DVD burners.

[city hunter]

I have a few questions.
1] When will DVD burners become cheap [around £250]
2] will there be authoring software that is reliable
3] will the DVD Disc be limited to just 4.7gb or will there be bigger capacity DVD discs.
4] I heard that 4.7gb Disc aren't actually that big but instead a bit smaller is that true and if so why are they called 4.7gb discs.


Cheers.

[alkieman]

At the moment only 3 companies manufacture DVD writers for the PC, Pioneer and Panasonic make writers available now in Europe and if you live in the States you can add Lacie to that list. Other companies have signed up to produce DVD writers capable of writing to DVD-R and many have also signed up for DVD-RW writing too. Pioneer are also busy signing up PC companies to pre install their DVD writers. Philips have also signing up 2 PC manufacturers for their forthcoming DVD+RW writers but no word from them yet on when we can expect a bare unit for use in existing PCs.

I would think the price of DVD writers should be down to probably around the 400 UKP mark by Christmas and maybe even lower if other companies meet their launch targets.

I have used MyDVD that came with the Pioneer drive, and while it's capable, it's also unstable and slow. The version that comes with the DVR-A03 writer also allows chaptering which the standard MyDVD does not, but it's almost impossible to get the chapters exactly where you want them.

I then downloaded SpruceUp which had similar features, but turned out to be superior to MyDVD. So much so, I registered and paid for it. Used it for a while and it's great, far more stable and faster than MyDVD. Only flaw is that it doesn't support end actions on video clips so you can't seemlessly play from one clip to another, in fact none of the budget DVD authoring applications support this.

However, Spruce offered an upgrade path to their much more professional DVDVirtuoso authoring software for about 350 USD (about 230 UKP). I took the plunge and have been mightly impressed so far. I would never have shelled out the near 1000 USD it normally costs, but at 350 USD it's an absolute bargain. It support 4x3, 16x9, PAL, NTSC, MPEG audio, PCM Audio, AC3 Audio (including 5.1), has full end actions for video clips, has rudimentary editing capabilities, supports full motion menus etc. etc. If you can afford it, buy it. The menu authoring takes a bit of getting used to because you have to create the menus in another graphics program (it recommends Photoshop but I find Serif's Photoplus 7 works fine), and then import them but once you get the hang of it the menus look great. It doesn't accept mpeg program streams though, you have to demux the audio/video and import them seperately but I use TMpeg and so far have had no problems.

There is however, a cloud on the horizon. Apple have just bought Spruce and have already announced the death of all but the most expensive PC authoring software. Nice one Apple, talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

At the moment DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW are all limited to 4.7Gb because thats the maximum a single sided, single layer disc allows. Before long companies will be offering double sided discs but I would think dual layer recorders are still at least a year away. And probably two years or more away from being affordable.

A 4.7Gb disc holds about 1 hour at very high bitrates, 2 hours at great quality and even longer if you drop the bitrates. I encode at a bitrate of 6000 and get great quality movies on one disc (get about 95 mins including menus and intros at this rate). If I drop the bitrate to around 5000 I can get over 2 hours on a disc and the quality is still excellent.

A 4.7Gb disc, is 4.7Gb but you do lose a little for the lead in and lead out tracks. Largest movie disc I have written so far was 4.62Gb in size.

[leebo]

"A 4.7Gb disc, is 4.7Gb"

Hmmm.
According to the book, "DVD Demystified", DVD size is calculated using 1000k, not 1024k as in PC's, so the equilivelent of a DVD's 4.7 gigs would be about 4.3 gigs.

Where did you measure your file size, from your HDD or from the DVD-R disc?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: leebo on 2001-08-13 09:46:32 ]</font>

[alkieman]

actually from the disc so you're probably correct.