What quality is lost when burning at less than 100% quality?

[pooty13901]

I am using Pinnacle Studio and I want to put 1.5 hours on a DVD-R instead of a DVD+R DL which I would normally do. the reason for this is that I am needing a large number of this movie to sell to the general public. The DVD+R DL costs a lot to have replicated and I also know a lot of players will not play that format. i figure I can burn to DVD-R instead, lose some quality, and then have the thing duplicated for less money. Most players will play the DVD-R. Pinnacle tells me that I will be getting 65% quality by fitting 1.5 hours onto a DVD-R. How does this really translate to what the finished product looks like. Can I expect grainines, loss of color, etc?
Any info would be great and thanks.

Mike Hammond

[mats.hogberg]

1.5 hours on a DVD5 is what I'd call top quality (provided good source material + good encoder). >6500 kbps video should be more than sufficent for most content.

/Mats

[jman98]

Mike - Please ignore what Pinnacle tells you. As Mats said, 1.5 hours on a single layer DVD-R should allow for > 6500 Kpbs video and that is really enough. If you have access to better encoders such as CCE or Procoder you can get excellent quality out of even lower bitrates.

I will warn you that since you are apparently not using commercially pressed DVD discs but mass replicated DVD-Rs, you should expect some people, at least a few, to bitch and complain that "your stupid DVD won't play on my player!" even though there is nothing wrong with the disc. For fewest problems, you really need to use a place that can press DVDs instead of using DVD-Rs, but I can't help you to find such places nor can I tell you how much they will charge.

[FulciLives]

The more you put on a DVD Video the less the bitrate and the less the bitrate the more chance you have of having compression artifacts.

I'm talking about what is traditionally referred to as "macroblocking" and/or "mosquito noise".

However 1 1/2 hours should still give you a fairly high bitrate and 65% doesn't really sound "right" to me.

Chances are Pinnacle Studio is giving you LPCM WAV audio. That takes up a lot of room. You would be better off to go with AC-3 audio at a bitrate of 256kbps or at the very most 320kbps (the higher the bitrate the better).

See with AC-3 audio you reduce the size of the audio file drastically (vs using LPCM WAV audio) which still give quality audio while leaving a lot of room for the video ... thus you can "maximize" your video bitrate.

You really shouldn't use Pinnacle Studio to create your MPEG-2 video file. That is best left to a dedicated encoder such as CCE or Procoder or TMPGEnc Plus or hell even the freeware HCenc is probably a better choice.

As for the AC-3 audio file creation ... you can use ffmpegGUI.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
Damn I type slow ... when I started this there were no responses yet heh

[machf]

You really shouldn't use Pinnacle Studio to create your MPEG-2 video file. That is best left to a dedicated encoder such as CCE or Procoder or TMPGEnc Plus or hell even the freeware HCenc is probably a better choice.

Yes, it's better to let Pinnacle Studio create an uncompressed AVI file (or one compressed with a DV or MJPEG codec at maximum quality if you don't have enough space on your HDD) and use that as the source for a proper MPEG-2 encoder. I'm assuming you're using Pinnacle Studio 9 because you need to do lots of editing and transition effects in the first place, otherwise there's really no need to.

[pooty13901]

Thanks very much for the insight. I hear what you are saying jman98 about pressing vs. duplicating. However, my money pockets are not deep enough right now to go with the replication processing (pressing) but believe me I would love to be able. Prices are a little too much for me as a start-up producer.
Just for the sake of telling it, what I've decided to do is reopen all my completed movies and break them in half so instead of 2hrs, 15mins on one DVD+R DL, there will be a little over an hour on two DVD-Rs. I will have them duplicated to get a product out of the house. This will be cheaper than replicating the DL DVDs and make for better customer compatibility issues by selling DVD-Rs as opposed to DVD+R DLs. In the future I hope to have enough income to replicate all my discs.

Mike Hammond

[jmkeuning]

How does this really translate to what the finished product looks like. Can I expect grainines, loss of color, etc?

Burn a DVD and look at watch it?

Author the DVD to the hard drive, use DVDShrink to shrink it. Take a look at it.

The movies that were DL that I put on a single layer look JUST FINE!

[mpiper]

This may be slightly off topic, but why are you using a hobby-level editor to produce retail videos?

