Simple Authoring FRUSTRATION

[Jayhawk]

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been trying to choose the right combination of tools to put multiple captured TV episodes on a DVD (single menu, 4 episodes, no commercials. Pretty simple, I thought.

I’m capturing in MPG2 with a Hauppauge PVR250 (video VBR 6200, audio 48K, 384kbs). All NTSC 720 X 480. That part is working great.

The biggest hunt was for a simple editor to remove commercials quickly. Nero Vision is borderline junk for editing but I owned it so I tried it.

TMPGEnc Author worked great but forced you to burn the DVD or create a TS_VIDEO folder ready to burn. No option for just editing the MPG.

MovieFactory-3 has a pretty good editor but it also forces you to burn the DVD or create an image file.

Finally found Womble MPEG-VCR and it works perfectly at chopping up a file and writing out a new file that can either be left alone or re-coded to whatever bit rate you want. $70 but I may have to bite the bullet on it. Unfortunately it doesn’t actually author DVD’s so on to the next program.

After creating the four files I wanted at the above mentioned capture specs, I attempted to use Nero Vision to do the actual authoring. Nero re-encoded the video to 9,200mbs and the audio to 1,536kbs. Even after using the custom output setting (set to 6,200) Nero still re-encoded the video bit rate to 9,200. What the hell is with Nero anyway.

MovieFactory-3 has a “leave compliant files alone” setting and that worked fine. Left all my encoding alone, added menus, burned the disc. Great, except now I’m looking at another $70 for that.

My question: Does it have to be this difficult to find a program that offers a little flexibility regarding the way people work. In setting these programs up for the “lowest common denominator” type person these companies have locked you in to their way of doing things.

I’m just venting I guess, especially about Nero. For $100 you would think the program would at least do what its told.

[FOO]

TMPGEnc Author worked great but forced you to burn the DVD or create a TS_VIDEO folder ready to burn. No option for just editing the MPG.

The title of your thread implies you want to make DVDs. Then you claim
TDA is no good because it makes DVD files. What's wrong with editing
commercials and making a DVD ? That is the goal , right ?

[mmasw]

TMPGEnc[/url] Author worked great but forced you to burn the DVD or create a TS_VIDEO folder ready to burn. No option for just editing the MPG.

well....if your goal, as you said, is to simply create the DVD with the 4 episodes minus the commercials, TMPGEnc DVD Author will do that fairly simply.

just use the 'set as start frame' & 'set as end frame' to isolate the episode itself and cut the commercials for each one.

For example, if you have episode A with 4 commercial breaks, all you have to do is load the episode 5 times in the same track and use each instance to chop out the ads. You'll then have an episode with 4 chapter points in the final dvd. You could add more chapter points if you want thru the normal process as well.

fairly simple process

[Jayhawk]

You are both correct to some extent. I really wasn't clear on what I wanted to do. Because I mix and match various files to make different DVD's it is much more convenient for me if all the edited files can be saved, and the DVD created later. Other than that, TMPGEnc Author worked great.

It appears that Womble is the right package for me right now.

Thanks for the comments.

[Tom Roper]

I want to love Womble MPEG Video Wizard but....

When I use Womble to edit a long capture, doing lots of cuts/joins, I lose audio sync when authoring the Womble edited mpeg file with TMPGEnc DVD Author.

If I do the same edits inside TMPGEnc DVD Author, I don't get the frame accurate edits, but it stays in-sync, and also saves lots of time.

[MemnocK]

I have a question in the same line as JayHawk.

I to I capture TV episodes an after I burn them on DVD (single menu, 4 episodes, no commercials).

Here how I do it. Probably you could give me a better way to make it.

I capture them with WinFast (came with my capture card) in MPG 720 X 480 NTSC. It give me nearly 2go or more for each episode...

After, I take Ulead DVD Movie Factory (or others) to create my DVD. I create a VIDEO_TS with my 4 episodes.

After I take DVD Shrink 3.1 to compres the project for my DVD.

But some times, my project is more then 9 go, so I can't create my DVD with 4 episodes...

Questions :
- Is there way to create project bigger the 9 go ?

- How to compress MPG ?

- And a better way them I'm doing it ... ?

Thanks !!

[Jayhawk]

MemnocK, I'm only doing half hour episodes and I suspect you're doing one hours so I probably won't be much help. One suggestion might involve your capture settings.

Does WinFast allow you to set the bit rate on your captures. I am capturing at 5400 - 6200 (VBR) but have captured as low as 3600 - 4000 with good results. Wouldn't try it with DVD backups but TV episodes seem to come out fine. I'm capturing 40 minutes of data and it comes out to be about 1.6 gig per. With any compression at all from Shrink that should get you 3 episodes on one DVD. Four might be a stretch at 6200 but you could try 3600 - 4000 and see if the quality meets your needs.

[WuphonsReach]

My method (using a Hauppauge WinTV card):

0) Record off-the-air to a S-VHS VCR

1) Capture to AVI (PicVideo MJPEG Q19) at 720x480 from another S-VHS VCR, I stop/start captures at every commercial break (with a bit of overlap)... since my longest segment is only 15-20min max, audio sync is never an issue

2) Audio gets cleaned up (rarely needed) by de-muxing in VirtualDub and then using Cool Edit 2000. I have some older VHS tapes that are hissy and hummy (60hz power-line noise). CE2000 has a batch mode that lets me process multiple WAVs at the same time, so 30 min to fixup 1 hr of audio.

3) Filter in VirtualDub (2D Cleaner + Smart Smoother High Quality), "fill" at the top/bottom to remove tracking noise, re-mux audio if needed, re-size down to 352x480, spit the results out to a new AVI file. I also do my cutting at this point to remove the commercials overlap at the start/end of the original AVI. Filtering takes about 2.5-3.5 hours per hour of source on my AthlonXP 2600+.

4) Encode to 2900VBR giving me (4) 48min eps per DVD or 3800VBR if I only need to fit (3) 48min eps per DVD. Takes about 2.5 hours to encode 1 hour of source on my Pentium4 1.6Ghz.

5) Toss the results into TDA using 256kbps AC3 audio. Since the video is already cut at the commercial breaks, I get automatic chapter breaks when I load the tracks into TDA.

Since I like to apply light filtering to my video stream, I don't capture straight to MPEG2.

[Duchess]

0) Record off-the-air to a S-VHS VCR

Doesn't this seriously compromise the quality of the capture?

[FOO]

Yes. It also takes twice as long

[WuphonsReach]

0) Record off-the-air to a S-VHS VCR

Doesn't this seriously compromise the quality of the capture?

Doesn't really matter in my case since it's regular TV being broadcast over the air (not via analog cable, digital cable, or satellite). Output resolution is 352x480 which is close to S-VHS capabilities as well. So in the end, what I get looks pretty close to what was received by the original ant.

[Duchess]

You're obviously not in Europe then. If I did that I'd have a recording that is fuzzier than the original PAL pictures.