My experience with DVD authoring

[Chris Blount]

Well, I've been quite busy lately. A few weeks ago I purchased a DVD writer for my computer. It's a Phillips DVD+R/RW series 200. I picked it up at Best Buy for $250. The drive works very well and does a great job.

Now the software to author DVD's is a whole other story. Let me start by saying that not all software is created equal. Some of the packages that come bundled with the drives work fine but are not all that great for creating feature packed DVD's. First, if you want Dolby Digital or Anamorphic widescreen video, you will need much higher quality software. Bundled software will only encode in PCM sound which uses up a lot more disc space.

Example: DVD encoded with 75 minutes of high quality video and Dolby Digital 2.0 sound, about 4.5 GB.

DVD encoded with 75 minutes of high quality video and PCM sound, about 5.1 GB. Won't fit so only about 60 minutes of video will fit.

Also I've discovered that MPEG-2 encoder quality varies greatly. The cheap encoders that come with bundled software work okay but pixelation is obvious even during high quality authoring projects.

So, after a couple of very full days fiddling with the software that came with the drive, I decided I needed something better because I wanted Dolby Digital and also needed a way to flag the DVD's for anamorphic video since all of my home movies and video projects are shot that way. With the DVD's properly flagged, any DVD player will format the picture appropriately for 4X3 letterbox or full anamorphic on a 16X9 monitor.

There were many software choices to choose from ranging from $500 to $1000. There is one package I picked up called DVDit by Sonic Solutions. It's a $500 package but managed to get it off E-Bay for much cheaper. It's not the greatest software to use but it supports Dolby Digital and anamorphic widescreen. Even with this software, the MPEG-2 encoder really sucked and was very slow taking over 12 hours to encode 75 minutes of video.

So I went searching again and found an excellent MPEG-2 encoder at a very reasonable price. It's called TMPGenc http://www.tmpgenc.net . They have a 30 day trial up for download and after 30 days it costs $50. VERY reasonable for the kind of quality it produces and the features contained in the program.

Using the MPEG-2 encoder along with DVDit for authoring, I am now producing some pretty darn good 75 minute DVD's with Dolby and widescreen video. Longer running times can be done but at the expense of picture quality which, to tell you the truth, can be easily overcome by tweaking the encoder.

Oh, and there is one other thing that the software vendors don't tell you about. Creating DVD-Videos that will play on ALL players require a compatibility bit setting so the DVD player knows it's a DVD-ROM disc. Some DVD players will not play some home authored discs because this bit setting is not correct. You can see more about this here: http://www.dvdplusrw.org/resources/bitsettings.html

It took me a few tries to get it right but now my DVD's play on all of my DVD players with no problems at all. The blank media isn't an issue like some people have warned. It seems to be all based on making sure that the DVD is authored with the correct bit setting.

So, my procedure is, capture the video to an AVI file. Run the AVI file through the MPEG encoder. Import the resulting MPEG file(s) into the authoring software. Create the menus and chapter stops. Choose "Create Disc" in the software and off it goes. The entire process takes about 12 hours (varies with the speed of your computer). During the creation process, the software extracts the audio from the MPEG files to create the Dolby Digital tracks then re-multiplexes them back in place of the PCM bit stream.

My summation: When you buy a DVD burner and want to start authoring DVD's, be prepared for a slow learning curve. It takes time with trial and error. Stock up on DVD Re-Writeable discs so you don't waste precious DVD Writeables at $3.50 a pop. Be prepared to purchase more software with a stand-alone MPEG encoder. And above all, have fun. Once you get the process down, you will love the results.

[Mike123abc]

I use tmpgenc all the time, it is a great encoder. I have also had good results with the Ligos encoder. Ligos is not as high quality, but it can do faster than real time encoding... Good for quick DVDs. You can get it on special every now and then for under $100.

[djlong]

What are you using for video capture? I've been buying some hardware in hopes of converting old Hi8 camcorder tapes to digital. I've got an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon that I've done a little video capturing with, nothing huge, but that's going to be the main 'input vector' when I eventually buy a DVD writer. The ATI has the advantage of doing hardware compression to MPEG-2 on the fly - seems to be ok but I haven't really put it through it's paces.

