Rant -- the annoyance of so many formats

[timmus]

More and more I'm finding that there's a brick wall that divides the DV world and the DVD authoring world. On one side of the wall you have AVI Land. On the other side is MPEG Territory. It's kind of driving me nuts.

AVI Land is great because the schools are excellent, it's high-tech, and your videos can be shaped into whatever you want them to be. In fact, most videos are born there. Unfortunately the cost of living is high... DV City, for example, can rapidly drain a man of storage space. The citizens all speak different dialects that constantly change.

Then you have MPEG Territory. MPEG Territory is like the working class area of town. Everyone can relate to the denizens of this nation, they all have the same accent, and you can get stuff done fast. But nobody likes to go there. Once you've been in MPEG Territory, you don't come out quite the same again. It always takes a little piece of you. The AVI Land citizens frown on dirty old MPEGs crossing the border... in fact the Editing Factories won't hire some of them. But the movie industry does thrive in MPEG Territory, and MPEG Territory has the only DVD factory in the world.

Now I've tried a few jack-of-all-trades services to run goods from my shop in AVI Land directly to MPEG Territory's DVD factory, but I stopped doing that because my goods would sometimes crash on the way there or come out damaged. The only thing that's been 100% reliable is the FedEx freight service called TMPEGEnc, which hauls merchandise over from AVI Land to MPEG Territory. Unfortunately EVERYTHING has to sit in the MPEG-2 Central Warehouse, then their subsidiary DVD Author truck carries stuff to the DVD Factory.

How nice it would be if the DVD Author truck (or somebody reliable) would set up service directly from AVI Land to the DVD Factory. Then maybe I can settle down in a cheap part of AVI Land and live high on the hog.

Tim

[edDV]

Have you never heard of Adobe Premiere (Elements), Sony Vegas (Movie Studio) or ULead (Video Studio or DVD Movie Factory?)

All encode from a native DV format timeline to DVD MPeg2 spec. All of the above use versions of the Mainconcept MPeg Encoder. All except full Vegas include some DVD authoring capability. Vegas is available with DVD Architect for authoring as an option.

[thecoalman]

The citizens all speak different dialects that constantly change.

There's only two dialects which are identical except when they ship stuff one uses two boxes instead of one and it takes up slightly more space.

How nice it would be if the DVD Author truck (or somebody reliable) would set up service directly from AVI Land to the DVD Factory. Then maybe I can settle down in a cheap part of AVI Land and live high on the hog.

Try the Ulead DVD Workshop trucking service.

[Scorpion King]

I'm glad you mentioned Tmpgenc. I've tried all those others and I always came back to tmpgenc. When you can't afford to wind up with a problem mpeg then tmpgenc is the solution (at least it has been for me).

I've used ulead products and cussed them (ulead that is) and swore I'd never use them again (ulead that is) many times. I've uninstalled every ulead product i've ever owned or tried except for good ol'e ULv6. I feel that was the last version they made that worked somewhat properly. I guess the guy that wrote it retired or something.

Premiere...... forget me. I don't like it and I don't even want to like it...

Sony? I quit Sony a long time ago. I got tired of the way sony does their business. They have always done their business at my expense. Somehow I always wind up paying more in the end for ever using anything made by Sony.

Cool rant timmus. Done no good... but cool anyway.

Good luck.

[edDV]

I'm glad you mentioned Tmpgenc. I've tried all those others and I always came back to tmpgenc. When you can't afford to wind up with a problem mpeg then tmpgenc is the solution (at least it has been for me).

I've used ulead products and cussed them (ulead that is) and swore I'd never use them again (ulead that is) many times. I've uninstalled every ulead product i've ever owned or tried except for good ol'e ULv6. I feel that was the last version they made that worked somewhat properly. I guess the guy that wrote it retired or something.

Premiere...... forget me. I don't like it and I don't even want to like it...

Sony? I quit Sony a long time ago. I got tired of the way sony does their business. They have always done their business at my expense. Somehow I always wind up paying more in the end for ever using anything made by Sony.

