Authoring without re-encoding

[grendel]

I have already encoded my .AVI's to MPEG 2 with TMPGENC. Now, I'm looking for a DVD authoring software that will enable me to reuse my .mpg's without re-encoding. Does anyone have any recommendations?

[mdm]

I've been using Ulead's DVD Workshop and have been fairly happy with it. Based on my experience and posts by others, if you tell DVD Workshop to use a higher bitrate than your original MPGs it will not re-encode them.

[joeAgain------]

Sonic's MyDVD will author is as part of the burning-to-disk process.

And is really easy to use.

[curritch]

Ulead MovieFactory provides capability to author and burn without re-encoding mpg2 files. Works OK.
Pinnacle's Studio8 advertises the capability but has many bugs in that feature. Wouldn't recommend it at least until first patch arrives.

[grendel]

I have been reading other posts and some people mention something about some authoring packages not liking the mpeg audio track from TMPGENC encoded MPGs when choosing not to re-encode. Do I need to be concerned about this? Do I need to do something special at author or burn time?

[curritch]

grendel.
I'm not an authority here but it is my understanding that NTSC US players are required to accept either AC-3 Dolby audio (which most low end applications don't support) or PCM. So I think that Sonic MyDVD, for instance, converts TMPGEnc MPEG1-Layer2 audio to uncompressed PCM but does it in a seamless manner. Converting audio is relatively fast, though, and does not require re-encoding video.
Others, such as Pinnacle S8, provide capability to burn with MPEG1 audio or PCM. But apparently some US players won't play MPEG1 audio DVD's properly. So most go with PCM. Still I don't think that anything overt is required in authoring and burning except to select desired audio and, again, no re-encoding of video takes place.

[bugster]

I currently use Dazzle DVD complete. It has its limitations but is very easy to use and produces more professional looking DVD's than any Sonic consumer level product (IMHO). It will handle MP2 audio or PCM but not AC3, so what you can use depends on your DVD player.

[KingJohn]

I currently use Dazzle DVD complete. It has its limitations but is very easy to use and produces more professional looking DVD's than any Sonic consumer level product (IMHO). It will handle MP2 audio or PCM but not AC3, so what you can use depends on your DVD player.

No AC3, what use is that then ?, when the vast majoprity of DVD's use AC3, or the DVD DivX rips

[Trevor929]

I've been using Ulead's DVD Workshop and have been fairly happy with it. Based on my experience and posts by others, if you tell DVD Workshop to use a higher bitrate than your original MPGs it will not re-encode them.

I was told that Ulead has prepared DVD Workshop 1.2 Patch on

http://www.ulead.com/tech/dws/dws_ftp.htm

that will solve the re-encoding issue, you could check it. :P