Problems with text in DVD movie

[JBreits]

I have a 1.5 hr movie which is a compilation of several home movies. At the beginning of each section, I have some text that fades in, displays for a few seconds, and then fades out. I'm trying to use TMPGEnc so I can better control the resulting file size and thus fit teh entire movie on one DVD.

First, I encoded everything with a contant bit rate of 4965. Everything seemed ok. It encoded well, it worked well with the authoring software, it burned fine. I was able to play the DVD perfectly on my PC. However, when I put it in to my standalone DVD player (memorex), the text fade sections did not work. To be exact, the screen just stayed blank and the text never appeared.

I then tried several smaller files with just the text fade in/out with several of the different options in TMPGEnc. It turns out that using the Constant Bit Rate, the text never showed up. Even at 8000 bit rate. I did a test using 2-pass VBR Min:0 Max:8000 Avg:4000 and the text fade worked perfectly.

So I re-encoded my entire movie using the following settings:
2-Pass VBR
Min: 1000
Avg: 4900
Max: 7500
P Spoilage: 0
B Spoilage: 20

GOP: IBBPBBPBBPBBPBBP
Closed GOP: Y
Detect Scene Change: Y

What I got was a movie, that would fade the text in correctly, but while the text was static, it would appear to be "jumpy" or have fuzzy edges, then the fade out would look fine as well.

This is my first DVD and I think I have everything figured out except the correct settings for encoding the MPG file. The text fade looks great if I use some simpleton software like Sonic MyDVD. But that won't let you change the bit rate (therefore, the size can't change) and the menus suck.

Can some one help me out?

Thanks,
Josh Breitbach
josh@breittechnologies.com

[BJ_M]

what editing method did you use to add the txt effects?

[JBreits]

The text was created using the "Basic Text" effect in Adobe After Effects. The text is red on a black background. Font is Perpetua (Bold). The text is medium size (approx size 60).

The movie was rendered from After Effects to a DV AVI file. I then encoded this the mpg2 for dvd from tmpgenc. The files play fine on the PC but look terrible on the TV.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Josh Breitbach

[BJ_M]

well for one- unless you have installed one ... AE uses the MS dv codec and it is really bad on text -- in fact TEXT on ANY dv codec looks not all that hot IMO , but you can get not to bad withsome codecs .. you would have better off to render to huffyuv or QT animation or targa compression ..

also -- did you render your text out as progressive while the rest of your project is interlaced ? better to ussually render out as interlaced (though it will look like crap in preview) ... another issue may be that you rendered out as 30fps instead of 29.97 ..

in tmpgenc did you select interlaced bottom field first (for DV) ? sounds as if (because plays ok on pc but not tv ) that you have a field issue ..

the colors you are using are alright (black on white is a no no) , you should always use a sans serf font (unless you are rendering out as uncompressed as the serfs will always get aliased ...