mpeg joining/encoding for a DVDr burn

[Jasmill]

Hi all. I come with another round of questions. I have three mpegs that I downloaded from the internet. What I would like to do is burn all three onto a DVDr with the beginning of each being a chapter so that I may choose which to watch when I put it in. I have a few questions that I am hoping you can help me out on.

1. Are the mpegs that one downloads off the internet the same mpeg format that you burn to DVD? In other words, could I just burn staight to DVDr without encoding with TMPGenc?

2. If not, is the process for encoding the same as with Divx? In other words, saving a wav file using Virtualdub, and then selecting my wav as the audio and my mpeg as the video in TMPGenc.

3. Assuming I get the mpegs ready for burning, how do I add more than one mpeg when using ULead DVD Workshop? DO I need to join them first, or is the a way of adding multiple mpegs in ULead?

Any help you can provide wil be greatly appreciated.

[Craig Tucker]

1. Are the mpegs that one downloads off the internet the same mpeg format that you burn to DVD? In other words, could I just burn staight to DVDr without encoding with TMPGenc?

They could be any format, they could be VCD compliant SVCD compliant or DVD compliant or none of the above. The most common of the 3 though is VCD compliant as these files will be smaller than their SVCD or DVD counterparts. I have not come across a DVD compliant mpeg, but that does not mean that they are not available.

2. If not, is the process for encoding the same as with Divx? In other words, saving a wav file using Virtualdub, and then selecting my wav as the audio and my mpeg as the video in TMPGenc.

Yes you would encode in the same way, although there is no need to save the audio as uncompressed PCM as it will not be encoded with a VBR. If the file is VCD compliant you would be better of making a VCD-DVD , this means that you would not have to reencode the video, incurring a loss in quality, all you have to do is upsample the audio.

3. Assuming I get the mpegs ready for burning, how do I add more than one mpeg when using ULead DVD Workshop? DO I need to join them first, or is the a way of adding multiple mpegs in ULead?

You can add multiple mpegs in workshop, it is very simple, you just drag ans drop as many as you like into your video project. If you use seperate mpegs, however this creates titles for each video and not chapters. Some DVD players have trouble navigating through titles with the back and next key, and you have to access the seperate titles via a menu. If you want to create chapters for the entry points you have to merge the files together and enter your chapter points manually. This allows the back and next key to be used to navigate on all players.