Pauses between the chapters during playback

[roblobster]

I captured my video w/ Premiere. Chopped segments into separate avi files. Composed my DVD with Encore with each one of those avi files as a chapter. The End Action for each of those clips is to go to the next clip. Why is it when playing back, the screen pauses when going from a clip to the next instead of playing smoothly all the way through the DVD. The pauses are more like a second freeze.

I'm a real newbie at this so don't hesitate to ask or suggest the very basic.

Thanks for your help.

[pijetro]

Are you getting the pausing during Encore Preview, or is it on the settop player?
As an aside, I would personally keep the .AVI file as a single entity, and create chapter points at the points of interest...
That way, playback is seamless. You can create buttons on the main menu linking directly to the chapter points on the main timeline..

[dadrab]

Composed my DVD with Encore with each one of those avi files as a chapter.

To begin, I think there's something you're leaving out. You can't burn .AVI files onto a complieant DVD. I'm surprised you got it to play at all. In fact, I'm surprised you got it to burn.

Are you encoding your files to MPEG first or are you burning a data disc to watch on a DIVX compatible player?

The End Action for each of those clips is to go to the next clip. Why is it when playing back, the screen pauses when going from a clip to the next instead of playing smoothly all the way through the DVD.

There should be a pause between movies, and that's basically what you've done. You've created a disc with a bunch of different short movies on it. You should, instead, take your long movie file and put chapters in with an authoring application. GUIforDVDAuthor is a pretty good free one. I use DVDLab Pro. A little different to use and not so free.

[guns1inger]

You should have a single file (called a title) and add your chapter marks in Encore. Chapters are simply marker points in a title. If you cut your video file up then you get a series of titles, and therefore pauses in between as the titles switch.

To fix this, you need to start again with your original avi files, and this time, no cutting.

[roblobster]

Got it. I watched a short tutorial on Encore and that's how it was done so I thought it was necessary. But I explored some more and discovered the chapter-ing technique as those had replied.

Thanks as always

[roblobster]

Can I work with avi files in GUI for DVD Author or do I need to convert them to mpg first?

[guns1inger]

You have to encode them to DVD compliant video and audio streams first. Very few good authoring tools actually do any encoding for you. Most users of those few good tools that do, still encode before authoring because you get better quality and control that way.

[roblobster]

Oh ok thanks. Encore encodes the avi files automatically compressing them just enough to fit into the media. So I think I'm getting the best quality for a specific amount of time. Isn't that right?

If you encode them before compiling the DVD, how do you know how much to compress? Or do you convert them in the highest mpg setting then compressing just before burning?

[manono]

If you encode them before compiling the DVD, how do you know how much to compress?

You use a bitrate calculator to help you choose a bitrate for the final size you want. You'll also want to take into account the audio size/bitrate, the muxing overhead, and the size of the menus, if any.