Need advice for encoding/authoring

[ejm1385]

Relatively new to digital video. Am working on a two "projects":

1) Cataloging over 150 episodes of a favorite TV series. I capture from TV using Canopus ADVC 100 and with Scenalyzer Live (like the start/stop timer feature of this).

Purchased Studio 8 mainly for editing features of my home videos and I like the menu creation features, so I have that as an option. Encoding / rendering is extremely slow in this program.

For my project, I need to add .avi files to a program, edit out commercials, author a custom menu with a button link to each of 4 episodes I am putting on each DVD, and then encode and burn.

Read a lot of good reviews on TMPGEnc. Would TMPGEnc be faster at encoding that Studio 8? Also, do I need the TMPGEnc DVD author seperately to create the menus?

2) For editing home movies, is there a way to edit video and create DVD menus in Pinnacle, but use another program to encode and/or burn? What are the steps to go about doing this?

Thanks for the help.

[sacajaweeda]

DVDLab is pretty good for creating custom menus. You can use whichever encoder you want if you use DVDLab because it's just an authoring program. It doesn't encode anything. Quality encoder for beginners would be TMPGEnc, I believe they have a version now that will author as well as encode but I haven't tried it so can't reccommend it. Their encoder is very good albeit slow so it isn't going to be much of an upgrade speed-wise from what you have now, quite possibly even slower, but it is more user friendly than using something like Cinemacraft Encoder (with AVISynth), which is markedly faster (2-4x at least) with a difference in quality that while some here will say exists, you and 100 percent of the people who watch the DVDs you encode with it will most likely not see or notice it. None are freeware, but you can download trial versions of all of them.

[donpedro]

2) For editing home movies, is there a way to edit video and create DVD menus in Pinnacle, but use another program to encode and/or burn? What are the steps to go about doing this?

Almost... Creaet in PS8, encode elsewhere, create menu PS8, burn Nero.

For more info read post in my signature.