Cool rant timmus. Done no good... but cool anyway.

Good luck.

Not fair to paint Vegas with Sony issues. Vegas was developed by Sonic Foundry and only recently acquired by Sony. The same development team has been kept entact in Madison Wisconsin.

I have many issues with Adobe but they have a strong prosumer following.

Ulead Video Studio is good value for the money and IMO has been adequate since version 8. DVD Movie Factory 5 and DVD Workshop are capable products.

ULead vs. TMPGEnc Editor + Encoder + Author is a personal choice. Money investment favors ULead. I like TMPGEnc Author for routine DVD projects and use Premiere or Vegas+Architect for more formal projects (DV or HDV or HDTV).

[guns1inger]

If you go about things in a logical way, and use the right tools, then there is no confusion.

The divide you see as between DV and mpeg is illogical. It is all video. Period.

I see the divide as more between those who do video as a serious endeavour, be it hobbiest, semi-professional or professional, and those who just want to convert their downloaded avis to DVD to watch. The there is a third category, the home video user, who sits somewhere in between.

The first group are well catered for. They generally have clean sources, reasonable to strong knowledge and skills, and a willingness to learn good practices and techniques. They are also generally more willing to invest the time required to improve their skills and therefore the quality of the outcomes they achieve.

The home video category were once neglected, fobbed off with cut-down, SE versions of average software. This has changed of late, with produucts like Premiere elements and Vegas Movie Studio, and subtantial improvements in software from makers like Ulead. They often don't have the time or the inclination to learn more complex tools, however if they are working with DV then this is usually not an issue.

The third category is where the most users have problem. And for the most part, they are problems of their own making. They use dubious quality sources, downloaded in a variety of formats - some standard, some non-standard - much of it of low to medium quality. They just want everything to happen yesterday, because they have downloaded 20 movies from YouTube and bittorrent, and want them all converted before they download the next 20. Most of their source is encoded for delivery, not editing or conversion. They don't want to learn the techniques and software required to deal with this type of mish-mash of video. They often prefer to use cheap, all-in-one software like NeroVision Express and WinAVI, then complain when things go out of sync or look poor. Or they try to use an 'aquired' version of higher end software, and complain when it won't load something squeezed to within an inch of it's life by Real Video.

As to the likes of Scorpian King - if you simple refuse to use a piece of software on idealogical grounds that's your perogative, however you can't then complain that no-one else fills your needs.

Having been around here a couple of years now, and having invested quite some time to learn from those knowledgeable contributors who give so freely of their time, and having been willing to try new things, I believe there is little if anything I cannot eventually achieve with video. There is software available, much of free, to cover all three categories of user. The biggest constraint on achieving an acceptable outcome is the user themselves. Put in the time, and have realistic expectations of how long things will take, how much room it requires, and how much you have to invest of yourself, and you will get the best outcome you can. If you aren't willing to do this, then don't come whinging about how hard it all is.

[Scorpion King]

Grow up you two. I was trying to be funny. Don't you know comedy when you read it?

[Nitemare]

I don't understand where your confusion lies. I take a DV source and I convert it to MPEG2 so I can watch my edited video on the DVD player.

If a family member wants me to e-mail said video, I convert it to a highly compressed, medium to low quality AVI and e-mail it.

All DV sources are archived "as is" to keep original quality.

My point is that the chosen format has a everything to do with how and where the video is being used. DV for editing, MPEG2 for watching, and low quality AVI (or WMV...just to add more formats) for electronic transfer.

Each format has its niche and is useful.

[torrentcrazy]

Tmpgenc is a BEAST for homeusers and those who encode for hobby (maybe even professional work?). The results are solid, almost guaranteed to play in your player with mpg1, mpg2, and .vob authoring. It can encode to divx/xvid now too. All the others, I can't really say as I haven't given them a fair chance because they use too much memory/cpu (Premiere and Vegas). Tmpgenc is an all in one BEAST.