If you are creating DVDs to sell, I would recomend either upgrading to Pinnacle Liquid, or my preferred, Adobe Premiere. The sales alone should pay for the upgrade, and the improved quality of the encoded video will be visible to all your customers. If you are thinking of going into business with Video, look at Adobe Production Suite, which provides the full set of programs to produce professional level products. (I use CCE on top of that, but I like it better than Mainconcept's encoder)

There are also a number of free programs that are better than Pinnacle Studio, although each program is dedicated to a single piece of the video process, so you would need multiple programs. (BeSweet for audio conversion, HCEnc for mpeg2 encoding, MuxMan for multiplexing, etc.) It is scary when free programs are better than a retail program. But the skill required to use all of them to create a finished product shows the professionalism of the editor.

But then Studio was only created for the home user who wanted to take their home videos and make them watchable on TV through DVD. (Not 'Viewable', I am referring to emotional reaction-not physical ability, "watchable" )

I am not impuning your choice of video editing software, Studio is a good editor for the market it is designed for. My problem is that too many people buy a computer, find out how to do basic editing, then start a little home-based business at cut-rate prices, with cut-rate products, which hurt the professionals who have to conduct business in the same geographical areas as these wannabes. People choose a "friend of a friend" who can make DVDs for cheap rates, "taking bread out of the mouths of the children" of the professionals who don't get the business because the customer didn't know there was a difference until afterwards. And most will settle with the low-end product, since they already spent their money.

If you are trying to go professional, set your prices at realistic rates (Hours per week X desired pay rate / products produced within that week + cost of equipment to produce product) and start at that point. Starting cheap will cost you sales when you try to raise your rates from the "intro special."

Just my thoughts.

[mpiper]

BTW,

Film Companies (Universal, Sony, etc.) Use single-sided DVDs for film only DVDs all the time. It is all the extras and such that take the extra space. A Menu, Scene selection menu, and the movie should easily fit with fantastic quality if a quality Mpeg2 encoder is used. (with AC3 Audio of course.) You only need a DL DVD for 2 hours if the encoder is below standard. For a temporary fix, for budget, try HCEnc. It is almost as good as CCE, but free, and has multiple quantizing matrices, so you can tweak the file size and image quality.

for a DVD-R or DVD+R, you should be able to go up to 2 1/2 hours without a single problem. With a quality encoder, you can fit over 3 hours as well, but at that point you can really see the difference between encoder quality. I wouldn't try HCEnc for that, and I'd worry about CCE Basic. Only CCE SP, (or maybe Procoder, not sure) can guarantee that timeframe with good quality.

[pooty13901]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to post a quick follow-up and another thanks for trying to help me out with my situation. I followed through on the DVD Shrink advice just to see what would happen. While it did indeed fit 2:15 on a DVD-R, there was too much of a noticeable difference to use it as a sellable product. i have a DVD-DL with 1:30 on it and I will most likely use Shrink to put that on a DVD-R. I can't imagine there would be too much of a quality loss there.

So thanks again for all the advice. it's appreciated.

Mike Hammond

[FulciLives]

DVDShrink is a dumb thing to do.

You want to encode it with a real encoder ala CCE or TMPGEnc or Procoder or HCenc etc.

A real encoder will give you better quality than DVDShrink which "cheats" and results in more quality loss than a full re-encode.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[mpiper]

Please realize that DVDShrink is NOT an encoder, as Fulci points out. It was never intended to be one. DVDShrink is a program that takes the existing mpeg2 file, and drops out existing data to get the file down to the necessary file size. As such, it can NEVER be anything but worse than the original encode.

DVDShrink works good for deleting out extras, and other non-necessary data that is NOT part of the actual main movie, and keeping the original look and feel of the disc. But since all it does is LOSE data, the final product will, by definition, be worse than the original. The minute you start uisng DVDShrink on the main movie, you loose quality. It is not noticeable if only a small change is required, because it will drop data from low visibility areas, like blacks, whites, etc.

Keep in mind, the more data that needs to be dropped to reach the goal, the more visible color data needs to be dropped to reach the size. The newest Nero Recode (the latest incarnation of DVDShrink) does much better than DVDShrink, but it is limited by what it is and what it was designed to do.

The only way to drop file size and keep quality is to use a quality encoder to create a new encode of the MPEG2 file where a better Q-matrix is used that is optimized to 1)the type of video being encoded, and 2)the expected bit rate of the output mpeg2.
You cannot skimp on quality in your tools and expect the result to match the result of a professional studio. There is a reason professional artists and studios spend the bucks they do on thier products.

If you are on a budget (starting out), then thank God for dedicated enthusiasts like Hank, who develop freeware programs (like HCEnc) as an intellectual challenge to see if they can match the quality of the professional products. These people are professionals (in waiting/training) and give tools to the community while they develop their skills.

