DVD Novice Help

[Macc34]

I am new to dvd Authoring etc. and have a few basic questions:

I have video footage on my Sony TRV20 MiniDV camcorder which I transferred to my PC as Avi file using canopus Raptor RT-2 card. I then added varioous transitions and Audio to the video. I tried creating DVD from this using Intervideo DVD creator but the results were very poor. I then used Ulead workshop and the results were better but i would describe them as top end VHS quality rather than DVD quality. My questions are as follows:

1) Does the quality drop when u burn footage on DVD i.e. is miniDV footage btter than what you will get when u burn on DVD.

2) Total length of my original film is 1 hour 50 minutes. Can this be put on a single DVD? Ulead gives two options of 1 hour and 2-hour. Is 2-hour poorer quality. Can a file be further compressed than mpeg2 to make a higher quality DVD?

3) Does anybody know what the best software is for DVD authoring that would give the best picture quality.

Any tips welcome.

[daamon]

Hi Macc34,

Welcome to the black arts... In short, the good news is that with DV footage you can get it on to DVD at very close to the same quality.

A main deciding factor is how much time (length of footage) you want to get on. Anything over about 100 mins and you're gonna have to accept lower quality or more than one disc.

I'll explain why:

1. Obviously, each DVD can only hold so much (4.7Gb in total, 4.35Gb once disk overheads are taken into account).
2. To get DV footage on to DVD you (mostly, there are exceptions but I won't go into that) have to have it as a DVD compliant MPEG2 file (.mpg). See the "DVDR" link in blue, top left of the page.

The size of this file depends solely on the time in seconds of the video footage and the bitrate at which the .mpg is encoded at. The higher the bitrate (max = 9,848kbps for video and audio together), the better the quality.

So, as a rough guide: approx 100mins @ high bitrate = enough to totally fill one disc. Simple, but hopefully gets the idea across - it's time or quality, or a compromise on both.

1) Does the quality drop when u burn footage on DVD i.e. is miniDV footage btter than what you will get when u burn on DVD.

There's always a loss of quality when encoding, you can control how much.

If you're encoding at good (high) bitrates (say, 8,000 upwards) then you'll get a quality that is damn near comparable to the original DV footage.

2) Total length of my original film is 1 hour 50 minutes. Can this be put on a single DVD?

Yes, but see my "I'll explain why" above.

3) Does anybody know what the best software is for DVD authoring that would give the best picture quality.

There are 5 basic steps that you need to learn:
1. Transfer (if DV via firewire), or capture - there's a subtle difference, but as long as you end up with a good AVI you'll be OK. This, you've done.
2. Edit - Add fades, transitions etc. This, you've done.
3. Encode - Get the footage into a DVD compliant MPEG2. This, I recommend you do separately. Explanation as to why to follow in link below.
4. Author the DVD - Create menus, chapters etc. and then produce the VOB files. This, you'll need to do - see link below.
5. Burn to disc. And this too.

Some apps take AVI's (edited or otherwise) and make DVD disks all in one go, but they still go through steps 3 - 5. Though the common consensus is to use the best tool for each step coz then you'll get the best possible for the next step (with step 6 being "Watching", for which you want the best possible). You'll also get more control at each step, allowing you to make any tweaks you need to.

See this link:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=725433#725433

...for the steps I take to go from DV cam to DVD disk with menus and good quality. I don't claim it's the best way or the right way as there's loads of ways and loads of different tools. But it will give you a good insight into what you need to do, typical tools and settings.

The only other thing you may well need is a bitrate calculator to tell you what bitrate you need to use either:
1. As a max for Constant Bitrate encoding - CBR, or
2. As the average for Variable Bitrate encoding - VBR (as I use in the link above).

A good one is the DVDRHelp Bitrate Calculator, but the are others in the Tools section.

I know there's loads there. Read through, understand each bit (read the help guides, glossary and search the forums to help you) and then start with small trial clips burning to a re-writeable. This will save you sooooo much time and avoid making coasters out of disks.

When you're happy, try your full lenght footage to a re-writeable or DVD-/+R, depending on how brave / confident you are.

Hope that helps. Good luck...

[lechtin]

Daamon covered the video part of encoding, but there is also the audio part that ultimately also influences the quality of your video. Basically, most authoring software encodes you audio in LPCM (equivalent to .wav) or to MPEG audio. While LPCM has better quality, it takes up a lot of room on your DVD. Remember that a DVD is 4.3GB, so taking up space for audio leaves less for your video. I suggest you try to encode your audio to AC3. It is supported by all DVD players (better compatibility than MPEG audio) and takes less room than LPCM. BeSweet is an application that can do that conversion, or you can use the AC3 plug-in in TMPGEnc DVD author. DVD-Lab also supports AC3 but does not do the encoding.

[daamon]

Hi Macc34,

lechtin's dead right about the audio - this is covered in the link I posted.

I think, with the latest version of BeSweet, that the AC3 encoding has been disabled. I'm not sure of the reasons behind this, but it seems that some Pioneer stand-alone DVD players (not all - only a few I believe) don't accept the end product AC3 audio. Or, put another, pretty much every other player on the planet is OK with it.

I found BeSweet's GUI quite busy, and couldn't get it working (I don't think I had all the dll's). I tried ffmpeggui and found it dead easy to install and to use - that's why it's mentioned in my pseudo-guide.

ffmpeggui uses the same encoding algorithm as BeSweet, so the same issues may arise. I don't know what the latest is on that though...