Which render for Vaio Click-to-DVD

hbwerner wrote on 10/6/2004, 12:15 PM
My Sony Vaio came with Click-to-DVD for DVD burning. It's a good program, with edit capabilities and great menus with video clips of the menu points. Which rendering is best to feed into it -- AVI or MEPG-2? I know it works with AVI, but it spends a long time re-doing the video to convert to DVD (no problem - I let it churn through it at night). I tried installing Sonic MyDVD, but couldn't get it to connect with the VAIO burner, and had to uninstall it to get Click-to-DVD to connect again.

Comments

gogiants wrote on 10/6/2004, 4:26 PM
At least in my humble opinion, which format will depend more on how you plan to do your work than about which will yield higher quality.

Rendering to MPEG-2 before DVD authoring will definitely save you time when creating the DVD image for burning. I don't know how Click-To-DVD works, but if it isn't smart enough to use an earlier prepared image when creating a 2nd copy of the same DVD, then this is something to consider.

Then again, rendering to MPEG-2 ahead of time means you'll have to do it again if, after burning your DVD, you find things that you want to change in your original movie. (That happens to me all the time.)

Anyway, a bit of a circular argument, but assuming the render quality to MPEG-2 is about the same in "Click-To-DVD" as from Movie Studio, then you might want to think of it in workflow terms rather than quality terms.
IanG wrote on 10/7/2004, 12:39 AM
>Then again, rendering to MPEG-2 ahead of time means you'll have to do it again if, after burning your DVD, you find things that you want to change in your original movie. (That happens to me all the time.)

And to me! But it's going to be re-rendered anyway, so you don't lose any thing by rendering before the DVD authoring stage. I also find I want to make changes to the DVD menus etc - having the video already rendered as MPEG2 can save a huge amount of time. I sometimes make "compilation" DVDs for relatives, and there, having the videos already in MPEG2 is a real boon.

Ian G.
Sarasdad wrote on 10/7/2004, 4:01 AM
I just made 17 dvds and I just imported avi from M S to Click to DVD and everything was great.
hbwerner wrote on 10/7/2004, 4:41 AM
Ian, Is your comment strictly on the time it takes for the movie to go through the conversion to DVD (faster for MPEG2 than AVI)? Or did you find it easier to work on the menu in the MPEG2 format? If so, what program are you using to make the menu? Click-to-DVD has the capability, but it's a real art because you can't (at least I haven't found a way) to expand the time line from a couple of inches to pick out the desired points.
Bryan
IanG wrote on 10/8/2004, 1:25 AM
Bryan, my comment was purely on the time involved. If you only compile the DVD once (whether to HD or the DVD itself) it shouldn't matter which order you do things in. My experience though is that I'll burn a DVD (to DVD+RW), play it on my TV and spot things I don't like. Recompiling the DVD from MPEG2 only takes a couple of minutes, whereas having to re-render an avi could take hours. And then I start again because I spot another problem! I don't mind spending half an hour or so tweaking menu layouts, changing fonts or whatever to get it right, but it's not practical if I have to spend days at it!

I use DVD-Lab for my authoring, so working with avi isn't an option (DVD-Lab's author agrees with me!). I don't think there are any practical issues around when you add chapter points unless you want very accurate positioning. A chapter point has to be at an I frame, which means you can "only" get the chapter point accurate to about half a second, given a normal GOP structure! If you're setting the chapter points in the avi, it can be rendered such that your chapter points are I frames. I'm sorry, but I've no experience with Click-to-DVD.

Ian G.