DVD-Authoring software, migranse, and misery

Factual Questions
1

Okay, I got roped into making some DVDs from some raw videos that a friend took of a gospel music festival.

Not a big deal, I’ll just throw them into one of the two pieces of DVD software I have (DVD Workshop 2.0 and DVD Moviefactory 2se), have them crank away rendering overnight, and burn the things and be done with it.

[wayne]Shyeah, right![/wayne]

Anyways, here’s what I’ve got going on.

I’ve got my source files. I’ve got a complete set in Quicktime and a complete set in .ASF.

I prefer Workshop over MovieFactory, mainly because it can support both formats, and gives me a bit more power in the menus. However, MovieFactory lets me easily burn a .ISO of the movies. Supposedly Workshop lets you do this, but, well, I can’t see it.

But here’s the biggest headaches.

First of all, I’ve been running them through AVOne AVI Converter to convert them to .AVI. The reason I’m doing this is because I just got Workshop, and MovieFactory can’t handle .ASF or Quicktime.

Now, AVOne can convert to DVD, SVCD, VCD, MPEG1, MPEG2, and AVI. However, it seems that no matter what I do, both Ulead programs want to render them for the DVD.

There any way around that?

Second, and much biggest, is something that makes absolutely no sense. Here’s what happens.

Open MovieFactory, select AVI files 1-20 and add them to the project. Wait a second for it to load them. Total size of my DVD is now about 3.7GB.

Open Workshop, select AVI files 1-20 and add them to the project. Wait a second for it to load them. Total size of my DVD is now 44.1GB. Not a typing error.

W.T.F?

How is that even the tiniest bit possible? Same files going in, supposedly same format coming out.

Anyone with any experience have any brilliant ideas?

Another thing I was wondering about, since this may have to be done again, is what the quickest way, time-wise (money is not much of a factor with this guy unless we’re getting nuts, here), to go from camera to DVD?

-Joe

2

Bumpsies

Id be interested in hearing solutions myself. I dont have these problems YET, but I am installing a DVD burner this weekend and would like to tranfer files from the digital camcorder to a DVD.

3

I’ve been doing a lot of DVd authoring lately and I’ve learned as I went.

Unfortunately, I don’t use the programs that you are using, so I can’t offer much of an insight to your problem.

Off the top of my head, it may be that the second applicaiton is using a much higher bit rate when converting the video than the first app. Look under preferences, there may be an option to control the bit rate of the output.

I use TmpgEnc to encode my video. It works like a charm, it’s easy to use, and I have COMPLETE control over the output. You may want to look into it.

To author the DVD I use DVD Author from the same company (Pegasys systems IIRC).

You may want to take a look at: http://www.dvdrhelp.com/

They may have tutorials for the apps you are using.

4

Yet another reason why things go better when you use a Mac.

Or, “How to do a month-long DVD project in 90 minutes.” :wink:

5

I also recommend www.dvdrhelp.com they have everthing you will ever need for converting/buring video.

I would suggest using TMPGEnc and convert your videos using the DVD template. You should be able to generate DVD compatable files that do NOT need to be re-encoded by your authoring programs. I don’t know anything about the other, but DVD Workshop has an option to not convert compatible video under Prefernces or Options. Usually, I let the Authoring program do the coversions for me, but when you’re dealing with different formats, I’d suggest to get everthing coverted beforehand.

6

Ahh…thank god for Apple.

Why, if not for them, then the version of Quicktime Pro I purchased to work with .mov files couldn’t have given me an error.

Well, that’s not so impressive. Errors happen all the time.

Exaclty. But this error was special. This error returned zero results when put into Google. That’s right. Zero. As in, less than one. And that includes searching both the web and usenet.

Note that it’s not that searching didn’t help me resolve my problem. Instead, that error is mentioned nowhere on the internet.

Strangely, I could edit that .mov file with all sorts of other software I got after that.

Apple can eat me.

-Joe

7

rjung and Merijeek, let’s keep Mac vs. Windows comments out of this thread please.

Address the OP.

Thank you.

-xash
General Questions Moderator

8

Oh wait, you are the OP! :sheepish grin:

9

Yeah, take that, mod!

Besides, he started it!

And most importantly, I think the thread is pretty much dead. I will be intestigating things at www.dvdrhelp.com, though. At least we managed to produce that for me in this thread. :slight_smile:

-Joe

10

Imagine that, the board ate my reply.

Since some people were interested, here’s what I learned in 2 weeks in DVD Hell.

Use TMPGEnc Plus for your encoding and TMPGEnc DVD Author for the actual DVD creation.

It’s $100 for the two pieces of software together,and it’s totally superior to anything out there.

And Ulead software is complete and utter shit. It wasted about 8 days of that DVD hell I suffered through…and it was totally the software’s fault.

Oh, and Apple Quicktime Pro can still blow me.

-Joe

11

Gotta love those two apps :wink:

If you havenm’t yet, I recommend you also get the AC3 codec plug in.

12

Don’t know how this got to the top of the board, but I just want to echo:

“Use TMPGEnc Plus for your encoding and TMPGEnc DVD Author for the actual DVD creation.”

Do an internet search for Pegasys Software. You can download a working version of the software, and it only $69 to register it. Will also write ISO files, which will make the DVD the most compatible possible.