Just good quality DVDs for my customers

[peco]

Hi.

I've been working with computer graphics and digital video for about 14 years... I work with 3D animation, Post Production, editing, etc. I have a video production house for 12 years... and... recently...

the facts:

I used to make copies of analog video tapes to DVD using those "great methods" exhaustively talked about in this site, and it really helps me to get the best picture quality from those tapes.

What I do:

- First I capture the entire tape with one of the best capture cards ever made, the DPS Perception VR (1995/96). It has processor amp, it captures without drop frames (even on a Pentium 90 cpu), because the computer act only as a host for the card, and the video stream is recorded and played back from a dedicated SCSI HD. Great!
- Then I normalize the audio and use some denoiser, puncher and peak master plugins inside the Steiberg's wavelab to maximize the volume and eliminate the noise from the captured audio. Great!
- Then I convert the captured video to m2v with TMPGEnc at CQ 5000-8000+ bitrate. (2-3 hours of great quality video!) Great!
- Then I use HeadAC3he or BeSweet to convert the processed 48khz WAV file to a MP2 file. Great!
- Then I mux them to author in DVDworkshop, (because it leaves my Mpeg-2 files and do not try to convert them). Great!

Great!!! -- The Final DVD is beautiful, color corrected, with a great audio, and works fine in all DVD players, using NERO or DVDworkshop's burner.
Works great, almost perfect, what I done? - I made a tape restoration and the image quality now looks great on a compact purple DVD-R media.

I now have a lot of VHS (and other...) analog tapes to "convert" and the "best process I found" takes some 8 to 12 hours to complete. Of course it doesn’t worth the time I spend.

The spected solution:

-- Now everything I did has to be made in real time, because the clients never put the VHS (or whatever) tape back to compare, and even so they don't seem to care... they only want to copy them to DVD. No menus, no chapters, no denoiser, no audio normalization, no color correction. - just copy to a newer, compact media. That's all for me and for them...

What the hell I am doing? Who cares about quality? I'm a hobbist but the tapes continues to arrive, ("people who wants to pay me for it") ... so I decided to record everything... // ...from analog VHS, U-Matic and BetaSP tapes, DV tapes or even CD-ROMs with Divx files or whatever need this kind of "DVD copy/conversion" directly through the perception's TBC and the sound card volume / audio enhancer to a stupid black box.

In short - My choice is a Sony or a Panasonic DVD recorder with firewire in and that's it.

So, after all... all I need is some help here and serious "real world experiences" on stand alone recorders !!!

Who tried some (black boxes) side by side and which one can record a good picture quality for a 2 hours maximum DVD-R?

thanks

peco.vgfx

[hispanicboy]

this is the exact same issue i am running into. people don't care about quality. they just want it on dvd. where do i turn?

[i know i didn't have much to add to this post, but i really just want to be notified of replies]

[lordsmurf]

I run into this too. If they want shit, give them shit. Not my problem. I got my money and that's what is important in this situation. If it's their stuff and they don't care, why should I?

However, for the record, I generally refuse to work with people that have that attitude, as it normally comes with the cheap-o attitude. If they don't want to pay, I'm not willing to do the work.

Plus, I wouldn't want anybody to know I did that garbage work. I have my standards.

[Leon8]

I don't crest DVDs for a living. Mostly using for my own
promotions. I have the DPS Perception like you do
and it have has been a work for outputing our animation
for more years than I can think off. But I haven't use the
the Perception like you have for DVD. I may try it.

I just bought the Panasonic E50 DVD Recorder yesterday.
I have been doing some testing. I have recorded from my
Sony miniDV video camera through "S" conncection. The quality
is very good at EX(Highest Quality) quality. You may notice some
artifacting when you advance the video frame by frame.
The quality depends a lot on the source. I recorded some through
the TV tuner (Cable) the qualtiy is noticeably worst but that is if you
check the video frame by frame otherwise it is hard to notice.

Some people mentioned it is commercial DVD quality, it could be
perhaps if you hook it up to a BetacamSP deck. Which I haven't try.

Too little time and too many things to try and test.

I am curious to know if the quality differs from the Panasonic recorders
the ones with and without the hard drives. If anyone have done any tests.

Leon
I

[spiderman2k1]

"peco" how much does that capture card go for? Sound's like it's monster. I love remaster old tape's and turning them to DVD or SVCD.

Some people do not care how a DVD look's. Those are the people with old TV set's and when they see a flat screen TV they know it look's good but would never buy one. My friend work's for a record store and you still see people buying VHS WHY WHY I do not know there sick LOL

I saw one jerk buy the Matrix Reload VHS at the record store where my friend work's for $14.99 and accross the street at BEST BUY they had the MARTIX RELOAD DVD on sale for $15.99. Why did he buy the VHS you ask he's sick he need's help LOL

[jinky]

I just wanna say thanks to lordsmurf, i bought my first DVD burner last week and the guides from him were great, i would have been lost without them, thanks

[donpedro]

and works fine in all DVD players

Be aware that if you do not re-author capured DVD, you might face issue with playback compatibility and this part of your post will not be true anymore

[peco]

“this is the exact same issue i am running into. people don't care about quality. they just want it on dvd. where do i turn?” - hispanicboy

“Plus, I wouldn't want anybody to know I did that garbage work. I have my standards.” - lordsmurf

We all know that ”people” are less tied to quality as us, they only see the “garbage work” is really garbage if you tell them… In 90 percent of the cases “they” really can’t tell the difference between a real good encoded material and the “not to bad” garbage (as I expect from those “boxes”).

