Ulead Workshop- questions

[INFRATOM]

1- DVD plays the movie first , how can I author to play menu 1st , what setting have I changed [ where it says play this first is the first frame I don't have option for menu]
2- putting 3 vcd's together what is the best bit rate? I chose 352X480 original resolution 4500 bit rate came out exactly right. I want some opinions.
3- How can I normalize to sound level of commercial movie dvd's so when I play mine don't have to adjust the vol. My vol is louder than commercial dvd's
Thanks

[GeorgeW]

1) don't put a video in the first box that says "First Play" (leave it blank -- it's for videos like a Copyright Warning that's supposed to play immediately when the disc is inserted in the dvd player).

2) how did you get the mpeg videos off the VCD's? I wouldn't re-encode them at all -- they fit within the DVD Specifications, except that the audio will need to be re-encoded to 48khz (the program should do that for you).

3) You would need an audio application for normalizing. Ulead's DVD MovieFactory has a "Normalize" option, but I don't think they included that in DVD Workshop.

[Richard_G]

1) In the Edit screen don't drop your video file into the First Play box, drop it into the first Title box. First play is for anything that you want to play before the menu, such as a copyright notice or title clip. I use First Play to run a title sequence and then go into the menu when that has run.

2) That sounds about right. The resolution is half D1 NTSC so you can run at half the bitrate with negligable loss in quality (the only loss will be a slight softness to the video caused by the reduction in resolution, not the bitrate). This is the equivalent of a full resolution frame size (720 x 480) at 9000kbs. Depending on the footage, you could probably even drop down to 3500 before any artifacts get too bad.

3) In the Edit screen again, click the Audio tab at the top left of the screen. Under the list of audio tracks is a icon showing a speaker, next to it is a drop down which brings up a volume slider. Adjust the level in there.

[Richard_G]

Looks like it took George less time to type his reply than it did me. At least we're both giving the same answer though!

[INFRATOM]

Thanks guys for such a quick reply, I got all my answers , on bit rate I took a lucky guess it came out right but your explanation made me understand. Sound I selected mpg, I did all these in DVD Workshop thats why I love it, it almost does everything.
GeorgeW: I copied the dat files and renamed them to mpg.

[GeorgeW]

If you copied the VCD's .dat files, and renamed them to .mpg, then they should be 352x240 (or 352x288), and their bitrates should be closer to ~1150kbps (for standard VCD's). Unless you made xVCD's using a higher bitrate.

As long as you don't tell DVD WS to re-encode the video, it should use them "asis" (as long as the bitrate <= 1856kbps -- max bitrate for mpeg1 for DVD).

[INFRATOM]

I can't be sure I think I checked the attrib said it was 352X480 but the format was vcd , at first I didn't change anything and the size was too big =15gigs,when I changed the settings it got 4.2 gigs with sound=mpg & bit rate 4500. when I go home I will check the resolution I think I chose that as intial project too.