Title/Chapter Menus

[valeried]

I am capturing, authoring and burning digital video from my Sony DRV730 Digital Handy Cam using either U-Lead’s DVD Movie Factory 3 or Sonic My DVD. If I don’t add a title or chapter menu and just burn straight to the DVD, the playback quality off the DVD is very good. If I add a title or chapter menu and then burn the DVD, the quality of the DVD is absolutely awful. It’s jumpy with a very slow frame rate and virtually non-watchable. HELP… How can I add the title/chapter menus without this problem? Should I be using different software?

[rkr1958]

I am capturing, authoring and burning digital video from my Sony DRV730 Digital Handy Cam using either U-Lead’s DVD Movie Factory 3 or Sonic My DVD. ... HELP… How can I add the title/chapter menus without this problem? Should I be using different software?

I'm not familiar with either of those two programs. One step that you left out was encoding, which I assume is being done or you wouldn't be able to author. Do you have the option to encode after capturing and stop there? If so, you could try TMPGEnc DVD Author to author w/menus. I believe it has a free 30-day trial. For that matter, you could try using TMPGEnc Plus to encode your captured AVI to MPEG-2 first and then author. TMPGEnc Plus also has a free 30-day trail (I believe). These are the two programs that I use. Also, I burn with Nero. Again, Nero comes with a 30-day or 15-day free trial.

Bottom line and in my opinion, if you want to make the best quality DVDs that you can get away from the all-in-one packages. It will take you longer to learn how but once you do you'll find you'll have a lot more flexibility in making your DVDs and greater understanding of what's going on. Again ... resulting in a better quality DVD.

[jimmalenko]

Bottom line and in my opinion, if you want to make the best quality DVDs that you can get away from the all-in-one packages. It will take you longer to learn how but once you do you'll find you'll have a lot more flexibility in making your DVDs and greater understanding of what's going on. Again ... resulting in a better quality DVD.

I couldn't agree more

[TuxOmatic]

I am not familiar with Sonic My DVD, but I do use MovieFactory. I have not experienced the problem you described from adding menus, so the program shouldn't be the reason. If you are using MovieFactory to encode, and it looks fine without the menu added, including a menu shouldn't change how your project is encoded. However, if you are encoding with a different program, and then importing your MPG into MovieFactory to add the menu, then your project might be going through a second encoding, which could make it look like crap. If this is the case, you need to make sure that you have the "Do Not Convert" option turned on.
My questions:
How are you playing your finished DVD? Your computer or a DVD player?
Have you tried using a different DVD player?

[valeried]

Thanks for your reply. I play my DVD in our home DVD player, not on the computer. When I use MovieFactory I am not encoding with different software. I tried capturing in both AVI and MPEG. If I capture in AVI and don’t add title/chapter menus the dvd playback is pure CRAP! If I capture in MPEG without title/chapter menus it looks good. But as I said in the first message as soon as I add title/chapter menus no matter how I capture, it’s really bad. I’m a novice at this and don’t know if I have the “settings” set properly. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Nelson37]

Interesting that when you "capture in AVI and DON't add menus, playback is pure crap". Since AVI is not DVD-compatible, SOMETHING must be encoding the video to MPEG. I assume a similar problem in the other instances.

What resolution, bitrate, framerate, and sound format are you capturing in? If not DVD-spec, or not accepted by authoring software, a re-encode may well result, lowering quality.

I use Sonic MyDVD for most disks, have done same files in other software for comparison. Saw no degradation when using Sonic for menus.