DVD Authoring: Apple or PC, which one is best?

[kmadel]

I just bought a Sony Vaio (the RX580) with a DVD-RW drive. I has a sticker on the front of it that says, "Create your own DVD video". That lead me to believe that I would be able to import my mini-DV footage, and then author and burn a true(MPEG-2) DVD movie. The computer comes bundled with Sony's DVGate software (no MPEG-2 output in this version, although other versions do support MPEG-2 output), Adobe Premier LE (no MPEG-2 output), and DVDit produce specifically for Sony (no AVI import, thus you must have MPEG-2 to import). I just thought that it was really crappy on Sony's part to sell a computer with DVD-RW, but not the neccessary software to actually produce a DVD movie. My wife spent several hours on the phone last night with tech support, and they basically said go buy third party software to do that.

Well enough of my rant, I happened to have the Ligos LSX encoder plug-in for Adobe, so I have been able to encode to MPEG-2. This brings me back to the title of this post. I was wondering if anyone had done a side by side comparison with DVDs created by Apple (iMovie, iDVD, superdrive) and DVDs created by PC (to many choices to list). I am still messing around with Ligos settings, but so far have not been that please with my results. However, my wife's boss has an Apple G4 with a superdrive and she says that his DVDs look outstanding.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks, Kurt

[Sefy]

Well, i'll start by saying i'm rather bribed, as I hate Sony! but this isn't our question here, so you'll forgive me

Mac's are basicly much better then PC for Authoring DVD's, but notice I said BASICLY, and why ? cause when they finaly get a software to do the job, it's a well invested program, unlike PC which has a gazzilion programs cause none of them are invested like those in a Mac, but atleast they are free

Lastly, LSX quality SUCKS!!!! no matter what you do or what any person says! LSX SUCKS! simple as that! get CCE, TMPGEnc, even old XingMPEG is better then LSX in quality!

[wildcatfan]

Xing better than LSX???? You must be crazy....Maybe better than the old LSX versions but 3.5 has pretty decent quality for mpeg2 at dvd bitrates.

[Sefy]

Yeah, amazing quality once you manage to get by all the blocks!
I've never had blocks with Xing, and it's pretty damn fast for an outdated no longer being updated Encoder

[wildcatfan]

While there are definitely better encoders at vcd bitrates. I feel that LSX does a good job once you get over 2000kbps. What I have noticed is it (in my experience) doesn't get the "macroblocks" but instead bands the colors worse than say tmpgenc. I prefer the banding over the blocks. But it is all in each persons opinion....

[Sefy]

From my experience with LSX, it has the worst encoding I have ever seen, and believe me, for a guy using just VCD, i don't have that much of a high standard compared to others.

LSX blocks, colours, non-standard, it is by far the worst i've seen, if there is anything that beats it by bad quality, would be rare.

[tinycorkscrew]

Of course, the Apple "Superdrive" is a rebadged Pioneer A03, so the hardware is identical AFAIK.

TMPGEnc does a nice job of converting digital video to MPEG2. I can make SVCDs that look (to my eyes) as good as the source material.

[Sefy]

I just love Pioneer don't you ?

[SatStorm]

Because of my job, I was able to rip a dvd (charlie's angles) both to a mac and pc...
Mac winned the game.... On all issues...

[kmadel]

I tried using TMPGEnc, and it took much longer than Ligos and then I wasn't able to import it into DVDit. I change the settings and encoded again same results. This is TMPGEnc 2.01. Has anybody made DVDs with TMPGenc recently, and if so what setting did you use. The default template does not work.

[wildcatfan]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-12-06 01:20:40, Sefy wrote:
From my experience with LSX, it has the worst encoding I have ever seen, and believe me, for a guy using just VCD, i don't have that much of a high standard compared to others.

LSX blocks, colours, non-standard, it is by far the worst i've seen, if there is anything that beats it by bad quality, would be rare.

</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>


Amazingly enough you say it is nonstandard but it is the ONLY encoder so far I have seen that makes a program stream the vcd toolkit will take with out any post processing!!!

[kmadel]

What about Media Cleaner 5, that is if price didn't matter?

I know that you can't get variable bit rate with Cleaner unless you buy the add on MPEG Charger. But I figure it is worth a try. I am going to try it tonight and I will post back my findings tommorow.

I guess I should have added in my previous post that the footage that I am working with has extremely bad lighing (home miniDV, taken indoors at night with bad lighting). Made there are some special settings in one of the encoders that I could tweak to deal better with poor lighting.

[Sefy]

wildcatfan, have you seen the default VCD settings ? for some reason Audio is at 192k, and that is not standard, and by the way, Video ToolKit 2 accepted my TMPGEnc encoded VCD files with out a single problem so far.

