Ulead Moviefactory & Workshop --summary of problems

[jeff_marek]

All,

For everyone's reference.

Summary
Ulead's products do a reasonable job of capturing directly to MPEG (constant or variable). Unfortunately, when you try to burn these files to a DVD you WILL have very noticeable Audio/Video sync problems. Specifically the video will get ahead of the audio. The effect can be minimized by capturing audio at 192kbps or better yet 92 kbps.

Details
I thought I would share my experience with everyone since I've clocked a good thirty hours fighting this problem and spoken with Tech support at Ulead. If you scan through the various websites you will find lots of people mentioning this issue. For reference my hardware for this set of tests is:

Athlon XP 1700
512MB DDR Memory
120g, 80g & 60g hard drives all defragged
(all 2mb buffer, ultra-dma 100, fast, blah blah)
ATI Radeon DDR 32mb All-in-Wonder
Dazzle DV-Bridge
HP 100i DVD+RW drive
Ulead Media Studio Pro v6.5
Ulead Videostudio 6
Ulead DVD Moviefactory
Ulead DVD Workshop Trial
Sonic MyDVD v3.0 (w/patches)
Sonic DVDit! PE

Problem: I am unable to capture video and write it to a disc without the audio and video getting out of sync using the Ulead products. Depending on the audio bit rate you select (and possibly how many chapter stops you set) you will see this problem sooner or later in the DVD. The problem IS NOT in the original MPEG video stream. You will see the problem if you write the DVD to the hard drive so this is not a DVD writer issue.

I have tried capturing at different bit rates, variable, constant, etc. but it doesn't matter. I've tried capturing with the ATI program, DVD through Windows Movie Maker, etc. but it doesn't matter. I am convinced that the transcoder in the Ulead product is just faulty. I suspect that if you encode with TMGEnc you might be able to get around this problem. Unfortunately, for my "Buffy the Vampire" episodes and the like, I'm not willing to wait 8+ hours for a decent encode.

I've captured a file with the Ulead products, encoded it to Variable rate (8000) and tried to write it with Ulead products (Synch issue). Taking the same file and writing it with Sonic MyDVD v3.0 or DVDit! works just fine.

A couple of interesting things I discovered during my research:

• Ulead VideoStudio v6.0 and above and Ulead DVD Workshop no longer use the Ligos encoder ... it is an encoder from Ulead.
  
  Ulead tech support is friendly and answers the phone quickly but not particularly helpful. They also don't respond to email.
  
  Ulead writes audio as MPEG audio on the DVD. Sonic writes it as PCM. This may or not cause issues depending on your receiver. The higher versions of DVDit! can write Dolby digital.
  
  Ulead DVD Workshop is an awesome product. It does motion menus and is light years ahead of the Sonic products in terms of ease of use. Unfortunately, it has the audio issue.
  
  Sonic MyDVD has an audio sync issue if you trim the video in the program. Be aware.
  
  Capturing from Dazzle DV-Bridge to MPEG in Ulead is a bad idea. They do some funky thing where they capture from a firewire source and then pause it when they do some conversions. Obviously, you can't pause the DV-Bridge. Lame, lame, lame. Your best bet is to capture as DV and then encode.
  
  Capturing raw AVI from the ATI card in Ulead is another bad idea. It will consume around 70gig per hour.

------------------------

I'd be happy to hear from anybody who actually uses the Ulead products to encode MPEG and then write a DVD. I've pulled people's names off of bulletin boards and emailed them and noone that has experienced the synch issues has found a solution (other than to change the encode rate on the audio to a crappy level).

O.k., sorry for the long winded post but I've seen this issue many many times on the boards and I hate to see others suffer for no reason.

Jeff
[/list]

[Rich927]

I use Ulead VideoStudio 6. and I find some of the features lacking. The Capture from DV to MPG is a waste. It takes too long to render while capturing/converting. it halts after 30-55 seconds and does a "flushing DV Transcode Buffer", which takes about 4-6 minutes. I have been in contact with Ulead tech's which take 4 days to recieve a reply from. None of their suggestions help. I even changed settings in the Dswplug.ini file. Most of the transitions are poor and clunky. Pinnacle 7 has better transitions. This is on a Pent III running XP, 512meg memory using firewire with a dedicated 7200rpm ata100 hard drive with everything shut down. I bought the upgrade direct from Ulead on Feb 2, 2002. eight days later, I asked for my money back. They have ignored my request. Burning worked ok for about 3 days then started failing after abut 95% thru the process. I made 15 new drink coasters trying to figure out problem. Because of Poor tech support, poor program performance and lack of concern for their customers is why I'm looking elsewhere. I have been using VideoStudio since version 2.5 so I know the problems and hassels with their tech support. this is my last Ulead product.

[winman42]

Well, i'm having the same problems with DVD Movie Factory and DVD Workshop.

I purchased Factory, and it's become useless to make DVD titles, because the darn things are horribly out of sync.

I downloaded the Trial of DVD Workshop, and loved the features, but
again the DVD's created are HORRIBLY out of sync. The same files
are burned with SOnic software, and have NO sync problems whatsoever.

Winston

p.s. anyone have the PDF manual for DVD Workshop? I cant seem to download it, and cant figure out how to do MOTION MENUS without it.
Even though the auido sync issues remain, i'd like to do a test DVD-RW,
to see what the MOTION MENUS look like.

[Lamont Cranston]

I have run into the audio/video sync problems. Also, it looks like there is no way to join clips. If you capture or edit segmented files your out of luck. Selecting a chapter thumbnail using the avi file makes no sense. Lastly, the DV 'real time' mpeg encoding is sad. $299 - no way.

[tmuncy]

I have been working with both the Movie Factory and the DVD Workshop trial versions. I attempted one DVD burn with each and both were successful without any synch problems. I am greatly concerned by the comments I read here however. In both cases my source material was a single mini-DV format AVI file, which was the final output after editing the projects in Pinnacle Studio 7 (highly recommended).

I did discover one big problem. While the basic Movie Factory recognizes and burns to my DVD-R burner (see signature for details), DVD Workshop does not. I was able to author in Workshop and save the DVD image to the hard drive. I was then able to use Movie Factory to burn the image to DVD. I've sent an email to ULEAD support already, saying I was ready to spend $299 if they had a solution. You guys don't give me a lot of hope of hearing back anytime soon.

My big question is about the MPEG capture in real time. I was satisfied with the transcoding quality of the DVD I made (7,500 CBR for a project just over 1 hour). I captured yet another 1 hour project, that was archived on mini-DV, directly to that MPEG setting, but I find it hard to believe that they can encode at the same quality level in real time. I don't relish making a $7 coaster to find out they make big comprimises in quality to get real-time speed. Anyone have some feedback on MPEG capture vs. AVI capture and transcoding. I got the sense that the transcoding was a lot slower than real-time, but I'm not sure because it was one of several steps in the authoring process and I didn't hang around to watch it work or time the steps.

[Lamont Cranston]

My big question is about the MPEG capture in real time. I was satisfied with the transcoding quality of the DVD I made (7,500 CBR for a project just over 1 hour). I captured yet another 1 hour project, that was archived on mini-DV, directly to that MPEG setting, but I find it hard to believe that they can encode at the same quality level in real time. I don't relish making a $7 coaster to find out they make big comprimises in quality to get real-time speed. Anyone have some feedback on MPEG capture vs. AVI capture and transcoding. I got the sense that the transcoding was a lot slower than real-time, but I'm not sure because it was one of several steps in the authoring process and I didn't hang around to watch it work or time the steps.

I have made severl real time mpeg captures using my ATI AIW 128 Rage and the reuslts were okay. I used the default settings and the video did not have much motion. I would expect blocking in high motion scenes with the default motion estimation of 2. IMHO you get much better results capturing in avi and encoding vs real time capturei and software mpeg encoding. Real time hardware mpeg encoders is another story but a good one is not cheap.

You did not mention your OS. If you are using fat32 you will find DVD WorkShop comes up short by not be able to join video clips in the same title. Joining clips using multiple titles gives you the 2 second pause at each title change.

[tmuncy]

Thanks Lamont.
I updated my signature. In fact I am using XP-Pro with NTFS. Doing big video projects with FAT32 is a real pain, as are all the non-NT based operating systems. I was able to capture the entire 1 hour 10 minute original mini-DV at 7,500 bit rate vs. the 6,000 default. I also set to level 1, rather than the default level 2. I didn't have a single dropped frame, which I credit to my hot new hardware. Is this (single file) MPEG capture worthy of a $7 blank DVD-R as a test or should I recapture in AVI and transcode it to MPEG? Anyone have an opinion of the quality of this new ULEAD MPEG-2 encoder vs. using my old favorite TMPEGenc encoder set to the best possible quality? I think that will take about 12x real time to encode with TMPEGenc that way. This project involves selected scenes of high motion i.e. rides at Disney World, kids playing ball in a busy swimming pool, etc.

Anyone else have my problem of the DVD-R drive being recognized by DVD Workshop?

Thanks,

[Lamont Cranston]

Is this (single file) MPEG capture worthy of a $7 blank DVD-R as a test or should I recapture in AVI and transcode it to MPEG? Anyone have an opinion of the quality of this new ULEAD MPEG-2 encoder vs. using my old favorite TMPEGenc encoder set to the best possible quality? I think that will take about 12x real time to encode with TMPEGenc that way. This project involves selected scenes of high motion i.e. rides at Disney World, kids playing ball in a busy swimming pool, etc.

Anyone else have my problem of the DVD-R drive being recognized by DVD Workshop?

I suggest you buy a DVD R/W to make your test recordings before you commit a $7 DVD R. I use generic DVD Rs and DVD R/Ws and they work fine. The DVD R/W play fine in my stand-alone Panasonic and Sony DVD players.

IMHO The mpeg encoder with DVD WorkShop produces images of about the same quality as the Ligos (predecessor ) and is much less efficient ie it produces a much larger mpeg file with equavalent settings. TMPGEnc is the winner by far.

IMHO a motion estimation setting of 1 will produce unacceptable results unless you have very little motion.

Capturing in mpeg carries with problems with editing. None of Ulead's products edit on the I frame which means your mpeg video clip will be rerendered at the splice. This rerender can result in blocking at the splice. You can use one the mpeg 2 editors listed under tools at the left. I alwqys edit in avi.

While I am on the subject of editing let me make this point again. DVD WorkShop will NOT join video clips under one title. Unless you always make one video file or are willing to live with the pause at the title change this is a problem. I always end up with several clips I want to combine. I believe this a major shortcoming.

Why DVD WorkShop assigns the chapter thumbnail to a frame in the avi file makes no sense. There is no guarentee this AVI frame will be an I frame in the mpeg file unless Ulead's encoder is more sophisicated than I think it is.

There is also reported an audio/video sync problem with DVDs burned with DVD WorkShop. If DVD WorkShop recognized your DVD burner the DVD you burn would most likely would be out of sync.

[tmuncy]

Thanks again Lamont. Unfortunately a DVD-RW will not work because my burner is a DVD-R/DVD-RAM hybrid. You can't author videos to DVD-RAM. DVD-RAMs are FAT32 formatted and act like a zip disk. Fantastic for on-the-fly backup and archiving, but useless for testing Video DVD's. In a perfect world there would be a DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM drive.

I tried a pack of $2 generic DVD-R's from www.cd-recordable.com, but my drive won't recognize them. They're happy to take them back, but that doesn't solve the problem. What source do you use for your generics? I need to try some other manufacturers. Imation works fine, but $7 is ridiculous. If anyone else has this drive and found a good generic, please tell me.

Sounds like it's time to go back to TMPGenc, at least for the important projects. My primary interest in capturing directly to DVD spec MPEGs is that I have archived a number of fully edited 60-90 minute projects back onto mini-DV in Pinnacle Studio, awaiting the day I could justify this new hardware and DVD burner. Pinnacle can only edit AVI's and has the worst excuse for an MPEG encoder ever foisted on the public. It is a teriffic editor though and when you output to AVI, they are unchanged from the original except for transitions and titles that have to be rendered. If I could capture them directly back to MPEG properly, it would just be a matter of creating the menus and burning.

I'm do some tests and see how high a motion setting I can successfully capture at. All helpful insights welcomed. I'll let everyone know if I hear back from ULEAD.

[SingSing]

The Capture from DV to MPG is a waste. It takes too long to render while capturing/converting. it halts after 30-55 seconds and does a "flushing DV Transcode Buffer", which takes about 4-6 minutes. I have been in contact with Ulead tech's which take 4 days to recieve a reply from. None of their suggestions help.

I was not satisfied with analog capture from my analog Camcorder.
So I bought a digital viewcam and a firewire card.
The ULEAD software download the AVI file okay, the avi look good.
I convert it to NTSC SVCD with TMPGenc 12a.

THE RESULT IS PRETTY BLOCK and COLOR IS DULL.

IT IS WORST than ANALOG CAPTURE!

Maybe I did not optimised it enough, please tell me
is it me, or it is the DVCAM digitized AVI problem ?

What is the resolution of the downloaded AVI ? Is it interlaced ?



Do the mpeg2 quality better if the Digital Image stablizing is off ?

DVCAM suppose to be as good as DVD, but AVI files are hue.
WHAT DO I have to do to get GOOD Video quality SVCD ?

[tmuncy]

DVCAM suppose to be as good as DVD, but AVI files are hue.
WHAT DO I have to do to get GOOD Video quality SVCD ?

