MyDVD vs. TMPGEnc (and other questions)

[dvnewbie]

I'd like to make some DVDs of my kids to send to friends and families. My computer came with Showbiz, MyDVD and Windows Movie Maker. My camera came with Pixela. I made one test DVD, using Showbiz and MyDVD. It was relatively hassle-free to make. The results were o.k. However, I could see the difference between playing the tape directly from the camera to our tv vs. playing the DVD. I've been reading the advice in this forum, but I still have some questions:

1. Does it make a difference what program is used to capture? In particular, is there a picture quality difference? If another program (Huffyuv?) has more options, but the same picture quality, then I'd be inclined to stick with the simple ones as long as they seem to have all I need. Put another way, is the avi file from the capture program an exact copy of the datafile on the camera tape? If so, can I keep transfering the datafiles to disks for storage and keep re-using the tape in the camera? The tapes are a lot more expensive than the disks.

2. I see most people don't like MyDVD because it uses PCM audio, which uses a lot of space. If I don't plan to put more than 1/2 hour of video on a DVD at a time, is there still an advantage to using TMPGEnc? Capturing and editing in Showbiz and exporting to MyDVD is so easy -- I'm intimidated by all the complicated settings discussed for TMPGEnc. Is it true that some DVD players will play the PCM audio but not the compressed audio generated by programs like TMPGEnc?

3. Where do you think the most degredation of picture quality occurs -- in the capture, the encoding or somewhere else?

In case its relevant, I'm using an Athalon 1800 (1.8ghz), 120GB hd, 512mb RAM, internal dvd+rw drive and firewire port. I'm looking for a happy medium between picture quality and ease of use.

[TOMMO]

Hi. To start with the easier to answer question, I have used MYDVD 3.5 to make certain home movie dvds. I am fairly impressed with the quality it produces. However the source material is DV AVI captured via a firewire card. Editing is done in Premiere 6 and output as DV AVI.

PCM audio should be OK for DVD. Plays fine on my Philips, my daughters Sanyo and my Brothers NAD (which will not play VCDs on CDR/RW or DVDR/RW unless written to DVDRW using MYDVD).

Yes - PCM will mean less footage because of the size of the audio part. But with home movies, as you have stated, quality is the important factor, but not as important as GETTIN A WORKING RESULT.

The one drawback of the bundled MYDVD is that it is a little limited in flexibility. But when I first got my DVD+R burner (Philips 228) it was great as the results were instant. Especially as it was daunting when reading up on ifoedit, doing this and doinf that. However it is quite easy once you get used to it, and IFOEDIT is very useful to adapt your home movie dvd to fit widescreen TV format straight away when you put the disk in. Excellent.

The most critical part of the process is actually getting your source into the computer and maximising the quality of capture. You don't mention what you are using. If it is firwire, then keep it as DV AVI throughout the editing process.

You then have to decide how to manipulate the edited source into compliant MPEG. TMPEnc is a very good program. It can be as difficult or easy, has it has templates you can load, so it can be open source movie, load template and encode. However whatever you do in tmpenc will result in MYDVD doing it again, so stick to MYDVD, or try one in TMPENC, perhaps encode one in TMPEnc and the exact same encoded by MYDVD. You can compare the two then. See what you think.

I also use SPRUCEUP which is simple to use, I like it very much. Maestro is quite complicated but is very powerful. Lots of people like the ULEAD DVD Workshop, i have not, but I suspect it is excellent. ULEAD products normally are.

The one product that is not out yet but looks so exciting is the yet to be released Vegas Video 4 +DVD. That reads so good, but it is so expensive, but with the features it sounds excellent. If you were considering buying a program like Premiere, DVD Workshop, I would put extra toward the vegas product, after waiting to see how other users find the product - however -

I hope this helps, detail more on your capture card, this is the most critical aspect of it, getting good input.

[dvnewbie]

Yes, I'm using firewire to capture in dv-avi. I'm not sure what my capture card is. If it's the video card, the computer came with a Radeon 7000 DDR 64mb.

So, is the captured dv-avi a substitute for keeping the original tape?

[TOMMO]

If you capture into the PC as DV AVi then you are basically copying the tape. But DV AVI files are huge, so it is not really practical to store them long term in this format. This is why the edited video is or can be converted to MPEG2 for storage.

When capturing your original just make sure that you capture at full resolution, and when saving the edited footage you save it as DV AVI. Then do your conversion to MPEG.

[dvnewbie]

How many minutes do you think would fit on a dvd in dv-avi format? How lossy do you think the mpeg coversion process is using MyDVD?

[apaw]

i like very much MYDVD, because i can use any j-peg as the menu background for the DVD and buttons and re-edit the title.

is there in TMPG the ability to do this?if not what other software like MYDVD can i use that is not PCM audio.

thanks

[TOMMO]

TMPEnc cannot make chapters or Menu pages.

How much DVAVI on a DVD disk. Not a great amount. 4.37GB worth.

Loss quality in compression in mydvd. Subjective. mine looked pretty good.