Several of these developers (Lightning UK comes to mind - DVDShrink is now Nero Recode) have gone on to become professionals, or were hired by professional studios because their products proved their abilities.

[jmkeuning]

DVDShrink is a dumb thing to do.

Are you kidding me? Let the dude try it out man. I feel like saying something to you that will get me warned about the rules in the forum. If DVDShrink works, it works.

i have a DVD-DL with 1:30 on it and I will most likely use Shrink to put that on a DVD-R. I can't imagine there would be too much of a quality loss there.

Fulci - if this meets his needs, why is it dumb?

How about this - I think saying that saying that DVDShrink is a dumb thing to do is a dumb thing to do.

[mpiper]

DVDShrink itself is not a dumb thing to do. It is when it is used.

The issue in question was using DVDShrink to produce a much smaller file size and thinking DVDShrink could do it without visible quality loss.

To put it in layman's terms, have you ever seen a paper that you could tell instantly that it was a copy of a copy due to the quality of the print? That is what DVDShrink does. It takes a copy of a video (MPEG2 is a lossy compression, so it is never as good as the original raw video footage) and then makes a copy of it, but tries to make it smaller by dropping out "non-essential" picture data. In the darkest shadows and brightest light, you can't tell much difference between the original and the copy because the lost data is only 1% difference visually, but drops 5% of the file size. But, as you need to drop the file size more and more, it has to find more and more "Non-essentual" data to drop.

Here is a better example: Take a jpeg. Save it at 100%, then make a copy at 80%, very small difference. Now take the 80% and make a copy of it, but saved at 56%. Very bid difference!! The 100% is the original video. the 80% is the Mpeg2, the 56% is the typical compression DVDShrink uses on DVDs. If you can see the difference on a single jpeg, then you can understand why DVDShrink will NEVER be able to match the original in quality.

On the other hand, open the 100% jpeg in Adobe Photoshop, create an alpha layer where the most crucial areas are set to white and the middle important are set to grey, and the lowest important parts are set to black. Do a gaussian blur to smooth the blending of shades. Then save the jpeg using the alpha channel to identify where to keep quality. Save that at 56%. 95% of the population will never notice the difference between the 80% and the 56%. That is what a new encode using a real encoder with a specialized q-matrix does.

Does that help explain the difference? That is why we are saying to use a real quality encoder to make the DVD fit on a DVD5.

[mpiper]

And before you say the encoders would be using the 80% to create the 56% just like DVDShrink, realise 1) he has the source videos, so it is 100% and 2) most encoders first decode the file back to as close to 100% as possible and then re-encode that, not a straight encode from the compressed video. That is why AVISynth is part of my workflow in shrinking DVDs. It allows me to re-create the 100% original as much as possible, clean up the source video, apply filters, etc. and then encode that product with CCE.

And, YES, I use Virtualdub and AVISynth even though I use Adobe Production suite in my professional productions (multimedia department for a fortune 500 company, NOT a Universal or Sony). I use the best tool for the job, and some of the filters written by enthusiasts are better than any in Premiere.

Use the best tool available, regardless of source for the best finished product.

[machf]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to post a quick follow-up and another thanks for trying to help me out with my situation. I followed through on the DVD Shrink advice just to see what would happen. While it did indeed fit 2:15 on a DVD-R, there was too much of a noticeable difference to use it as a sellable product. i have a DVD-DL with 1:30 on it and I will most likely use Shrink to put that on a DVD-R. I can't imagine there would be too much of a quality loss there.

So thanks again for all the advice. it's appreciated.

Mike Hammond

It is a fact that the original DVD specs called for a 135 minute (2:15 hours) movie plus audio plus subtitles to fit on a DVD-5 (in the end, I think it became 133 minutes). So, if you encode your original source material to fit on a DVD-5, you shouldn't have any quality issues. As people have already said, it's a bad idea to use DVDShrink to make your authored files fit on a DVD-5, you should just reencode your original sources (or an uncompressed AVI generated after the editing processs) with a good encoder. It's a good idea to use DVDShrink if you for example got a final size of 4.38GB, maybe even 4.5GB, that won't fit on a DVD-5 by a narrow margin, then the quality drop by DVDShrink's process shouldn't be noticeable.

