Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2 worked with VBR !!!

[miamicanes]

A couple of weeks ago, I was forced to write off Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2 as unusable with long VBR-encoded files because it took SO long to recover from any attempt to reposition the mark towards the end.

Today I made an accidental discovery: it doesn't seem to have that problem with *ALL* files... only *SOME*. Here's the current score:

1/2 DV1 resolution (352 x 480) @ 29.97fps (59.94 interlaced fields/sec) 2800k VBR MPEG-2 captured and encoded by ATI MMC 7.7 -- unusable. DVDMF2 gags on anything more than 30 minutes into the video.

DV1 resolution (720 x 480) @ 29.97fps (59.94 interlaced fields/sec) encoded by TMPGEnc as 3000k avg VBR (min=0, max=8000) w/224k MP2 audio -- DVDMF2 had no apparent problems navigating through it, even 90 minutes into the video.

At this point, I'm not sure whether the culprit is ATI's encoding, the use of half-DV1 resolution, or something else... but I wanted to share the good news that DVDMF2's VBR-related problems aren't universal.

POST your success and failure stories here! Include:

• * app used to do the encoding (TMPGEnc, ATI MMC, etc)
  * resolution
  * min, max, and average VBR parameters
  * audio encoding (xxx kBit MP2, PCM, AC3, etc)
  * length of video file, and if it was affected by slowdown, how far into it could you reasonably navigate before DVDMF2 became unusable?

I think it would be particularly useful for lots of people here if we could find some combination that enables DVDMF2 to gracefully handle VBR captures straight from ATI MMC7.7, or at least handle them after some quick cleanup that doesn't involve re-encoding the whole thing from scratch.

[Hojobey]

I have had the exact same issue. Do a search under all forums and type in "moviefactory" and "vbr" (look under the discussion with hojobey).Others have had problems as well. If the movie is over 40 minutes long, there are noticeable delays when you use the slide (jog) bar.

I have given up trying to pinpoint my chapters. I simply do auto and set them about 5 minutes apart.

I called customer support about this issue and they told me my ATI 32 Meg card was insufficient (which I could not believe). I went out and bought a 64 meg. DDR nvidia gforce card and their was no difference. It is clearly a defect in the program. CBR works perfectly, but with VBR, while you can get the slide to move, takes very long and is not practical.

[Robert Simandl]

I use MPEG's captured with my ReplayTV at 4000kbps VBR, 720x480, MPEG-1 L2 stereo 48kHz 16-bit audio, with commercials edited out by Womble MPEG2VCR.

There is a delay when doing the chapter add/edit thing that gets longer the further into the file I get, but it's never to the point that the program's unusable. Just annoying.

Sometimes I use VirtualDub-MPEG to extract a wav audio file from the clip, then use the "replace audio" option in DMF so I can have PCM sound in my project. This increases the delay, probably because it's dealing with the .mpg (which still has its original mpeg sound) AND the replacement .wav audio file at the same time. Again, not unusable, just annoying.... especially since DVD Workshop at six times the price probably would have crashed on me by this point.

[miamicanes]

I haven't had a chance to experiment further, but something I came across this afternoon gave me an idea where to explore next... it's possible that DMF2's problem isn't with VBR per se, but rather the combination of VBR and unclosed GOPs.

I personally don't know for a fact whether or not ATI MMC 7.7 produces open or closed GOPs, but I vaguely remember reading somewhere else that it either leaves them open, or at least doesn't quite close them properly. Maybe someone will have some free time on Monday afternoon to test this theory (inspecting the GOPs of an ATI MMC7.7-encoded VBR MPEG-2 file that DMF2 chokes on to see whether they're open or closed, and if they're open, whether closing them with some external utility takes care of the problem).

[digitalmaster]

You should try Pinnacle Studio 8. VBR files just lock up the program completely, not just long pauses, it never came back after sitting there an hour.