Bill Stephan
Forum Replies Created
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Scott,
First of all, you don’t need to encode at such a low bitrate. You can use an average of around 4.8 if your audio is Dolby Digital.
Second, a 1-pass encode at 3.7 is getting way into “you’re pushing your luck” category. At that bitrate, you need 2-pass VBR. The problem is Apple Compressor is not a great encoder for low bitrate encodes. It produces extreme bitrate spikes both high and low.
Try a CBR or VBR 2-pass encode at 4.8, but make sure you set all the setting in Compressor for best quality. That will greatly increase the time required to encode, but it will also help the quality a lot.
The real solution for encoding at really low bitrates is a better encoder where you have more ability to control the encoding parameters.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Panasonic DMR-ES10.
This topic has been discussed many times, and a search would have turned-up the information.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
David,
You can send them the Video_TS folder, and the recipients can then burn their own DVDs using Toast on Mac or Nero, Easy DVD Creator, etc. on PC. DVDs must be burned using DVD burning software so that the files are arranged in the correct order on the DVD.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Katya,
We are in NYC and can easily handle 50 DVD-R copies with full-color thermal printing delivered on a spindle. 24-hour or less turnaround does carry an additional charge. Call our sales department at 212-398-6400 for pricing and details.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
What you want is called a “still show” in almost any standard DVD authoring software. In a still show, the still images display until you advance manually using the DVD player remote. Don’t use a “slide show”, which displays images only for a predetermined fixed duration.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Avid DVD is the exact same program as DVDitProHD and it does work on Windows 7 — we are running it on one PC. Also check out the notes on videoguys.com about the compatibility of the software with W7.
You probably need the latest version of DVDitProHD.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
You can fit up to about 8 hours on a DVD if you go for low bitrate MPEG-1 encoding. But the picture quality will be only barely good enough for simple video material, such as a lecturer speaking in front of a black background. You will need to encode in several chunks, as you cannot have a file longer than about 2-1/2 hours.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
1. If you know only DVDSP or Adobe Encore and are not trained in spec-level authoring, don’t even think about trying Creator (or Scenarist). You will be completely lost FAST. You need to know the rules of the DVD Spec and play by them. The consumer-level apps mentioned above do these things for you.
2. DVD Creator has not been sold or supported for several years. But you can occasionally find used systems for sale. These are OS-9 Mac-based systems that require hardware boards, so you want a system being removed from service in good working order.
3. Pro option? DVD authoring doesn’t get any more pro or complex than a spec-level system.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
The time duration of 1 frame of Dolby encoded .ac3 audio is slightly different than one video frame. When you duplicate a clip in the authoring app’s timeline, you will start to see the cumulative difference in duration when it gets to be 2 frames or more out-of-sync with the picture stream.
I’ve done this in a spec authoring app (Sonic DVD Creator), and you can trim the streams to keep the sync within one frame. (I’ve built DVDs of tens or hundreds of commercial spots that way without the need to edit a video master beforehand.) I don’t believe you can trim the streams that way in DVDSP.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Technically, there is no 23.98fps in DVD — there is 29.97fps with the 3:2 pulldown flagged. So I would encode the 23.98fps footage as 29.97 in Compressor. (Converting 29.97 to 23.98 is a difficult and nasty-looking conversion no matter how you do it, unless the footage originally was 23.98 at one point. Then you can strip the 3:2 pulldown.)
How are you creating the artwork for the DVD menu? The answer to your blurry menus probably lies in your workflow.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City