I also think that everything you say for them they’ll accept as a true. It’s a little bit stupid, because you are the professional in charge of their tapes. They don’t know DVD encoding… If you can live with a “not perfect” or a “not too bad” encoding (that can saves you a lot of time!!!) believe me that they can too.

Also… how can we tell that some video stuff (any) has a worst encoding quality? -- Who put again the original material and the new DVD side by side running in the same scene?

For Betacams that’s probably the same. And probably you will use your recorder at it’s best quality. -- Those long VHS tapes is the biggest problem, so why don’t get the job done and stop wasting time with something that can’t have better days anyway? Who wants to pay for a VHS restoration?

For me (and I think that’s true for many) the problem is not with video capture and audio processing, this can be done fast. You can even create some kind of batch processing for it. The real problem is running the Mpeg-2 encoders in various (fast) machines to finish your work (how many machines running???) -- VHS copy really needs it? If this can be done in real time, and I don’t think (hope) it will end with some "reaaaally" garbage video, why worry with all those long encoding processes? Who will pay for it? -- "How much value have those tapes and why?"

I don’t have the opportunity and time to put various recorders side by side to see which one is best for what, but I think that even with the worst of them (and of course, that’s not the one I’ll put my money) we can cut a big encode time for those now known as “garbage stuff”. -- Not too garbage/not the best, but we can live with that and catch some more customers, make money and buy some new toys to play with too. : )

I’m considering the Sony GX7 as my primary choice and the Panasonic E60 for second (I’ll wait for your tests Leon8!!). -- I was very interesting in Pioneer 310 the day I knew it, but I'm a little disapointed because of the 2hrs encoding quality. Somebody says that even the “professional” 9000 is not better than Panasonic recorders. I don’t know, but it seems to be true…

I’m just looking for a good box for the day by day work/cutting time, and continue to use our precious TMPGEnc’s stuffs for who/what really needs them. Is just a matter of get the job done, without hide ourselves from the customers, as they will pay for their DVD conversions and eventually tell somebody about you, bringing you more customers, those small “garbage video” ones and maybe some “big professional great encoding” ones. The price varies and nobody gets hurt.

So again, I’ll be waiting for someone who has real day by day experience with Pioneer, Panasonic, Sony, or whatever blackbox recorders.



… donpedro.. “and works fine in all DVD players I’ve tried”… We all know those marantz and others… : )

... spiderman2k1 - ...I think some 2000,00 for that monster in 1995... I used to work with it for 3D anim and some basic editting on a Pentium 90 a long, long time ago... If you look at ebay maybe you can find one for 400,00 or less with a 18 gig scsi hd??? - (18 gb = 1 hour of Broadcast amazing quality recording). "You just can't drop a frame and loose audio sync"... believe me...


Thanks again

Peco.vgfx

[donpedro]

Just be sure that you don't miss this post

Panasonic DMR-E30 can't play recorded DVD

BTW: There was one pretty nice and long post with comparasion of couple of DVD Recorders from somebody who knows what he is doing.

[i am x]

I run into this too. If they want shit, give them shit. Not my problem. I got my money and that's what is important in this situation. If it's their stuff and they don't care, why should I?

However, for the record, I generally refuse to work with people that have that attitude, as it normally comes with the cheap-o attitude. If they don't want to pay, I'm not willing to do the work.

Plus, I wouldn't want anybody to know I did that garbage work. I have my standards.

This is funny. I WISH I could find customers that didn't care about quality. My customers are nit pickers for the best quality POSSIBLE. I've had so many discs returned to me to be redone that it's not even funny. That was when I was first starting out. In a way it's good, because they fored ME to care about quality. I went from using Lead Data to Riteks, and learned how to tweak the settings on the software I use for the BEST quality possible.

[hispanicboy]

and on the otehr side i have some people who have thier kids dance recitle from 5 years ago that they just want a copy on dvd because they are tired of getting thier camcorder out to watch it. it was a bad original to begin with, so a "bad" dvd is expected.

[rkr1958]

When I was at my mother's this past Saturday she gave me five 8-mm tapes of home movies made in circa 1961. In fact, one was from the Christmas of 1961 when I was three. Believe it or not the 8-mm projector still actually worked (kind of) and I was able to play a couple of minutes of that tape. These tapes probably haven't been played in over 30 to 35 years and have been kept in a dark closest. These tapes have flim of my Father who died this past year and my older sister who was killed in 1972.

