Christopher Smith
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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The DVD spec allows for three frame rates: 23.976 fps, 25 fps, and 29.97 fps. Blu-ray offers even more choices (29.97, 25, 24, 23.976, 59.94, and 50).
If your source footage was at 25 fps, then you should encode at 25 fps for the best picture quality (really, the best motion quality). Encoding 25 fps at 24 fps forces one or more compromises, which necessarily reduce quality. For example, you can turn on frame blending, but that makes the picture less sharp.
Keep the quality and preserve the frame rate.
Christopher Smith
CBN International
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[Romina Rey] “I am now trying to Build the Video and Audio TS on my desk top and burn it via Toaster to see if that works.”
This is the first rule of DVD authoring with DVD Studio Pro. You’re on the right track. Don’t burn media until you’ve thoroughly tested the disc with Apple’s DVD Player software from the VIDEO_TS folder that DVDSP will build onto your hard drive for you (use command “Build”).
I can’t tell you what’s causing your button issues. I encourage you to carefully go over all your settings (where each button goes). I can’t tell from your posts if the buttons when pressed do nothing, or whether you simply can’t get to all your buttons. If the latter is true, be sure your buttons are fully & properly programmed to respond to the remote control’s arrows, perhaps using that menu at top right of the Preview screen that I, too, often forget to execute (Set Button order Now), or use manual settings, of course.
Finally, DVDSP sometimes just does weird things, and nothing will repair the problem. It is doing so much hard work behind the scenes that occasionally it messes up a bit (1/8 of a byte) and that project will forever have that flaw. There is a good number of posts here and on DVDSP Forum explaining that the only solution to a DVDSP issue was to reauthor the disc (start the project over) from scratch.
Christopher Smith
CBN International
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In order to play audio (music, in your case) on a DVD-Video, there has to be video playing as well. Your trick is an excellent solution, except for the space problem you describe.
The only alternative is to play the music with black video. In that case, you would encode each song + black video as a separate video asset (separate VOB) but in order to save space, you would be free to use the tightest compression permitted by the DVD specification. I don’t have reference material with me, but I believe 1 or 1.5 Mbps is the smallest allowed. A digitally black video (a slug from your video editing software) should compress with no artifacts even at such low data rates.
The downside is of course, people would be watching blank video.If black video is not satisfactory to your client, you could recreate the same image you’re using now with the menu, but instead of “trusting” your authoring software to encode each menu video, you do it yourself as video assets (one for each song). Again, a perfectly static image needs only the I-frame to describe it, and subsequent frames simply say, “No changes here,” permitting super-low bit rates.
Christopher Smith
CBN International
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[Niklas Wikman] “is there any other Mac software that can display stream info?”
There is a program I use (on Mac) called VideoSpec. It’s not perfect (e.g. it can’t always determine field order) but I use it with Compressor to develop a consensus on the specs of a given piece of video.
https://videospec.free.fr/english/
Christopher Smith
CBN International
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Nick’s got a good point: often Europeans can play a NTSC disc.
Also “NTSC Film” is 24 fps, and is one of the formats which is part of the DVD spec. So shooting 24 fps is an excellent idea. In NTSC Film, there will be no frame rate conversion, and in PAL (the DVD spec only allows PAL to be 25 fps) there will be the smallest pulldown.
Christopher Smith
CBN International
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[Sally Moran] “I was trying to have my audio and video looping at different rates but I’ve given up on this.”
Hmm, that doesn’t sound like it would work, unless the entire menu loops (no unlooped portion at the start). Otherwise, the loop points would get further and further out of alignment.
Christopher Smith
CBN WorldReach
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Hi Sal
It sounds like you’re missing one tiny setting. When you have a video intro to your menu, and then the buttons come on after a bit, those buttons are coming in at the loop point. It’s a nice double-use of the loop point, as once the menu is looping, you always want the buttons there anyway!
What you’re missing is to make sure your End Jump from the video doesn’t just go back to the menu (in which case you’ll see all that intro video), but to the Loop point of the menu. You will have to write a little script to do that, but it’s not difficult.
You only need one line. Create a new script & select the first line (No op) & go to Inspector panel to create commands.
Command: Jump
Jump to: YOUR_MENU_NAME
and tick the box “Start at Loop Point”Because Jump is a command which automatically terminates a script, you’re done. Now make sure your End Jump from the video targets your script.
Christopher Smith
CBN WorldReach
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Oh boy, Tibor. Sadly, I don’t have a sure solution. As iDVD does a lot behind the scenes, but doesn’t give you the ability to look under the hood, it’s difficult to say what’s causing this problem.
It sounds like you’ve done what you should. Because chapter selection works neither from Chapter Selection menu nor from within playback (using the remote’s Next Ch button), it is pretty clear to me that iDVD isn’t putting the chapters into each video.
If you’re using iDVD, I assume you don’t have Final Cut Pro and Compressor, in which case you can’t convert your Quicktime movie (you didn’t say what format it is, but I assume it’s not .m2v already) before putting it into iDVD.
My recommendation would be to try putting less on a disc. You have 3 one+ hour videos, so I would try putting two on a disc and one on the other disc. I realize you want the convenience of having it all on one disc, but it’s possible that reducing the amount of video will cause iDVD to do its job better. This shouldn’t be necessary, but with iDVD, trying different things eventually often gives the desired result.
Christopher Smith
CBN WorldReach
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[Tibor Torok] “it does not let me play per chapter when I click on any of the chapters with the remote.”
Hi Tibor
What button are you clicking on your remote? Next chapter (which looks like an arrow)? It’s difficult to know what the problem is without seeing the disc.
Please try to describe exactly what you’re burning onto the DVD, what you’re doing to play it back, and what it does (or doesn’t do).
Christopher Smith
CBN WorldReach
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Hi Anna
Michael is correct. You may be able to simply change the aspect ratio setting for each track that should be widescreen, setting it to “16:9 widescreen” and any DVD player should play it back correctly.
If that doesn’t solve the problem, you’ll have to investigate further to find the point in your workflow that needs adjustment.
Christopher Smith
CBN WorldReach