Does Ulead video studio6 need additional authoring software?

[2002Ecoast]

If not, great!

If so, is Nero 5.5 the best all around audio/video software. I was thinking of getting new audio burning software and was wondering if something like Nero was the ticket or separate software like DVDMovie factory was better. Thanks

[Mirror_Image]

I think VS6 is superb for what it costs ($100, or $50 for an upgrade from UVS5).

I capture NTSC cable TV programming on an WinXP/P3-1000 using an ATI Radeon AIW 32MB AGP (a.k.a. Radeon 7200 AIW), ATI MMC 7.7 and the ATI preset (labeled "Half-Horizontal Resolution [HHR]") - 352x480 MPEG-2 4.80Mbit/sec VBR. I think that these captures look quite nice.

I then use Ulead Video Studio 6 (with all Ulead patches installed - 2 so far) to edit my MPEG-2 captures, add intro clips and transition fades between segments. I also use UVS6 to encode to VCD-standard MPEG-1, create menus and chapter entry points and burn to Imation 700MB 24X CD-R media with a Philips CDRW2010.

Now for a little bit about quality, or rather how I am willing to give up a little of that quality in order to save a considerable amount of time and effort. I am totally willing to make this trade-off, not because I am pressed for time, but because I am extremely lazy, perhaps a true champion of laziness.

While apps such as TMPGEnc (using a decent template) can trump the encode quality of UVS6 if you set everything to max, UVS6 converts my 352x480 MPEG-2 4800/224 files to a VCD-compliant 352x240 MPEG-1 1150/224 with an encode time of ~2.1x real-time, with very little manipulation from my end (UVS6 is quite user-friendly), and the quality is quite acceptable to me.

(Try the UVS6 30-day trial at http://www.ulead.com/vs/runme.htm and judge the quality for yourself, as you might be a pickier individual).

For my overly-brief encoding time test, I captured 5 minutes of "Die Hard" from the FX network at 352x480 MPEG-2 4.80Mbit/sec VBR resulting in a 167MB file. Loaded into the timeline in UVS6, the time to encode my 5-minute clip into VCD format was 10:12 (~2.1x real-time) which generated the expected 50MB file. The time to encode the same clip into SVCD format was 21:11 (~4.2x real-time) and generated an 86MB file. The quality result was (to my eyes) quite satisfactory, with no visible macroblocks or significant text blurs in either VCD or SVCD appearing in any of the clips. Encoding speeds will vary proportionally as your CPU diverges from my P3-1000; a high-end P4 or Athlon XP will likely be near real-time.

If I don't need to edit out commercials or add an intro clip (both of which UVS6 can also do, and much more, i.e. titling, etc.), it is mind-numbingly simple. Drop a commercial-free MPEG-2 capture of an old 2-hour movie from the TCM network (for example) into the timeline, snap a screenshot for our VCD menu, hit the "Create VCD" button, pick a filename and hit OK. Then come back in about 4 hours and it's done. Pick the chapter points and select that screenshot we made earlier as a menu background, and then burn.

As much respect as I have for the superb encoding quality of a well-templated TMPGEnc (and CCE of course, not to mention the superb ProCoder), I cannot say the same for TMPGEnc's faint appeal to my lazy nature, made even more faint by the requirement that I use other apps to do the things that TMPGEnc cannot, such as menu creation and burning. I don't rip DVD movies (I just buy the DVDs). I won't buy CCE, nor will I pirate it. I just like the lazy man's all-in-one UVS6 solution, even if I give up a bit of quality (compared to dedicated encoders) in exchange for my sloth.

[APVM]

Hi,

About VS6, what template should I set when opening a new project if I want to convert an avi file to vcd, should I set the template to vcd or template from an existing video file?

TIA

[Tommyknocker]

Do not worry about that. Load your video, tweak it, add the good stuff, and the one of the last steps is select VCD as the format you want it encoded in. I cannot believe I got this "monster" for free when I bought my IDVD!