FYI:

DVD-Video Requirements

The Hollywood based Motion Picture Studio Advisory Committee defined the following requirements for the DVD-Video format:

* 135 minutes on one side of a single disc (covering 99% of all movies).
* Video resolution better than Laserdisc (LD).
* CD quality surround sound for true home cinema listening.
* 3 to 5 languages (audio) per title on one disc
* 4 to 6 subtitles per title on one disc
* Pan-scan, letterbox and widescreen formats
* Parental lock features
* Copy protection
* Compatibility with existing CDs
* Chapter division and access (like Video CD)
* Manufacturing cost similar to current CD costs.

The Video CD format was studied, but was rejected as it could not offer the necessary combination of quality and playing time, hence the need for a new higher capacity disc format that has been realised in DVD. The above requirements have all been met in the DVD-Video specification.


DVD-Video Features

The DVD-Video specification provides the following features:

* 133 minutes of high quality MPEG-2 encoded video with multi-channel surround sound audio.
* The choice of widescreen, letter box and pan & scan video formats.
* Audio in up to 8 languages
* Subtitles for a further 32 languages
* Menus and program chains for user interactivity
* Up to 9 camera angles to give the user more choice
* Digital and analogue copy protection
* Parental control for protection of children

Playing Times
The DVD-Video specification is based on pre-recorded DVD (DVD-ROM) with the UDF Bridge file system. A DVD-Video can therefore be a DVD-5, DVD-9, DVD-10 or DVD-18 disc depending on the playing time required and other factors.

* A DVD-5 (single sided) DVD-Video disc will hold nominally 133 minutes of high quality MPEG-2 encoded video, together with three surround-sound audio channels and four subtitle channels. (Without video compression one DVD-5 disc would hold only about 3 minutes of video).
* For a DVD-9 (dual layer) disc the playing time increases to 240 minutes of continuous video.
* A DVD-10 (double sided) disc will hold a nominal 133 minutes on each side (ie 266 minutes in all), but the disc needs to be turned over to play the other side.
* A DVD-18 (dual layer, doubled sided) disc can hold 240 minutes on each side, but the disc needs to be turned over to play the other side.

Unlike audio CDs the maximum playing time is not fixed but can vary. Longer playing times mean lower average bit rates and lower video quality, while shorter playing times allow higher bit rates and higher quality. More or fewer audio channels or different audio bit rates also affect the video bit rate and/or playing time.

The maximum bit rate is 9.8 Mb/s for video, audio and subpictures (the overall maximum, including control information, being 10.08 Mb/s). For a playing time of 133 minutes, the average bit rate is 4.7 Mb/s. The average video bit rate available depends on the number of audio streams and the encoding used, but should be at least 4 Mb/s for high quality results.

The chart below shows the video bit rate for various playing times. It is assumed that the video is accompanied by 3 Dolby Digital audio streams, each at 448 kb/s and 4 sub-picture streams each at 10 kb/s. For a DVD-5 and the nominal 133 minutes playing time the video bit rate is an average of 3.1 Mb/s. 240 minutes on a DVD-9 allows the same bit rate. But DVD-9s are being used for shorter playing times, to achieve higher bit rates and so higher quality.

[Chart of DVD-Video playing times]

For a playing time of 133 minutes on a DVD-5, the average video bit rate needs to be 3.1 Mb/s. Reducing the number of audio channels will allow this to be increased. Note that the maximum video bit rate for this example is 8.4 Mb/s, the remaining 1.4 Mb/s being used for the audio and sub-pictures.

Source: http://www.deluxemedia.com/support/background/dvdtech/dvdvideo/
(but you can find it elsewhere, too)

[mpiper]

Machf,

Nice reference! This is the type of stuff I remember reading when DVDs were first coming out, and I have remembered the basics, but did not have a formal reference to use. I have gone by gut feeling and viewing the final output on what is acceptable or not.

I plan to keep this link in my favorites. (At least until the blueray vs. HD-DVD debate is over, DVD is dead, and I'm forced to upgrade everything to the winner of that battle.) Hopefully DVD will be around for a good long time. It is just now becoming well understood and fully utilized. I am still waiting for some movies to be produced where you can change the camera angles during a movie. Especially during action scenes. They use multiplke cameras to film it. Why not put all the angles on the disc.

Thanks again for the link.
Mike

[pooty13901]

Hi everyone,

I have come back to this post after trying to take it all in (all the different opnions and such) and I think I may understand something. Please remember I am still relatively new to compression and all.
Should I be approaching all of this like this: Use Studio to add all my subtitles, narration, music, fades/wipes (right now I don't have money for another program for this if there's something much better), have Studio make an AVI of the entire 2 hour movie, then use a different encoding program to make it fit neatly onto a DVD-5?
You see, if this is what you guys do, I wasn't getting it because I never thought about using a Studio created AVI to start with, I was authoring, rendering with Studio and then getting confused as to how to take those finished DVD files and re-encode them with something else.
If I just now got it, I'm sure some of you will think I'm dense. But if this is the missing part, then I'm one happy guy. Make an original AVI with Studio at 100% quality and then load that AVI file into something like DVD Rebuild?

