[Bob Cole]

Thanks Eric. I had already seen this, but looked again and found one good one (Videocalc). But warning to others: one of the links from videohelp contained an annoying “You’ve won a Nintendo Wii” page. It makes you appreciate the COW, doesn’t it?

And, I still haven’t relocated my favorite DVD calculator, which was even more thorough, asked all the right questions, provided nice prompts in case you don’t understand, and still gave you the bottom line answer in a very straightforward way.

But Videocalc does the job…I think.

One question that probably isn’t in any of the calculators: way back when I was told that you shouldn’t actually fill up a DVD — you should provide a “cushion” to improve playability. True anymore?

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

I did that google search incl. videohelp — no luck. If I find it I’ll post the URL here – it was clearly the best one.. Grrr.

[Bob Cole]

Walter, if you have any insights as to the advantage of the Pro version that would be appreciated.

The only problem I’d have with Media Batch (besides forcing me finally to make a website) is that it relies on the speed of your own server. I suspect the alternative file transfer sites are faster for up/download.

B

[Bob Cole]

[Wayne Carey] “embed your video on a web page. Works great for us.”

Cool. The problem I’m having is specifically with Apple’s server being very slow to upload my video files. Does your workflow somehow get a preferred treatment from Apple? Have you uploaded a video in the last week?

I had initial success last week, but since then, stalled uploads have sent me elsewhere.

Thanks for the tips everbody. When I get flush I want to try Walter’s solution — sounds very client-friendly.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Wayne Carey] “its the logging that’s doing the most damage to my wrists.”

Brain spasm report: When I read this phrase, I thought about what a lumberjack would say about us editors if he could hear us complain about the physical demands of “logging.”

I’m not minimizing it, either, Wayne — it’s probably as hard on our bodies to adjust to being adjuncts to computers as it is to fell trees.

Walter, what kind of Wacom do you use? And, have you checked out their monitor/tablet?

Bob c

[Bob Cole]

[David Roth Weiss] “in fact ridiculously slow.”

maybe Ron Lindeboom should tell Apple how to speed things up with their servers.

[Bob Cole]

[John Foley] “Sorry, I forgot which forum I was in and assumed you were on a Macintosh.”

Actually I have both. I’ve been using Encore on the PC because I’m familiar with it, but I have a tower with DVD SP4.

Confession: the reason I haven’t used DVD SP4 on the Mac is that I opened it up and found it confusing, and so I went back to the tried and true Encore on the PC.

The other, better reason for staying on the Encore/PC side is that my PC has a SCSI connection to a DLT tape drive, for preparing DVD masters on tape properly.

But the dual layer burner is a strong motivator. Could you recommend a good tutorial source for DVD SP4? I just want to be able to add my own background (non-motion) for the menu.

Thanks!

bob c

[Bob Cole]

[Sean McPhillips] “I do it all the time on my C2D MBP 2.16 15″ 3GB RAM.”

good to know. It didn’t work (or worked intermittently) on the MBP I was provided, until I added the firewire card. I don’t have the MBP here so can’t provide the spec’s.

[Bob Cole]

[walter biscardi] “Dual Layers are not all that hard, but if you don’t set the layer break perfectly, there will be playback issues. If it was me, I’d keep it simple and just create two discs.”

Thank you very much indeed for that advice. Very interesting. If it were up to me, I’d create two discs in a heartbeat rather than mess with a DVD-9 dual layer. I will make my best effort to suggest two DVDs.

But in the event that the client insists on one DVD, do you have any suggestions about how to set the layer break perfectly? Does manual control over the layer break increase or decrease one’s chances of a perfect layer break? Is Encore good at this — better than DVD SP4 (with which I am not very familiar)? How do you know whether you have set the layer break correctly?

This goes back to my earlier question about whether I should try to get a dual layer DVD burner, to test the authoring.

Thanks very much.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

Michael, how did you come up with that 3.4 Mbps so fast? Do you have access to a data rate calculator? I found one on this page https://www.planetoftunes.com/dvd/videocalc.html
but it jumps from 3 Mbps to 4 Mbps depending on exactly how many minutes of video I input.

[Corey Rybicki] “if you need help with transcoding at 3.4 Mbps, just let me know…”

Corey, is there a special trick to transcoding at such a low data rate?

I have a Digital Rapids card housed in a HP8200 and was planning just to reset a Profile to the appropriate data rate — but I’ve never used such a low data rate, so if there are some “gotchas” I’d appreciate knowing more about them.

Thanks Michael and Corey. I feel very much reassured that this will not be the Hindenberg of DVDs…. possibly.

Bob C