Help me with authoring

[tweakfreak]

Whats up all, I am fairly new to the whole dvd authoring and would like some help. I have been capturing TV shows using my Canopus ADVC 100 with Adobe Premiere 6.5 So I have 2 hour long episodes of Monster garage that I would like to burn onto 1 dvd. (The episodes have been editing of commercials and are around 43 mins each or ~9 GB) These shows are still in DV format .avi. I would like to know what is the best way to burn to dvd so that I can create my own menus with sound, have quality that looks the same as it does on TV and thats fairly easy. I have been trying many programs but some are a pain because they take forever to encode etc. Right now Im using DVD workshop. I have purchased TMG DVD authoring but the menu editing on this program sucks. Sorry for the long post but I figured you guys are experienced and can lead me in the right direction. Thank you for your time and help

[bek]

DVD Workshop does pretty good with encoding. Are you unhappy with it?

[housepig]

try DVD Lab - very customizable, still easy to learn on (although not as much wizardy hand-holding - you'll have to read a tutorial or two)

but it packs a lot of punch in an $80 program. check www.mediachance.com

[Doggiedaddy]

Your post seem to have more than one question. In regard to the title of your post AUTHORING you might want to give DVD Lab a try. I am in testing now with the program in conjunction with DVD Menus and for the price it seem to give a lot of options. THIS IS NOT AN ENCODER just authoring along the same lines as DVDMaestro but at 79.00US.
Audio options still need some work in the program but it seem very useful for the $ and I think there is a 30day trial available. Encoding would already need to be done via encoder of your choice.

http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/index.html
http://www.mediachance.com/
http://www.dvd9to5.com/DVD_lab_Intro.htm
Dd

[timmmay]

The best way would probably encode to mpeg with premiere's built-in mainconcept encoder, video only. Save the wav sound from premiere then convert it to ac3 with besweet. Import both video(mpv or m2v) and ac3 to dvd workshop for authoring.

As far as the menu goes, you can make it really professional and fully customized by using your own assets(images or clips). Creating customized images would have to involved using photoshop or other graphics program. And creating clips for a motion menu would have to involved using premiere, after effects, etc... Authoring menus is fairly easy, it's the design and customization of the menu that gets complicated as this usually means using other applications to get your menu not to look pre-canned.

[Doggiedaddy]

housepig

dejavu?
submit time, you win
Dd

[mkelley]

Yes, I agree with a lot of the posters here, but I'll still add my two cents <g>.

I do a lot of exactly what you're doing (although not the show -- never heard of "Monster Garage"... is it like Monsters Inc? :>) and I use Premiere to capture the video, convert to MPEG via Main Concept, convert the audio to AC3 and use DVDLab to put it all together.

Using the built in parameters of Main Concept (highly recommended) you can fit two 43 minute episodes coded at the high quality setting (assuming you're converting your audio to AC3). The nice thing about DVDLab is you can quickly drag over a title frame from your show and create a nice menu in a few seconds -- then if you do subsequent DVDs you can use this same project file and just change the movies (it will take literally seconds to setup the next one). Encoding with MainConcept out of Premiere works in near real time on any decent machine -- then you can erase your big AVI files and free up disk space for the next set.

DVDLab has a free fully functional 30 day trial, so there's no excuse not to at least try it. BeSweet is freeware, and there is (on this site) complete settings for use on a DVD (see far left -- Convert). Make sure you use 224 for your audio rate for the maximum compatibility. Have fun!

[housepig]

@Doggiedaddy -

you almost beat me - I wrote my response, realized he needed info about encoding as well, and said f**k it, I'll re-reply later.

@mkelly -

"Monster Garage" is a show where they take cars and transform them, like a Chevy Suburban into a mobile wedding chapel, complete with pipe organ, or a Winnebago into a roving skateboard halfpipe.

it's on TLC (or maybe the Discovery channel) - you should catch an episode.

@Tweakfreak -

if Premiere capturing works for you, rock out. I would try some other encoders such as CCE or TMPGenc, see if you like the quality better than the Main Concept encoder.