Some newbie questions

[spoonmasta]

hi, i have a few newbie questions...i did a few searches, but had no luck.

1. With EP and LP mode on a DVD-R...how much worse will the picture quality be if i use extended mode?

2. Is there any way to make animated button pointer? for example i want a star to point to the button (or text) that is currently highlighted, but i also want the star to spin at the same time. (not sure if that made much sense... 8) )

3. Lastly, can anyone suggest a good video editor program for the PC? i used Adobe after effect to try to make a good intro for my dvd, but the files rendered from AE are either bad quality, or HUGE!

thanks in advance

[erayboul]

On a set-top DVD recorder such as the Panasonic DMR-HS2, its EP and LP (which I believe are 4 hours and 6 hours, respectively), the quality won't be too great. A 4-hour recording requires an average bitrate that is about 2250 kbps. Many people on this site would likely say that anything below 5000 kbps is getting into the marginal quality area. Six hour recordings require an even lower bitrate, hence lower quality. I've recorded a couple of off-the-air programs in the EP mode. They were watchable but definitely had some compression artifacts and macroblocking especially during higher motion scenes.

In regards to your second question, its sounds like you are talking about DVD authoring on the computer. Some of the mid-level programs let you use menu subpictures which can be stars or whatever you design, but I'm not sure if these subpictures can be animated.

Question 3: I use Adobe Premiere 6.5 for video editing. In my opinion it is an excellent editor. It also includes an MPEG1/2 encoder. I'm not sure if they kept the encoder in there when they released Premiere Pro. Incidentally, on Adobe After Effects, what type of file are you rendering your compositions to. In terms of MPEG2 filesize, a video clip should be basically the same size regardless of where it came from. I have a copy of After Effects, but I'm just starting to learn how to use it. I do know that there are setting for resolution (full, half, quarter, and so on), and quality levels (best, draft, etc.). Make sure that those are set properly when you render. You might want to check out creativecow.net. They have discussion forums on many of the Adobe products. Of course, adobe.com has its discussion forums, too.

[Sparkplus]

1.-Try burning DVDs with both configurations and play them to see if you like the results. Consider VBR when compressing to Mpeg to save disk space avoiding lower resolutions otherwise go CBR.

2.-Do not know
but you can check out dv.com
or wrigleyvideo.com
or forums for your authoring application.

3.-I agree about Premiere, but there are cheaper poducts with decent results, check out wrigleyvideo.com for very good tutorials.
Remember DV means huge files about 13G/hr of video and better for editing than Mpeg (some editors do not accept Mpeg directly).

hope this helps.