Pinnacle Studio 9 or other "all-in-one" dv to dvd

[tmh]

I know many here don't like the Pinnacle products, but I rec'd Pinnacle Studio Version 9 for Xmas and I have a few specific technical questions. I mostly create DVDs from my miniDV camcorder footage and jpeg photos. I now understand the "process" to go from DvAVI to DVD and have done several projects with all seperate programs (WinDV, VDub, BeSweet, TMPGenc, TDA, NERO Burn). I also want to be able to do projects with an "all-in-one" and have tried DVDSanta, and The Film Machine.

My question re: Pinnacle Studio 9 is does anyone know if the mpeg2 encoder is one of the encoders that is available as a standalone (TMPG, CCE, ProCoder, ec)? If not, is the quality of the Pinnacle encoder good for DV to mpeg2? I'm not interested in the stability of the overall software package, which I read is quite poor, just the actual output mpeg video quality.

I'd rather use Pinnacle as my all-in-one product if it produces decent quality because it's free (I have it) and I do like it as an editing program for producing my projects. If is sucks as an encoder, I'll just save my project as an AVI and run it through another encoder.

Any opinions on this?

[ggrussell]

Most of the 'popular' editing programs use either of two encoders: Mainconcept or Ligos. These are licensed and usually only work that program. NONE of them are 2 pass encoders so it you are really picky about quality then find another encoder. Personally, I have found the results to be quite satisfactory for family home video especially if I keep the time below 60 min on each DVD. That keeps the quality as best as possible. Over 60min and most of the editors will start compressing and/or using lower bitrates.

If Pinnacle Studio 9 runs stable on your machine, it is the most flexible when DVD Authoring. You can use any obiect as a 'button' including text. Other eidtors are not flexible forcing the user to have thumbnails, etc.

[tmh]

Thanks. I also have noticed that in these programs with limited bitrate control, the 1 hr or so video gets encoded at a fairly high quality, but the programs seem to error on the side of "low bitrate" when you start putting 1 1/2 hr or more on a DVD.

I was not aware they typically use single pass encoding. Is this the case even when I select "highest" quality? Can I use Pinnacle Studio 9 as the authoring program if I Edit with Pinnacle, Encode seperaely, then try and come back to Pinnacle fo authoring?

Thanks.