What is the best way to author a dvd...AKA GET RID OF THE JITTERS!

[burrowsfan]

First off....whoever told me to use WinDV 1.2.3 to capture my tapes...kudos to you! I was having the issue of the tape stopping at any sort of break in the signal on the tape...Premiere Pro would lock my system up trying to capture.....Movie Maker and other programs would stop at the breaks, etc. where WinDV works like a charm!

I have a few questions I want to rattle off in here....

First question:

Now that I have my tapes captured as DV AVI's from WinDV, I want to now cut out the swill in Premiere Pro, trim the fat if you will. Now I am not going to do any hardcore editing with these yet...it is just to get rid of the stuff I know I will not use, and just have the .avi file for a later use. (also to free a little space on my drive!) Can I export this DV AVI that I captured from WinDV as a DV file again or will that really degrade the footage?

Second question:

Down the road when I do want to author a dvd from these avi's, what is the best way to do so. As a test, I dropped an .avi file in a program I have called dvd santa. This is kind of a no frills method, no menu or anything, just creating to see how it would play on my dvd player. Well I stuck the disc in and the footage had a slight jitter to it that to be honest, gave me a queasy feeling to watch! I am surprised I didnt have a seizure or something! How do I get rid of the jitter? Could the santa dvd software be defaulted to an upper field first where my footage is captured as lower field, thus causing a tear in the time space continuem? SOMEBODY HELP ME GET RID OF THE JITTERS!

[gadgetguy]

1. Use VirtualDub. Set Video and Audio to Direct Stream Copy, cut out the bits you don't want and Save To AVI.

2. DVD Santa is not well thought of around here. Your tapes are interlaced and you need to maintain the interlace and field order throughout the editing/encoding/authoring processes. I'm assuming that the jitters you are seeing are a result of field order reversal, but that might not be the case as I might not have the same definition of jitters that you do. To get the best results with the most control, use separate programs to Edit, Encode, and Author. DVD Santa is an all-in-one that offers little control over the process. It's easy, but the results are usually sub-par.

Personally, I use AviSynth/VirtualDub to edit, HCEnc to encode, and either TDA or DVDAuthorGUI to Author, followed by IMGBurn to burn to disc. All of these are free programs, (except TDA), that offer a great deal of flexibility and control, but they also have a high learning curve. Others will have to make recommendation on payware as my only experience with payware programs is very outdated.

[MOVIEGEEK]

1.DV-AVI is uncompressed so it will not degrade when editing.
2.What you are seeing are called "jaggies",use a more advanced encoder such as Ulead VideoStudio to select the field order.

[zoobie]

did you use a tripod?
until you reply, nobody knows what you're talking about....mere guesses

[burrowsfan]

well this is just old footage....no tripod, but when watching it back in the day it didnt give me such a sick feeling and looked normal as amn avi on my computer!

[filmboss80]

If you already have Premiere Pro, edit your DV-AVI files the way you want. When you're finished, export the project / timeline to MPEG-2. DV-AVI is bottom (lower) field first. Export that way to make sure you get no jitters. (Jitters come from field order mismatch.) After making your MPEG-2 file, load it into any good DVD authoring program (see several choices under the Tools section of this site) and author your DVD.

Frankly, there are many better encoding and DVD creation tools than DVD Santa.

[burrowsfan]

filmboss -

Thats what I was thinking. I think I will test a small clip exported out of premiere pro. Is there certain settings I need to look for? I can then use Nero or something to burn the image. I did the dvdsanta thing...was being lazy I guess! It had "all in one" thing to it, so I decided to try it just by dragging my avi into it!

[burrowsfan]

Also,

Once I figure out the jitter problem, if I want to create chapter breaks, etc what program would be good for that? If I wanted a dvd with 12 different chapter breaks, do I create one file with all these clips in it or do I need to create 12 seperate clips?

[filmboss80]

I edited my previous post to add info on the jitter issue. It comes from a field order mismatch. Your source DV-AVI is bottom/lower field first. Your media encoder setting should stay lower field first when you encode to MPEG-2.

Don't worry about chapter breaks and menus during the video editing stage in Premiere. That stuff comes during the DVD authoring stage with the specific software for that purpose. Premiere is not really for DVD authoring. Adobe has Encore for DVD authoring, but I don't use it. (If that came with your Premiere package, it's an option for you.) I don't use Adobe's Media Encoder to export my editing projects, either, but it is still a viable option for you. I frameserve with either AviSynth or DebugMode Frameserver to an encoder of choice. (HCenc was mentioned. You might want to look into it.) There are many tutorials on making optimal MPEG-2 settings. Look around.

[gadgetguy]

Don't worry about chapter breaks and menus during the video editing stage in Premiere. That stuff comes during the DVD authoring stage with the specific software for that purpose.

In general I agree, but chapter points can only be placed on I-frames. In most cases finding an I-frame close enough to where you want to set your chapter is not a problem, but it might be a consideration at the encoding stage to make sure you get an I-frame where you want to set a chapter point.

[burrowsfan]

Ok...I gotta say thanks to all who helped me! I did some testing last night....i took the file that was so jittery from DVD Santa...and I re-encoded using Premiere Pro. (there was an export setting where I could point it to Adobe Encore, which I have never used before!)

I guess my question is, has anyone used Encore before? To me it seemed to do good! Although I wasnt too sure of what the best settings to export would be to dvd. Any thoughts on what I should set everything to? Bitrate encoding, Min. bitrate, target bitrate, Max. bitrate, GOP settings (currently set to 3 for M frames and 15 for N frames)

So if anyone knows the proper settings, PLEASE let me know! In my mind I want to jack all the bitrates to HIGH!

[filmboss80]

Setting bitrate will depend on your video running length and targeted file size. You can set a constant bitrate (CBR) to remain the same throughout the entire video, or you can set variable bitrate (VBR), to get a good picture quality while economizing required space. (In short, VBR will raise the bitrate for detailed, high-motion scenes, then lower the bitrate for static, low-detail scenes.)

You can get a bitrate calculator here: https://www.videohelp.com/tools/VideoCalc

As a GENERAL rule, your max. video bitrate should not exceed 9000 kbps and your minimum bitrate should not go lower than 2000 kbps. Make your motion precision settings the highest (slow encoding time). For NTSC, the typical max number of GOP frames: 16. One I-picture per GOP, 5 P-pictures per GOP, and 2 B-pictures per GOP. You can use those settings for starters. (There is no single best setting. The video content will dictate. For example, in movies with lots of really high-motion, high detail scenes, I might use I and P pictures only, but this will make the file much bigger.)

For your uses, Encore should be all you need in an authoring program.

[gadgetguy]

Rather than using the file output from DVD Santa, you should go back to your original source. Re-encoding an already highly compressed format can only result in a drop in quality. Especially if that source is already flawed, (like the field order being reversed).