[Dave Friend]

Hello Eyal,

Try changing the file extension from .dv to .mov and see it that helps.

Dave

[Dave Friend]

[Ruby Gold] “but I don’t see the option to “conform to template.”

The actual terminology that you will see in DVDWS is “Convert to Disc Template”. Sorry for not being accurate which created confusion instead of insight.

The “Convert to Disc Template” option is on both the Video and Audio pages (of the Edit Step) meaning that you can choose any combination of A/V to be converted or not. Note that each “video title” you bring into a DVDWS project has this option, so you have to be sure that each asset is being treated the way you want.

If you choose to have the audio converted to the disc template it is indeed processed according that template. Therefore, the PCM file out of PPro will be ‘stepped on’ again. However, I do not consider it stepped on in the first place (unless you consider mixing being stepped on). PPro is using PCM (as a wav file) and is exporting the same. Since it’s all digital once it’s in PPro you really aren’t going to have the kind of generational loss that we used to work so hard at avoiding in analog days of old. In other words, I consider the audio exported from PPro to be essentially lossless. Therefore, it has yet to be ‘stepped on’ in the first place.

[Ruby Gold] “I noticed in the template for “high quality” with the AC3 option that the audio bit rate is 256 kbps, is that too high (since you said that 192 is groovy)?”

You can use 256 kb/s if you like and still be much less than PCM

[Dave Friend]

Bob,

Maybe DR card is creating RAW PCM files. SoundForge or Adobe Audition should be able to open them. You can then Export or Save As… a windows PCM (wav) file. You might have to change the file extension to .raw before SF or Audition will recognize them.

There are probably shareware utilities you can find that will make this conversion too.

Hope this helps.

Dave

[Dave Friend]

Ruby,

DVDWS will convert the PCM audio (as exported from PPro) to dolby (ac3) for you if you wish. You can tell DVDWS to not convert (“conform to template” in DVDWS speak) the imported MPEG video.

” I’m concerned about the impact on resolution/quality by shifting video from the CBR of 8 to 6500 or 6800.”

You will likely not be able to see much difference – except it won’t be stuttering. (That’s good, right?)

I assume you are using the Adobe Media Encoder function of PPro to create the mpeg asset that is imported into DVDWS. When you redo the export try these settings in the Video section of the Transcode Settings dialog.
Slide the Quality control to the far right (5.0)
Bitrate Encoding: CBR
Bitrate [Mbps]: 6.800
M Frames: 2
N Frames: 10

Artifacts that might be seen are most likely to occur during fast motion sequences. If your program has a lot of those then consider a VBR, 2 Pass encode with a max rate of 7.500, a target of 6.500 and a minimum of 5.500. But try the CBR first.

An audio bit rate of 192kbps will work just swell for the Dolby encode.

Dave

[Dave Friend]

Scott,

You are not alone. I have seen the same behavior with encore. It doesn’t seem to matter if the source is an avi file or a m2v+ac3 asset.

I have also had timeline audio playback be wildly out of sync. Stopping, setting the timeline cursor to a new point and playing again will sometimes fix it – sometimes not.

In general timeline playback doesn’t seem to work all that well which makes setting chapter markers a hit or miss proposition.

I too would like to hear any thoughts on these issues.

Dave

[Dave Friend]

[bryanparris] “Is there a way to ensure the initial GOP structure is the same? Will this affect playback syncronization?”

Use the same encoder settings and the GOP structure will be the same. However, I don’t believe it will have any bearing on playback sync. No matter the GOP structure the players output at the frame rate appropriate for the video standard in use. How well the players stay in sync will probably be determined by how closely their fps rates match. It takes only a tiny fraction of a second difference between machines for the sync to quickly drift.

Dave

[Dave Friend]

[Bob Cole] “I have TMPGEnc Plus 2.5. Why?”

I would explain my workflow to demux and create ac3 files from a mpeg2 program stream with PCM audio.

Does TMPGEnc 2.5 support the ac3 plug-in?

Dave

[Dave Friend]

Bob,

“when it did the demultiplexing TMPGenc created a PCM file”

That indicates that PCM was the choice when the file was originally encoded. TMPGEnc’s MPEG tools does not do anything to the format of any file it demuxes.

Do you have TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress?

Dave

[Dave Friend]

Jeff,
“But I guess I’m supposed to encode each chapter separately?

Yes, unfortunatly that’s the only way that Encore will let you play a single chapter.

“And then do some sort of playlist in order for them all to play together?”

You can use the Playlist feature or you can set the “end action” and “override” for each timeline.

“I had already encoded this to mpeg before going into Encore.”

There is a nice little program from Pegasys software called the TMPGEnc MPEG Editor. This will allow you to trim an existing mpeg file and save it to a new file. It will only re-encode if it has to (which is usually just one GOP where you make an edit) and so it is very fast. It only cost about $50 so it might be worth the price just to avoid hours of redoing the encoding.

Hope this helps.

Dave

[Dave Friend]

Jeff,

So you have 11 timelines? One for play all and 10 others – one for each chapter?

If my understanding is correct, why did you do that? What are you trying to achieve?

Dave