DVCAM is better than DVD, the gold standard as far as home video goes. The AVI file you capture is an exact duplicate of the data on the tape with no quality or generational loss whatsoever. The DV tape stores about 13GB of data per hour of video and the capture files are the same size. Any quality deterioration comes in the encoding to MPEG-2.

A max quality 8,000k CBR DVD MPEG-2 file, compresses this down to less than 4.5GB. Feature films use sophisticated VBR with average bit rates of about 4,000k to squeeze two hours onto a 4.7GB DVD. Since the original is virtually uncompressed and MPEG is very efficient, there is only a very slight perceived quality loss from mini-DV original to DVD, especially at bit rates over 6,000.

SVCD is basically the same as DVD on the much smaller 650MB CD. I think the max bit rate for the SVCD standard is 2,550k. This greatly reduced bit rate means smaller files, allowing about 35min per CBR SVCD. You can squeeze a little more time on using VBR. The tradeoff is noticably lower quality with the higher rate of compression (lower bit rate).

It is difficult to compare VCD/SVCD to VHS/SVHS, but they are said by many to be roughly equivalent. The weakness of low bit rate MPEGs is different. The amount of motion in the material is the key, since the MPEG uses its bits mostly to describe frame to frame changes in the picture. What you see is blocky artifacts around moving objects. Kids playing in a wavy swimming pool are the best types of difficult test clips. A still picture or slide show all look about the same on DV/DVD/SVCD/VCD, because there is no motion to deal with.

To make acceptable quality SVCDs set TMPGenc to its ultimate (slowest) max motion detection settings, CBR at the max bitrate. Be prepared to wait 10 to 20 hours per hour of video for the encoding to complete, depending on your processor and memory. The results will be good by analog tape standards, but nowhere near comparable to DVD or the original mini-DV. Always keep a copy of your final edited projects on mini-DV so they are available for re-rendering on the latest and greatest media technology in the future. The next generation is already being designed. Perhaps the Super-DVD?

If poor quality drives you as nuts as it does me, you'll quickly tire of spending days editing a one hour product that just doesn't look that good in the end. Add to that the fact that only a small percentage of DVD players that aren't new Pioneer or Apex brand units will play SVCD. This makes them hard to mail to grandma, or all the guests at the wedding. Bite the bullet, take out a second mortgage and get state of the art hardware with a DVD burner. Then you won't have to upgrade for at least 18 months.

[SingSing]

DVCAM is better than DVD, the gold standard as far as home video goes. The AVI file you capture is an exact duplicate of the data on the tape with no quality or generational loss whatsoever. The DV tape stores about 13GB of data per hour of video and the capture files are the same size. Any quality deterioration comes in the encoding to MPEG-2.

I have been making VCD and SVCD for couple of years.
I used to do analog capture to AVI with ATI AIW,
but I was tired of the large file size.

So I used ATI AIW128 to capture to 6mb/s rate mpeg2,
then run TMPGENC to mpeg2 it to SVCD rate.

But I was not happy with sharpness, and color.

So when sharp's digital viewcam showed up in Circuit city I bough tone.
The unit is cute and nicely built.

But the AVI file transfered through the 1394 is equally large,
and MS media player said it is 360x480.

Conversion through TMPGENC is worst than previous method.
Does it means native digital fie is less than analog ?

What is your work around ?

[tmuncy]

Sorry Singsing you lost me.

Capturing directly from a mini-DV camcorder in AVI format should give you a native format file equal in size to 13GB/hr, not an Mpeg. Capturing to Mpeg at 6K and then further transcoding to SVCD Mpeg standard probably will give you terrible quality. Mpeg, just like jpeg, will incur substantial generational losses of quality. What software are you using to capture your native mini-DV source material?

[marsmayhem]

Firstly, there is a patch available from Ulead for the audio-video synch issue. From their web page:

"If you are using a hardware-based encoder to generate your MPEG files, you may be experiencing certain audio/video synchronization problems with DVD Workshop.

In many cases, this patch will fix the synchronization problem. However, as testing of all hardware encoders is currently not complete, you may still experience problems even after installing the patch. If so, please return to this page in the near future as we will update the patch after further testing is completed."

Secondly, I've been experimenting with VCD only (not DVD), but I'm able to load in VCD-compliant MPEG-1 clips, and change the thumbnails used in my presentation's menu.

The only problem I seem to be having at the moment is that the "Next" button, though correctly assigned, doesn't work under the disc preview option.

I like DVD Workshop. Nice front-end, nice features. Could've come with a better manual though to explain things a bit better. Still, it's early days for me, so I'll be plugging away at it until I either dump or keep it (or just go and code the XML stuff myself using VCDImager )

Caio!