Afew Newbie Questions

[Zeppy]

First off I'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has authored the numerous help files/guides on this site. They have been incredibly helpful!

Let me give you my rundown before I ask my newbie questions. I've got a ton of misc video files in avi, and various mpg formats. I intended originally to burn all of these to one DVD, but because of conversion work, I found that would be an enormous task. I've downloaded the TMPeng (I think that's the name) encoder and have used it a couple of times with good results. I've also successfully burned a couple of VCDs using Nero and MyDVD. With Nero, I find it tends to hang a lot when doing the conversions, whereas MyDVD seemed to work perfectly.

Now here is what I need to know:

1) I burned the VCD's with menus but discovered that my DVD player could care less about that menu. It brings it up when I insert the CD, but I can't navigate. I discovered that the DVD player has it's own VCD menu system to select items so I'm just using that. Is there a way to get those VCD menus to work in my DVD player, or should I just stick with the DVD's built-in functions? (It's a new Sony DVD player. Don't know much more than that about it's specs.)

2) As I stated, I have a number of video files to put on VCD. The problem is that I haven't found a method of re-encoding them without doing one at a time. I've looked at the batch function of the TMP encoder and I think that will work, but will work well enough for me to set it up and just let it run on it's own? Also, there is an addon for the TMP encoder so you can load multiple files at once into the app, though it seems that they all need to have the same source formatting. Is that the case? Does that mean I should just manually create a large batch file to execute later?

3) If you had to convert 100 files of varying formats to put on DVD or VCD, how would you (as an "expert") go about it? Am I on the right track?

4) Is it practical to attempt to burn all of those files onto one DVD or am I better off just sticking with VCD for now?

5) The final thing I want to add is that I don't have truly "unlimited" time on the system to just allow for processing. Taking an hour or two to convert and burn one VCD isn't practical for my situation. So am I correct in thinking that I should convert all the files to a consistent format overnight one night, then burn as I have free time?

Sorry if these questions are dumber than normal. I looked through a lot of help guides and didn't find specific answers to these questions, but if I missed something, don't hesitate to smack me around a little.

[Megahurts]

Zeppy

To answer your 3rd question (not an expert) is to use Adobe Premier 6.5 and TMPGEnc DVD-Author. Premier 6.5 will accept and mix MPEG and AVI formats. If you have WMV or ASF clips, they must be converted to MPEG or AVI befor using them.

Enter each clip to the time line. If you want, you can edit each clip or add transitions. Eport the movie as a compliant DVD MPEG2 file.

With DVD-Author, load the movie file in the 1st track and make chapters where you want. Make a menu and choose display chapters menu only.

Since you have 100 clips, you might make several shorter movies with Premier by catagory, etc. and make a title menu and chapter menu with DVD-Author. Use add track for each movie.

Hope this helps,

Chas

[sacajaweeda]

5) The final thing I want to add is that I don't have truly "unlimited" time on the system to just allow for processing. Taking an hour or two to convert and burn one VCD isn't practical for my situation. So am I correct in thinking that I should convert all the files to a consistent format overnight one night, then burn as I have free time?

You're going to have to deal with each file individually. Depending on your source files, if they vary from file to file, you're going to be pretty busy. 100 files in one night would be a pretty impressive feat if you could pull it off. Bit rates, aspect ratios, frame size, formats, etc, all come into play here and have to be dealt with on a file-by-file basis. You can't just load a bunch of different files into your encoder and fire it off using the same settings for each. You're going to have to work at it.

[K(c)offee]

You could break them up into groups. Say clips from one website would mostlikely be about the same. So you could use the same settings for all of them. Then encode a set a night.

[Zeppy]

OK...good info. Now let me check on this...

Last night I loaded all the files into TMPEng individually. From what I saw, the app adjusted to each files specs, then all I had to do was just keep adding them and putting them in the dump locale. Now the batch is ready to go from what I can tell.

The question is was I correct in assuming that as I loaded each file, TMP was adjusting properly for that file? It seemed to be, so I think all is good, but let me know if that doesn't make sense.