These instructions are specific to ATI capture cards using MMC 7.7.0.1 software. The techniques used, however, can be applied to any capture card and software that supports the DVD specs for video and audio.


You will need:

1. ATI VIVO or AIW capture card
2. ATI MMC 7.7.0.1
3. Sound Card which support 48Khz audio
4. A fast hard drive with several GB of free space.
5. Your favorite MPEG-2 demuxer (TMPGEnc, ImgTools, bbDMUX, etc.)
6. IfoEdit v0.94
7. DVD-RW Burner
8. DVD burner software that supports DVD-Video (Nero, Gear, etc.)
9. A blank DVD-RW disk.
10. A settop DVD player attached to a TV.

Optional: A tuner/amp that can decode MPEG 2-channel digital audio streams.


Step 1 - Video Capture
-------------------------------------

Set your MMC capture setting to DVD, which captures video using MPEG-2, 720x480 @ 8 Mbps, and 2-channel 48Khz audio using MPEG-1, Layer 2. At the rate of 8 Mbps, you can fit about 1 hour of video on 4.7GB DVD-RW disk. Note that you will also need at least 8GB of free space on your HD. If you want more video on the DVD, or you don't have enough disk space, you will need to create a custom DVD capture setting with a lower bitrate.

DVD specs only support 48Khz audio, so your sound card needs to be able to handle that.

You can program your Guide+ software to capture a program, or you can manually capture something (VHS, camcorder, satellite, etc.) using any of the video inputs (tuner, composite, S-Video).

The source video needs to be of high quality and the capture needs to be flawless (no dropped frames, A/V in sync) if you want a high quality, flawless DVD. (I shouldn't need to say this, but some people can't seem grasp the concept of garbage in equals garbage out.)

Your flawless MPEG-2 capture is not yet DVD compliant. It needs to be demultiplexed, remultiplexed into VOBs, and then made into a title set.


Step 2 - Demultiplexing
-------------------------------------

Use your favorite MPEG-2 demultiplexer to split the video and audio streams into separate files. Use the *.m2v extension for the video stream, and the *.mpa extension for the audio stream.


Step 3 - DVD Authoring
-------------------------------------

Start up IfoEdit v0.94 and select "DVD Authoring" from the menu bar. Select your video and audio input streams. Then select the destination directory for your output stream. Click on OK and go find something else to do, as what happens next takes about an hour, depending on the size of your capture.

While you are gone, IfoEdit will remultiplex your video and audio streams into a Video OBject, or VOB files. DVD VOB files are not supposed to be larger than 1GB, and are supposed to have specific names. If your capture file was originally larger than 1GB, IfoEdit will break it up into multiple 1GB VOBs, and name the VOBs files VTS_01_01.VOB, VTS_01_02.VOB, VTS_01_03.VOB, etc. These VOB files make up what is called a "title set".

A DVD can have multiple title sets, but I'm not sure if IfoEdit supports multiple title sets yet.

After multiplexing is complete, IfoEdit will then go through all of the VOB files in the title set and update the Navigation Packs with the appropriate VOB and Cell ID info.

After updating the VOBs, IfoEdit will then create the required .IFO and .BUP files in your output directory.

At this time, IfoEdit does not support chapter creation. Maybe in a later release.


Step 4 - DVD Burning
-------------------------------------

Follow the directions for your burner software to create a DVD-Video disk, and copy ALL of the files that IfoEdit created in your output directory to the VIDEO_TS directory.

Burn the files to a DVD-RW disk (or to a DVD-R, if you've got money to burn). Burning a 4GB title set takes about an hour with a 1x DVD-RW disk.


Step 5 - DVD playback
-------------------------------------

Take the DVD-RW you just burned, put it in the DVD player attached to your TV and press play. (You could also play it using the ATI DVD player, but that's not our final objective).

If you use the analog audio outputs on your player, you should have no audio problems on playback.

If you use the digital audio outputs on your player, you may have problems depending on the capabilities of your player and/or decoder. Not all DVD players and/or decoders support MPEG 2-channel digital audio.

DVD's I created from MMC captures play fine on both my Pioneer and Phillips DVD players using analog audio out. My Pioneer also has a digital out connection to a Sony AC3/DTS decoder.

My Pioneer player supports MPEG digital audio out, and can also convert MPEG audio to PCM. My Sony decoder supports MPEG audio, as well as PCM, AC3, DTS, etc.

For MPEG 2-channel audio, I had to switch my Sony decoder into 2-ch mode, which only uses the L and R audio channels. My C, SL, SR, and Subwoofer channels are not used, which takes a lot away from the sound.

I got better sound by configuring my Pioneer player to convert MPEG audio to PCM. My Sony decoder will send a PCM signal to all 6 channels, and it sounds great.


Problems
-------------------------------------

The biggest problems I run into are problems with my original capture, such as dropped frames and A/V lip-syncing. These are common problems that a lot of people have experienced, and there are a variety of causes and solutions.

There may be other problems with IfoEdit and the process in general, but I haven't created enough DVD's to flush them all out. That's why there are forums like this one!


RF