I really wanted these movies converted to some other media (VHS, DVD). I want the best quality possible, but I wanted them converted no matter how poor the tape was (except of course if it was dark).

Anyway, I called Wolfe Camera and found out that they will convert 8-mm film to Super VHS and then to DVD. I jumped on it ... even though I've authored and backed many DVDs and have even backed up some of my Son's Suuper VHS movies (Disney, Elmo, etc.) to DVD. They told me this will take 3-weeks and will cost somewhere around $60 to $80. Time and cost (to within reason) are not an issue.

I can't wait to see how they turn out. I thought these movies were lost. Believe me, I will make mulitple backups of both the Super VHS tape and DVD and will keep at least one backup set at work. I'm also planning to surprise my Mom with a set for Christmas.

[peco]

Ok donpedro that's what I expect from these forums, but it seems that no one will ever precisely tell anything about “DVD standards” or the various compatibility problems that we all experience in countless forms. Where are the facts? We just can’t put all recorders and software in a lab to do real serious tests to find what we are looking for! I think that what we are sharing here are only our speculations that lead us to even more confusion after all. (Maybe it makes me feel less lonely)…
Those posts where nice, but makes me more confused.
Of course the compatibility issues are more serious than anything else. I prefer to trust Pioneer in terms of compatibility because they started this recordable DVD stuff.

As I use a pioneer 104 DVD-R drive, I can now, after years, predict where the final DVD will work and how to make a compatible DVD-R. I don’t know stand alone recorders, but if it has this problems of “not playing what I recorded”, well that’s really something!

I burned a lot of DVD-Rs, a lot did't work, but now it is rare to occur. I know what to expect from my TMPGEnc’s encodings and my Pioneers because I test it and use it everyday. But what about the guy next door with a somewhat different software, recorder or a “who knows” DVD player? I don’t think these forums are bringing some light to DVD-R questions. Sometimes works, sometimes not… well, it better try for myself. As I did, buying my first Pioneer and discovering those encoding “secrets” that we are trying, year after year to share here. After all, only seeing by myself will makes me decide what is good for me. I think is a good idea to put my hands on one or more of these recorders to see for myself, in my own studio, with my own stuff... So maybe I can help someone… who knows? I'll pay to learn... because, after all, I’m more confused…

thanks again

peco.vgfx

[webeye]

Re above post...8mm film..
I believe there are 2 ways to get to DV (or analog)) and subsequently to DVD ..even VCD/SVCD with the right eqipt..... 1--the special box that photo stores with labs use and 2--the use of a white screen along with a DV camcorder which I hear works quite well and can be done at home.
An 8mm projector is required of course.
Doing this at home has editing possibilities. Editing the film prior to shooting would be ideal.

[bnbhoha]

bartell drugs does 8mm to vhs. I think they now do on dvd. I beleive Target does it too. Good luck. I paid $40 for an hours worth of material on vhs 3 years ago.

[busterw]

I went from using Lead Data to Riteks, and learned how to tweak the settings on the software I use for the BEST quality possible.

I know this is off topic a bit but what software are you using and can you in short, define your "tweaks" to get the best quality? If nothing else, can you PM me the tweaks you've learned?

Thanks!

[spiderman2k1]

The only reason I can think of for the Sony not burning DVD+R is that some duel burner's do not burn them right or Sony did not want to pay more money.

[DaveS]

The only reason I can think of for the Sony not burning DVD+R is that some duel burner's do not burn them right or Sony did not want to pay more money.

I can't remember who's on what side of the -R / +R camp, but if Sony's on the +R side, they'd really only be paying money into their own side (although perhaps the h/w guys didn't have the budget or it would have raised the unit price too much).

The only other thing I can think of is having to do w/ the format itself (& maybe w/ license $ too) is that sony sort of dumbed down the + format for this unit, e.g. didn't use all the features I think. I can't recall which exactly, but they made the -RW and the +RW very similar, probably for ease of operation or consistency w/ their s/w or user interface (panel buttons / remote). There may not have been much benefit to offering +R since many people burn -R for greater consistency (actual or perceived) and the editing features are really on the +RW and the VR formats anyway.

Their PC burner has both +R and -R format so I don't think its realted to the burner itself, rather some combination of the above.

The real story would be interesting if anyone knows anyone at Sony.

[Gil T Pleasure]

Sony claimed that it was too late to include DVD+R support because at the time DVD+R was just being finalized. There were numerous articles about this when the GX7 debuted, but I can't seem to find them now.

Edit:
Found it... http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,108632,00.asp

[DaveS]

Sony claimed that it was too late to include DVD+R support because at the time DVD+R was just being finalized. There were numerous articles about this when the GX7 debuted, but I can't seem to find them now.

Edit:
Found it... http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,108632,00.asp

Interesting that the +RW format was finished before the +R format..I would have thought they would have done it the other way around, but maybe finalizing the approach for re-writing let them figure out what the format would look like w/o the re-write...who knows...