Mike Hammond

[guns1inger]

The process, very briefly, is

1. Acquire video : be this through capture, transfer or other means
2. Edit video with an editing program. In your case, Pinnacle studio. This may also include effects and other matters.
3. Render the video to mpeg-2, using a bitrate calculator to get the correct bitrate for your size constraints.
4. Author the DVD with an authoring tool
5. Burn the results to disc

This has glossed over all the subtleties, of which there are many, but covers the main areas. You need to understand that every time you use some form of lossy compression you throw away data that you will not be able to get back. Do it once, you may not notice. Do it a few times and you certainly. This is where the warnings regarding Shrink etc have come from.

If you choose to output to an intermediate avi file, choose the codec carefully. If you use something like Huffyuv or Lagarith, you will have the option to use lossless compression. The image will be identical to you original, but the cost will be large files. With Lagarith, expect 2 hours to use upwards of 60GB. Huffyuv will likely use more again.

If you choose DV or Mjpeg then you will get better compression, but at a cost of information in the image, as these are lossy codecs.

Anything else, such as Divx/Xvid etc are out of the question if quality is of concern.

From there you can encode to mpeg-2, using correct bitrate settings from a bitrate calculator, and using a good quality standalone encoder. You should also encode your audio, possibly separately (most video encoders don't make good audio encoders), and then author. These are all separate steps.

DVD rebuilder is not something you need for your project.

[pooty13901]

HI Guns1inger,

Thanks for trying to lay it all out for me.

I'm trying to understand this and it seems like it should be very easy to do. Here's where I guess I'm getting confused.

1. Acquire video : be this through capture, transfer or other means
I got this no problem...

2. Edit video with an editing program. In your case, Pinnacle studio. This may also include effects and other matters.
Got this one too...

3. Render the video to mpeg-2, using a bitrate calculator to get the correct bitrate for your size constraints.
Here's the problem (for me anyway)...I use Studio for this step. Studio takes my finished project and renders it down for me. Maybe my glossary is a little bit off, but rendering is the process of turning all the original AVIs from my camcorder that have been faded/swiped, narrated, edited, etc. into a DVD file that can be burned to a disc, right? If so, I am left with files that have already been compressed using Studio at a programmed bitrate that I cannot control. Also, how do I get an outside program to recognize Studio files? Am I still on track here?
4. Author the DVD with an authoring tool
Again, maybe its my vocabulary, but isn't this the same as adding all the subtitles and narration and such? I'm under the impression that authoring and editing are parts of the same process.
5. Burn the results to disc
I'm trying to get to this point

I'm hoping that by laying all my questions out I can reach some point of understanding. I hope its my vocabulary that's impeding my getting all of this.

Mike Hammond

[AlanHK]

I didn't see any reference to audio.

If you're using uncompressed audio (i.e. like an audio CD), that can eat up gigabytes of space.
Even the highest quality AC3 sound will be 80% smaller.

If you do that, you should be able to fit 2 hours of excellent quality video on a DVD5.

[pooty13901]

Hi,

I can understand audio eating up a lot of space. If I were to use an audio compression program, how do I do it when Pinnacle Studio has all my narration, music, original sound in it? How do you compress only the audio and not touch the video when it's all wrapped up together in something like Studio?

Mike Hammond

[AlanHK]

I can understand audio eating up a lot of space. If I were to use an audio compression program, how do I do it when Pinnacle Studio has all my narration, music, original sound in it? How do you compress only the audio and not touch the video when it's all wrapped up together in something like Studio?
Mike Hammond

Generally, you can separate (demux) video and audio and recombine them after separate processing. But I have no idea how Pinnacle works.
Doesn't it have any help? Forums?

[guns1inger]

I don't use Pinnacle, so you may have to dig around or read the manual, however with most editing programs you can change the type of compression and container used for audio and video. You should be able to render your video out to and avi file, and select how the data is stored in it by choosing a codec from a list. Terminology varies. It might be called video type or similar. Once you have your avi file you can then use an mpeg encoder to encode to mpeg-2.

