What do I do with my two elementary streams?

[john2028]

I have read as much as I could and tried different things. Please forgive my ignorance but, here goes.

I captured my video and finally used TMPGEnc - for many hours - to fix my captured video and save it as mpeg-2 and audio streams. It did so and saved my video in a .m2v in one file (67MB small five minutes) and one .wav file (13MB). In short, I think I demuxed my captured video after fixing it (remastering it).

I tried to multiplex the two streams back together with TMPGEnc to create and MPEG-2. I went to MPEG Tools and selected Simple Multiplex. When trying to add the audio, I get "Multiplexing Linear PCM stream to system is not supported." So, I gave up. I was able to get TMPGEnc to do System [video+audio] from th main menu, but was not sure if that was correct. It looked grainy and worse than the captured video. I have been playing around trying to get the settings write, etc.

Now, I also tried to created an .avi so that I could use MovieMaker. These two small files, when saved as an .avi created a 2 Gig. file. I realize audio and video are supposed to be huge, but this seems excessive for a 5 minute video. What am I doing wrong here?

I do not feel like I am doing much of any of this correctly. Should I just buy a DVD authoring program. Right now, I am doing it all with the free stuff and letting Roxio Easy CD and DVD creator's scaled down DVD Builder author it for me.

Thanks for comments and assistance.

[wulf109]

TMPEG will convert wav audio to mp2 audio when it encodes. Select "System(Video+Audio)" and it output an mpg stream that is mulitplexed.

[john2028]

I am doing that now. Stupid question. By changing the bitrate to a higher level am I changing the quality? I went from 1100 to 11000 and one looks much better than the other. Just wondering the effects beyond it look a little better...

oh yea, I took the mpg it created and VirtualDubMod saves it as a huge 1.6 Gig. AVI. Will that get smaller when it gets to the DVD?

[wulf109]

Video quality is too subjective,if it looks better to you that all that counts. I find that an SVCD converted to vob/DVD looks much better than original SVCD,but that's just me.

[wulf109]

Uncompressed avi's are huge. Converting to DVD will reduce the file size.
The final size will depend on the running time and the bitrate you use. 9800 is the maximum for DVD. VBR is best,DVD "normal" would be 6000 aveage,9800 maximum,300 minmum. If your encodeing for DVD the audio should be sampled at 48000,not the 44,100 that is standard for VCD/SVCD.

[john2028]

What type of quality should I set it at Constant, Manual, 2 pass or something else?

Interlaced or non-interlaced?

Does it matter if I select MPEG-2 SuperVideo CD VBR or just MPEG-2 Program VBR?

And thank you all for your patience and information.

[wulf109]

I would go with 2-pass VBR,it will produce the best results. Tmpeg has templates for VCD,SVCD,and DVD. Pick the one your going to burn it as. I'd stick with interlaced since U.S. TV is interlaced.
The templates have other settings which are specific to the format your going to burn. After selecting the template,re-select template,double-click the folder icon and double "unlock". That will allow you to change any setting you want in the template you first selected. Bear in mind that my suggestions are simply based on my expierence,other people might disagree.