Mediastudio Pro and editting MPEG

[nrgetic]

I have discussed this on other boards and everyone seems to have a theory, but no definitive answer. I am hoping someone here has actually tried this.

I like to use TMPGENC to encode my VCDs since the quality is hard to match. I recently picked up Ulead Mediastudio Pro 6.0, and the VCD encoding in MSP is not up to par w/TMPENC. So.. I have been capturing in AVI, editing (really just joining MPEG files) in MSP, and then using TMPENC to encode. Works great. Of course, for a longer project I run into the 4GB limit since my HD is formatted as FAT32, so this process will not work for anything more than a very short video.

What I am proposing is to capture in AVI and then encode each file in TMPGENC to preserve the quality I like... THEN start a new project in MSP in VCD format. I will then merely join and add a music track.

Question... If I use MSP's "Smart Render" function, does MSP do anything to the frames that are already in proper VCD format? In other words, does it re-encode them? Or does it just skip over the properly formatted frames and just re-encode to the spots where I will add transitions?

Thanks

[Lamont Cranston]

I use MSP V6.5 and with smart rendering MSP re renders only the effected frames. Make sure you set the MSP encoder parameters to match the parameters of your mpeg 1 file otherwise MSP will rerender the whole file. MSP 6.0 uses the Ligos encoder which, IMHO, is not at TMPGEnc quality level but should make acceptable splices. Make sure you apply all the MSP V6.0 patches at Ulead web site. I believe at least one is an encoder upgrade.

One other thought. MainConcept just announced it's Mpeg 1 & 2 Encoder and it has one new feature that may be of interest to the fat 32 folks. The encoder can encode a group of avi files into one meg file. The downside is, IMHO, it is not up to TMPGEnc quality and it cost $149. You can try a demo at: http://www.mainconcept.com/mpeg_encoder.shtml

[nrgetic]

So, is there any reason to believe that a TMPGENC encoded VCD compliant clip will be re-rendered by MSP?

Reason I ask is because I really want the best quality and while MSP may encode it to be acceptable, TMPGENC just does a wonderful job. I guess I am just going to have to burn some experimental discs to be sure. I can post the results here if anyone is interested.

I will capture in Huffuv.. encode all the clips I capture.. I will then burn the clips as a VCD

I will also take the VCD compliant clips and run them through MSP with no transitions, but a simple title screen that I like to put in the front of my productions. Then burn as VCD.

Then I will add a music track to the above and burn as VCD..

Then add transitions to the above and burn as VCD. Hopefully, at this point, the only re-rendering will be done on the transition scenes and will preserve the quality of the TMPGENC encoding.

[Lamont Cranston]

So, is there any reason to believe that a TMPGENC encoded VCD compliant clip will be re-rendered by MSP?

No, MSP should not rerender the mpeg 1 file.

[troyvcd1]

Just for the hell of it I created a svcd using ms6.5 using the ligos encoder. Do not install the update patch as it will cause ms6.5 to use their own encoder which is far inferior to the ligos encoder. What I got was excellent results. And I have been wasting my time all this time trying to get tmpgenc to work. I never got satisfactory results from tmpgenc especially in moving scenes. I think that the ligos encoder is much much better.

[tharris]

I tried this approach - ie: capture in VCD and use MSP's smart render to just render the changes like transitions, etc.

Well, MSP did render the VCD file without re-rendering everything and it played fine on the PC but unfortunately, when I played the same video on a VCD in my DVD player, the player would skip a frame at each and every cut, transition, etc. Basically at any point that a change had been made in the video at the smart render point.

The skip would appear as a brief hesitation with a blocky screen at which point the video would play fine until the next change. Each of these corresponded directly to the smart render point in the video.

I ended up forcing MSP to re-render everything just to get a video that played correctly. At that point, I gave up on capturing directly to MPEG because the "shortcut" just wasn't working, no render time was saved, and the results were worse.

So, now I'm capturing in AVI, editing it, and then rendering either a VCD or SVCD from there. Video results are better, no weird problems, and everything plays fine on the DVD player.

[thxkid]

Try using another codec for longer AVI's like, huffy, Indeo, just don't try Divx I not been able to get it to work with my Pro 6.0.