Any other DVD progs have the features of Ulead DVD Workshop?

[ButchNapkins]

Hi there.. Ulead DVD Workshop crashes continuously on my 1.8 ghz, 600+mb system. I'm looking for another program with similar options: One that will resize my video clips to fit on DVD (I have about 5.5 gb worth of movie files that I'd like to crunch down just enough so they can fit), and also I'd like to have decent control over creation of new menu templates. I've been messing with Sonic MyDVD but so far it looks like it simply accepts the movies you plug into it without resizing? Please advise, and thanks again!


Butch

[ButchNapkins]

Hi again.. Let me be even more specific! I've scanned one full-feature movie file which is 4.58 gb, one short film that is 1.45 gb, and a music video that is 184 mb.. Grand Total: roughly 6.21 gb!! All three files were encoded using ATI's DVD settings (Mpeg2, 720x480, 8 mbps, 48.000 KHZ 16 bit stereo), and they look BEAUTIFUL. But now I need to get them onto one disc and still have room for the menus/music/picture galleries.. Is there a prog out there that will resize the movies before burning, or do I have to use TMPGenc.... And if I absolutely must use TMPGenc to resize the files, what is a good method to just resize a little bit, not drastically? Those movies look so good right now, I can't bear to lose much quality!! Thanks again!


Butch

[BKL]

I use TMPGEnc (the commercial Plus version) to convert my DV files to MPEG-2 and then use Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2 to author and write to DVD. TMPGEnc provides great compression/quality and MF2 doesn't reencode the video. www.meritline.com was offering a software bundle for $30 with Nero 5.5.9.x, WinDVD and Ulead MF2 SE. Works fine for me. Compared to encoding with Ulead whatever, I find the TMPGEnc output to be significantly smaller with no discernible loss of quality. I personally do not use the high quality settings for TMPGEnc because I am happy with the default and it takes much less time to encode. Good Luck!

[ButchNapkins]

I use TMPGEnc (the commercial Plus version) to convert my DV files to MPEG-2 and then use Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2 to author and write to DVD. TMPGEnc provides great compression/quality and MF2 doesn't reencode the video. www.meritline.com was offering a software bundle for $30 with Nero 5.5.9.x, WinDVD and Ulead MF2 SE. Works fine for me. Compared to encoding with Ulead whatever, I find the TMPGEnc output to be significantly smaller with no discernible loss of quality. I personally do not use the high quality settings for TMPGEnc because I am happy with the default and it takes much less time to encode. Good Luck!

Thanks for your response! I guess what I was hoping was that I could capture my movies and then just pop them into whatever dvd-creation program and create everything else (menus, etc.), THEN when everything was ready to be burned, hit a button and everything would combine in the video_ts folder.. in the right size.. A friend of mine has talked about using DVD Workshop to put two full-length movies on on disc.. Workshop takes the movie files you feed it and then will ask you if you want them to be reencoded so they will both fit. Are there any other DVD-creation programs that do this same thing?? TMPGenc is awesome, but I'm trying to find a DVD-creation prog that will do it automatically, like Workshop apparently does.



Butch

[sammie]

I've had the same problem. 2.0G P4, Intel 850 MB. DVD-WS 1 works fine DVD-WS 2 crashes all the time. Literally placing the cursor over the wrong button at the wrong time can crash the program. I keep meaning to see if there is any updates, but so far I've not been able to find out much. Their customer service can't help much, although it is clear that some people are having a problem.

Plus, I think there is a problem with the chapter creation. It seems, although I need to do the final checks this weekend that it does the chapter on time, but then assumes 29.97 fps when actually marking the frames. So if you are using 23.976 it trys to mark chapters past the end of the movie and errors out.

[unclebud]

I think you are being misled, to put 2 movies (let's say 90 minutes each) on 1 DVD would require the bitrate to be around 3k. This would only be slightly better then SVCD while using higher resolution.
It can be done but the quality would be similar to VHS. High motion and dark scenes would not look good either.

[ButchNapkins]

I think you are being misled, to put 2 movies (let's say 90 minutes each) on 1 DVD would require the bitrate to be around 3k. This would only be slightly better then SVCD while using higher resolution.
It can be done but the quality would be similar to VHS. High motion and dark scenes would not look good either.

You are correct in that! My friend did this with Workshop, and the quality was definitely grainy.. About VCD quality. Right now I have three clips which total 6.21 gb, and I'm wanting to shrink them to about the 4 gb mark.. Was hoping there was another DVD authoring prog like Workshop that would do that for you, but it's looking like TMPGenc or rescanning at lower settings. I'm a little leery of using TMPGenc to do this - I've used it to go from mp2 to mp1 before, but I'm no expert and didn't see a preset way to shrink an mp2 file.. Of course I'll mess with it more before scanning over, but if anyone knows an easy way to do this or could point me to a guide on how to shrink mp2 files in TMPGenc, I'd be glad to hear from ya!! Thanks again for all responses so far..


Butch