Then there's the Happauge box for $200 that also does compression - was thinking about that for the other computer.

[Mike123abc]

I use the Dazzle Hollywood DVD-Bridge that takes composite or Svideo and connects via firewire to my PC. The files it makes are the same as a DV camcorder. Very convient. I also use my DV camcorder.

I prefer to do my own compression in software than be stuck with the quality that most hardware compression uses. Unless you want to pay many thousands of dollars to use the same compression boards that a Hollywood studio would use, I would stick with software compression.

[gcutler]

For most of my authoring, I don't want to spend 12 hours total to get 75 minutes of data (most of the time it is just to get the info off the VHS tapes before they get worse.) So for those I stick with the Dazzle Complete DVD that came with my capture device. To record 75 minutes would take about 180 Minutes.

But for those special authorings, the default SW isn't very good for encoding. I ended up getting TMPGenc for another reason, but it is defianately the way to go if you want to devote more than minimal effort to getting the data on DVD.

I've been wondering about those devices/video cards that compress to MPEG-2 on the fly. Are they any worse than using the bundled SW like DVDIt or Complete DVD? If you aren't allowed to use 3rd party encoders like TMPGenc, then I guess it can be limiting (not for most of my recordings). Do the Encode on the fly give you the same amount of options as the bundled sw?

[Chris Blount]

Originally posted by djlong
What are you using for video capture? I've been buying some hardware in hopes of converting old Hi8 camcorder tapes to digital. I've got an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon that I've done a little video capturing with, nothing huge, but that's going to be the main 'input vector' when I eventually buy a DVD writer. The ATI has the advantage of doing hardware compression to MPEG-2 on the fly - seems to be ok but I haven't really put it through it's paces.


I have been using a firewire connection from my Digital camcorder and getting excellent results. I have not tested the ATI you are talking about but is should work great for the actual capture to a DV AVI file. The only thing that might happen is you might get a few more artifacts in the picture since you are transferring from an analog source like S-Video or Composite. Also, be wary of the built-in in MPEG-2 encoder. It might not give the quality you want especially if you are archiving high resolution images from Hi8. I agree with Mike123abc, a software encoder is definitely the way to go if you don't want to spend tons of money for a good hardware encoder.

Like I said before, TMPGenc can be tweaked to fit 2 hours on one disc. The difference in quality is small especially if the final product will be viewed on the average sized TV. Blow it up to big screen size and that's a different story. I hate being able to only fit 75 minutes of quality video on one disc but I know in the long run, it will be a good idea especially since these videos will probably be transferred to a new medium sometime down the road (i.e blue-ray). I would suggest that if transferring regular VHS video, the 2 hour limit should work fine but when doing high quality like Hi8 or Digital Video, the 75 minute mode would be best.

One thing I didn't mention in my original post is that hard drive space is also very important. I have only about 40 GB devoted to video production. Believe it or not, that fills up very fast just producing one 75 minute DVD. Between the initial capture to AVI and the editing process using U-Lead Video Studio, I suck up close to 35 GB. Looks like I will be getting much more hard drive space.

[Mark Holtz]

I'm going to start playing around with video capture and authoring with my GeForce 4600 card, including burning to a VCD.

[Mike123abc]

Well the true way to get 2+ hours on a DVD is to get a Dolby Digital encoder. I use the ReelDVD one. There is also DVDit PE that will do it. The audio goes from 1.5mbit/sec to 384kbit/sec or less if you want it to. That extra mbit/sec really adds up.

[Chris Blount]

Originally posted by Mike123abc
Well the true way to get 2+ hours on a DVD is to get a Dolby Digital encoder. I use the ReelDVD one. There is also DVDit PE that will do it. The audio goes from 1.5mbit/sec to 384kbit/sec or less if you want it to. That extra mbit/sec really adds up. I am using DVDit PE to get Dolby Digital. It works great and uses up much less room. Besides, it feels cool to be able to actually encode DVD's that way. :)