[wildcatfan1978]

I don't know what hacked ass version of ligos you are using but mine when i check the little videocd checkbox makes a perfectly compliant vcd stream. And vcd toolkit will NOT take a tmpgenc stream....notice before i said NO post processing....that includes demuxing it. With ligos just rename to *.mmd and your done. My vcd setting in ligos are as such audio: stereo 224kbps video: 1123 kbps.....and before you say anything the 1123 is exactly right, because they measure in TRUE kilobits ie 1024 bits not 1000.

[Shabubu]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-12-06 19:55:20, Sefy wrote:
wildcatfan, have you seen the default VCD settings ? for some reason Audio is at 192k, and that is not standard, and by the way, Video ToolKit 2 accepted my TMPGEnc encoded VCD files with out a single problem so far.

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That is standard for mono audio in VCD...

[Sefy]

wildcatfan1978, I don't have an hacked up version, I got an original full Ligos Suite v2.0 which includes the encoder v3.5
and when I select the VideoCD it has the Audio at 192k and it's still the worst looking encoder i've seen.

Shabubu, VCD by default is NOT mono, it is Stereo, you even had to unlock the Template in TMPGEnc to support Mono! so if they use Mono as default, they got a screw loose

[wildcatfan1978]

after looking at the cdi website I found that vcd 2.0 is a bit more relaxed than is 1.1. It does support mono and other bitrates and modes than vcd 1.1 does I believe....

[JHebert]

Kmadel, I think this thread got away from the your original post about encoding avi to mpeg2 for DVDit.
DVDit LE doesn't have a built-in mpeg encoder so you have to use an external encoder like you said. I am not a big fan of LSX although the latest version is not too bad imho.
I have heard of people using TMPGEnc with DVDit but there are some issues to be aware of.
First, DVD doesn't use MPEG1/layer2 audio but instead uses either PCM or AC3. I think the low-end version of DVDit only supports PCM. I'm pretty sure the TMPGEnc DVD template uses MPEG1/layer2 audio. I'm not sure if DVDit will convert the audio to PCM, or if you have to import the audio seperately as uncompressed PCM wav file.
This leads to another issue, the maximum bitrate. DVD spec calls for maximum 9.8Mb/s total bitrate for video and audio. With PCM audio this limits you to about 8.3Mb/s maximum for the video stream. I think the TMPGEnc DVD template is set to 9Mb/s which would be too high for use with PCM audio. You would need to load the Unlock template and lower the video bitrate.
You can also use AVISynth to frameserve from the Premiere timeline to TMPGEnc. I found a few links about this and about TMPGEnc for DVD:
http://forums.sonic.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=21
http://www.creativecow.net/articles/gordon_dan/premiere_dvd/

[Sefy]

You mentioned that DVDit supports multiplexing (Video/Audio seperate files), couldn't one use TMPGEnc just for the Video, and then use some WAV to AC3 encoding ? wouldn't that be better ?

[JHebert]

Sefy, I'm no expert at DVDit but this is my understanding of it. TMPGEnc with other AC3 encoder would be best, but the problem is that the LE version of DVDit (low-end OEM version) doesn't support AC3 audio at all. It doesn't have its own AC3 encoder and you also can't import an AC3 file encoded in another program.
So you are limited to PCM audio only with DVDit LE. I found this link that summarizes the different DVDit versions:
http://dvdit.com/about_editions.html
With DVDit LE you can import MPEG1/MPEG2 video and audio, and PCM WAV audio. Any imported MPEG audio gets converted to PCM audio within DVDit. So as I said you should limit your MPEG2 video bitrate to no higher than 8.3Mb/s to stay within the 9.8Mb/s combined limit.
You could still use TMPGEnc for encoding the video and audio as an MPEG file. But if you encode the audio to MPEG1/layer2 in TMPGEnc it will just get converted back to uncompressed PCM in DVDitit which seems like a waste. It might be better just to encode the video in TMPGEnc and import the audio seperately as a PCM WAV to avoid an unnecessary audio encoding step.

[Sefy]

What you are saying defenetly sounds right to do, although i'm curious to one thing, why should you limit the Video ? after all, the Audio may be imported as a PCM WAV, but doesn't DVDit still encodes it to the correct format on it's own ? which mean it should encode it to the same Bitrate you would encode yourself, no ?

[kmadel]

I made it real easy on myself, I bought an Apple G4 this weekend. It does a great job of encoding, and it does it really fast. While you are working in iDVD, it encodes any movie that you import in the background, so you can keep working. Of course it is DVD only, and you don't have any control over the bitrates, etc. But, I guess I am more interested in putting together my movie than messing with and configuring an encoder.

[Sefy]

Well, I suppose that's a solution too