Ulead DVD Workshop 1.2 trial

[matd]

Hi,

I'm trying out DVD Workshop 1.2 as i want to make sure its the right program for my needs before i buy it.

So far the program works really well, but my one concern is the fact that the 'Make Disc' section is grossly over estimating the size of my dvd project, i.e. it estimates the disc space required is 4.4GB when in fact after i've burned the project to dvd its total size is only 3.1gb!

This is obviously a real problem as i want to maxmise the 4.4GB i have available - i find this restricting enough and can't wait for the 9.GBGB media to come out! - By the way does anyone know when the larger media will be available to consumers.

Anyway, is anyone else having this problem?

You might be asking why i'm not e-mailing Ulead support, but their support is limited to registered customers only and i've had no feedback from their sales department....

[Baldrick]

Yep I noticed the same "bug" when I tried it. Maybe it is fixed in the new 1.3 patch.

You could try to convert all your video to dvd standard with some other application and then you should know how big it will be. (workshop should not reconvert if it is dvd compliant)

[Craig Tucker]

It will reconvert if the bitrate is lower. For example if you encode a video using TMPGEnc with a bitratre of 7000Kbps. You must specify a bitrate above this in DVD workshop or it will reencode the video. This applies to version 1. I believe in version 1.2 and 1.3 there is a do not reencode option. I assumed the extra space required was temporary hard drive space required whilst authoring (for what I don't know). But I suppose it could be a bug.

[solarfox]

It depends on what kind of 9.4Gb media you're hoping for.

9.4Gb media is available now, as double-sided discs which store 4.7Gb per side. www.shop4tech.com has them, as do some other vendors.

If you're hoping for media that lets you record 9.4Gb on a single side -- don't hold your breath. There are many difficult technical obstacles to overcome in making a dual-layer recordable disc... In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that I, personally, don't think it's even possible.

As for the DVD Workshop issue -- strangely enough, I've never seen this problem, and I'm also using the 1.2 version. It does require larger amounts of HD space to do conversions when you let it re-encode the video or audio, but if you check the "do not re-encode compliant files" option it shouldn't do that...

However -- since I'm running Windows 98SE, I typically use a two-step process to get around the 4Gb file-size limit. (If you burn straight to disc from DVDWS, it tries to create a single image file on the HD before burning.)

Try this: When you go into "Make Disc", select the "High Quality VBR video, LPCM audio" template (don't worry about whether your MPEG file actually matches either of those) -- then, instead of buring it right to disc, try the "make DVD directory" option, and let DVDWS build the VIDEO_TS directory and VOB/IFO files in a temporary directory on your HD. Then, go into "Burn Disc Image" and burn the DVD-R from the VIDEO_TS directory you just made. That's the method I use, and I always get a fairly accurate size estimate during the process...