The same goes for audio. Personally, I output the audio separately from my editor as AC3. You may not have an AC3 option, but you should be able to save it as a wav file (uncompressed), then encode it to AC3 separately with something like ffmpgegui.

When you author the DVD, you bring the video and audio back together again. If you use an all-in-one tool like pinnacle then the process is all lumped in together, which makes it all confusing. The processes are separate, and generally speaking, the best results come from use the best tools you can afford at each stage, rather than one jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none approach.

[Cornucopia]

Above were listed 5 steps.

You're using 1 tool to do all 5. I can understand using 1 program to do the 1st and 2nd, and another program to do the 3rd and another program to do the 4th and 5th. That is probably what most folks here do. Using 1 to do all 5 skips ALOT of possibilities for customization and versatility (which is what you seem to need).

Also, "Render" is probably not the best nomenclature for what most would consider "Encoding".
I would consider a "Render" to be the single, solid, continuous and final version of your edit session. As mentioned, this would best be left as Uncompressed/Losslessly-compressed.

"Authoring" mirrors the process of editing, often to the extent that a consumer-focused company thinks it makes sense to fold them both together. But, while that may help newbies not have to invest in as many apps (and the understanding behind the processes), it could never help with the quality. If you're at the stage of selling mass dupes, you ought to be beyond this. (sorry, that sounds a little cold)

Scott

[lordsmurf]

Pinnacle makes really crappy software. That is honestly your whole problem. I also have to agree with the notion of "if you're at the stage of selling mass dupes, you ought to be beyond this".

Just have to work through all this, change what you're doing. You can make it happen, if you follow the advice you're getting.

[InXess]

couple suggestions to your process:

1. Acquire video : be this through capture, transfer or other means
I got this no problem...

continue using Pinnacle Studio and save to DV AVI

2. Edit video with an editing program. In your case, Pinnacle studio. This may also include effects and other matters.

Studio is a very nice editor easy and transparent.

3. Render the video to mpeg-2, using a bitrate calculator to get the correct bitrate for your size constraints.
Here's the problem (for me anyway)...I use Studio for this step.

as I would but the output format should be DV AVI (as original - captured file) not MPEG-2,
Adding either Procoder Xpress (!) or one of free encoders mentioned above will make your results look better. Encode final DV AVI to MPEG-2 with the encoder of your choice (outside Studio).

4. Author the DVD with an authoring tool

[pooty13901]

Hi again,

Yes, that is right that I probably should have worked this out by now. Unfortunately, I was unaware of the technology that made it possible to fit 2 or 2hrs, 15mins. on one single DVD-R. On the fortunate side, my "mass duping" is really only equal to 20-25 DVD sales a month. However, when you take into account the time needed to burn each one, print the face, cost of ink/DVDs and all, it adds up.

I think I am getting the way to do this. I am going to place a webshot here of my Studio program to see if I have the settings correct to output to MPEG so I can then use an outside program for rendering (I guess you have to click on the pic to make it readable).



I am concerned that my compression, width and height, kbs are all okay. If I understand correctly, this will allow Studio to put out an MPEG that is somewhere near 8GB in size which I will then run through something like DVD Rebuilder?

Also, while I'm at it, here's a pic of my capture settings. I am wondering if the kbps looks good for best capture quality. I'm pretty sure that's okay.



Again, thanks so much for trying to help me. I find this site incredibly useful and hope to give back info whenever I can.

-Mike Hammond

[manono]

Hi-

I haven't really been following this, but I couldn't help being struck by a statement you made, and by the pics:

If I understand correctly, this will allow Studio to put out an MPEG that is somewhere near 8GB in size which I will then run through something like DVD Rebuilder?

To me, that makes no sense at all. Why not encode it right the first time, and skip DVD-RB entirely? If that encoder you're using can't do the job right, use a different one. Each time you reencode, the quality is degraded a bit more. Encode as few times as possible, just once in this case, AVI->MPEG-2.

You don't want 44.1 kHz audio. If it were I, I'd make AC3 audio and add it in during authoring. If it were I, I'd keep far away from CBR video encoding. DVD-RB is going to use VBR anyway. You seem to be wanting to fit this onto a DVD5, and VBR will serve you much better, in my opinion. You're filtering? Does it need it? Do you know what kind of filtering it's doing?

I don't claim to have read the entire (long) thread, so forgive me if I've missed some explanation(s) of your methods.

[edDV]

I take the position "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Do your own tests at various compression settings. Choose what looks good to you.

Just don't try to sell me on your "good enough".

Bar time 2AM "good enough" won't hold at 11AM.