SHOWBIZ 2 DVD confusion on captured video

[ktjensen]

Okay reading through various message posts and experimenting this is what I find:

1) Most DVD authoring applications work well with MPEG2 video, and AC3 audio only. This is your goal file structure for any capturing software. Do not try anything else as you might have problems later on when you try to burn to DVD, or convert to IPOD compatable MP4 videos.
2) My SHOWBIZ 2 DVD application can capture to this format but only if you get the settings exactly correct. SHOWBIZ labels the audio as DOLBY in the application settings, which is the same as AC3.
3) SHOWBIZ might not keep your settings when you start and stop the capture process (I am using a hardware PCI MPEG2 capture card). So check the settings every time.

Let me know if you are using the setup successfully? I would like to compare software tools.

I will continue experiments tonight. Wish I could capture directly to MP4 video, as it is nicely compressed. Anyone know of a software tool to capture to MP4 with a hardware MPEG2 capture card?

[ktjensen]

Looking at the ARCSOFT web site, it states clearly that AC3 IS NOT supported by SHOWBIZ. Remember that AC3 audio is required to play in all DVD players, unless you have a better DVD player that can handle MP2 audio streams (mixed/ MUXed with the video) which is uncommon.

So effectively you will need a tool that can take a stored MPEG2 video file with MP3 audio, and convert it into a MPEG2 video file with AC3 audio.

Figures I need some extra tool.

[ktjensen]

Well looks like I was going down a blind alley. SHOWBIZ will create a file with MPEG2 video and AC3 audio. Just make sure the settings are correct. But the resulting file is not structurally correct.

It needs to be reprocessed via SHOWBIZ and second time, so that it can work well. Open the resulting file and then output it again so that the file structure gets correctly structured. Worked for me.