[Christopher Smith]

Hi Colin

The bit-rate setting in any authoring program is only there for the purpose of encoding video (or audio) which comes in without having been encoded. If you encode all your videos before importing them to your authoring software—as is consistently recommended on this forum—you won’t ever actually “use” the bit-rate setting of the authoring program.

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach

[Christopher Smith]

Hi Colin

It sounds like you’ve ruled out the HDTV itself, as it handles the video fine from a BD player but not from PowerDVD.

One possibility is that PowerDVD isn’t handling the interlaced video well. You preserved 60i throughout the workflow, so it doesn’t sound like any issues have been introduced by your workflow.

The other possibility is that something else is happening to your AVC video file before it makes it onto the BD. Is Vegas Pro trying to re-encode it?

Really, no great ideas here, just guesses. Interlacing sucks. I know it had its reasons when it was invented, but I wish it would go away! 😉

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach

[Christopher Smith]

Hi Filip

In your script, you used the “Set System Stream” command to turn on Subtitle Stream 1. That sounds correct to me!
Using a GPRM command isn’t necessary in this case, as GPRM registers are simply global variables. It doesn’t sound like your programming is requiring any variables, so no need for GPRMs.

I believe the problem you’re having is that you’ve used the script as a prescript for a menu (if I understand you correctly). This isn’t always wrong to do, but I’ve found occasionally that a prescript for a menu didn’t run. It appears that some players are better than others at running prescripts.

If it’s true that you always want the same System Stream setting, why not run your script after First Play and then have the last command in the script Jump to your menu? (I assume you have a First Play video track of 1-2 seconds of black. This allows the player to get itself sorted out before playing anything we care about.)

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach

[Christopher Smith]

Colin,

I’m sorry no one was here to reply to your posts. It sounds like you ended up making good decisions, though. The encoding settings you make in DVDA only affect the assets that DVDA must (re)compress. If assets are already in a format compatible with the type of disc you’re making (DVD or BD), then DVDA shouldn’t recompress them.

Yes indeed, preserving the field order of interlaced video is critical. You did well to keep Upper field first setting throughout your workflow. You’re correct that viewers will see your video on progressive displays, so you can deinterlace your video, but I’ve found that keeping interlaced video as interlaced just means there’s less room for error. Progressive video does compress better, so if you’re doing a project where space is a severe constraint, you can deinterlace to make the encoding tighter.

As the still pictures are still, there’s no reason not to encode them as progressive.

I know it’s frustrating when you’re in the middle of a project and can’t get help, but sometimes we get busy and don’t check the forum. Please don’t give up on us.

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach

[Christopher Smith]

Hi Rodrigo

Your buttons highlight correctly with a mouse, but they don’t highlight with a DVD player remote. It sounds like you have forgotten to set up the navigation directions for each button. In the top right corner of the Viewer is a pull-down menu “Settings”; choose “Auto-assign buttons now,” or select each button one at a time and go the Advanced tab of the Properties panel, and set the navigation for that button there.

If the button navigation isn’t set, the DVD player doesn’t know where to go when you click an arrow on the remote. But your Play button works, because there is a default button for each menu and the player just picks that one.

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach

[Christopher Smith]

Steve,

You certainly can author these discs to use chapters for questions and answers.

However, you say you’d like to reduce the time required to encode the various versions (for each client). In that case, I would use separate track for your company’s content up to the client question, then a track for client question 1, then track for company answer, then track for client question 2, then track for final answer.

That way, you keep the encoded company tracks on your hard drive (for reuse), and only have to encode the two client question tracks for each new client. Then drop them into the project and rebuild the custom DVD.

Hope this helps.

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach

[Christopher Smith]

Amanda,

You say you have chapters. How many separate videos do you have on your DVD?

“Play All” usually refers to playing all of a set of video assets.

Playing the track (the video asset) plays all the chapters by default.

[Be aware I don’t know what you already know, so please excuse me if I’m being too simple.]

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach

[Christopher Smith]

Amanda, I don’t know the specifics of Sony Architect, but there should be a way to “build” the DVD to a folder on your hard drive (let’s call that folder “DVD 12”). Inside DVD 12, you will find two folders AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS
The AUDIO_TS folder will be empty and that’s fine, because it is there for the sake of DVD spec requirements only.

You can then store your folder DVD 12 wherever you’d like—on your hard drive, on an external drive, on an LTO tape cartridge—and then burn your DVD later from the contents of “DVD 12” folder.

Toast is a Mac program, and as you’re using Sony Architect, I imagine you’re using a PC. However, I’ll explain the process for Toast, and you can match up the steps with your DVD burning software. In Toast, I specify I want to burn a DVD from a VIDEO_TS folder, and just drag in my VIDEO_TS folder, and it takes care of the AUDIO_TS folder and names the disc the same name as the outer folder (in our example, “DVD 12”).

The workflow you propose is the one I use all the time.

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach

[Christopher Smith]

It’s difficult to know what the issue is without seeing it, but one problem we’ve had involved “dot crawl” along the edges of elements in the picture. This was seen even on footage shot on HD (XDCAM EX, I believe, as I didn’t shoot it), where there is especially strong color saturation on one side of the edge.

The issue in that case is that the chroma information leaks over into the luminance, and you will see “marching ants” along the edge of the object.

The solution? Reshoot with changes to the lighting. It is possible to mute the effect some, but only at the cost of softening the entire image. (Deinterlacing has no effect on this problem.)

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach

[Christopher Smith]

In order to help you with the least expensive way to compress for WMV 9, we would need to know what platform you use (Mac or PC) and what software you already have. Perhaps you have the capability already 🙂

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach