestions but, yes, as you say I've looked previously on the VCDHelp web and see that XSVCD limits the scope of players.

Oh yes, there is a sub-menu when you get to "Determine Output Options" to look at something called "Advanced SVCD Options". It comes up with "Legacy......"; "SVCD standard compliant...." - which leads onto "Custom" with "MPEGAV" and "ENTRYSVd" etc etc. P_l what's all that about?

I have found that using the "Corrected for PAL SVCD" - as you kindly advised, which does work, I can't seem to be able to "trigger" menu scenes and numbers. I click on a scene and the SVCD won't go any further on a standalone DVD player. It's okay on my pc. Can you throw any light on this?

At the SVCD section they talk about altering the combined ADR and VDR, and that together they shouldn't be more than 2750kbps. Have you had any experience in "juggling" these parameters? By dropping the ADR and picking up on the VDR, do you think I could achieve a better quality without me needing to produce a less than compatible XSVCD? Or have I got it wrong?

I've located some MF these tips/discussions at:

http://www.ulead.com/dmf/tips.htm


- As you can tell I am really trying to "squeeze" more out of this package, and when I've done it I will feel that the combined forces of Video Factory and U-Lead could potentially make the difference for me.

There's an interesting U-Lead Users forum at "Web Board" I've registered with. Have a look see what you think they are saying about the various Data Rates. Interested?

Grazie

I hope to be posting a quick comparison between Video Factory and Ulead Movie Studio vers.6 with its built-in mpeg (and authoring?) capabilities in the near future. I bought vers.4 nearly for free and it can be upgraded to vers.6 for the same cost as buying Movie Factory. Havent even installed it yet though, so details to follow later...