Rob Neidig
8
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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The main problem with how it looks on a computer screen is probably that your footage is interlaced rather than progressive scan. What that means is that video has two fields of information for every frame. The fields are displayed roughly every 60th of a second. The first field has half the lines of resolution, showing every other line of the picture, then the second field displays, showing the other half the resolution. These two fields are “Interlaced” to make one complete frame. TVs are designed to show video this way. Computer screens use Progressive Scan. That is, they display all the lines of a frame in order – no interlacing, no every other line field issue. But when you try to play interlaced video on a computer monitor, it results in that flicker and loss of resolution you are seeing. So to make things look better on a computer screen, you would want to encode your video as progressive, or use a “de-interlace” function. Unfortunately that sometimes results in a jerky look to the video when played on TV sets (unless they are a progressive scan display). Ain’t DVD fun?
Rob
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Pressing “Next Chapter” does not cause a DVD player to execute an end action. Chapters and end actions are two different things. The order of the chapters is set by how you imported the files I believe. So you need to make sure to import them in the order you want your “Next Chapter” to be. There may be sone other way to set the “next PGC” (sorry, I work more in Scenarist than in Encore), but that would be the type of command you would need to look for rather than end action. The end action command only affects what happens as you are playing the segment and it reaches the end.
Have fun!
Rob
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Chris,
Typically the tracks for 5.1 surround would be delivered on a DA-88 tape. The timecode should match the timecode on the DigiBeta. You would then need an application that can take in all 5 or 6 tracks (depending on whether they created a discreet Low Frequency Effects track) and encode to dolby digital 5.1. As far as charging for your services, you will have to come up with that rate on your own. I know that in the early years of DVD authoring, companies charged per minute of material to encode. I’m sure some companies still do, though many just figure how long it will take them to encode and charge their normal hourly rate for audio work.
Have fun!
Rob
Rob Neidig
R&R Media Producttions
Eugene, Oregon -
You could use a program like DVD Decrypter or SmartRipper to extract the files from the DVD. (Make sure you have the right to do this and are not using copyrighted material!!) However, they are already encoded as MPEG-2 files, so you do not want to bring them into Premiere and try to re-edit them – then re-compress them. That won’t look very good. Of course capturing via analogue and editing – then re-compressing also results in a twice-compressed file, so I guess it’s up to you to decide how bad it looks.
Have fun!
Rob
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Jason,
Have you tried setting the field order to “Upper First”? Most AVID systems I have worked on use that as the default.
Have fun!
Rob
Rob Neidig
R&R Media Producttions
Eugene, Oregon -
If you download tunes, then make sure your lawyer is ready to handle the lawsuit! Those tunes are all copyrighted. What you need to do is get some Royalty Free Music discs from one of the many companies that offer such things. I’m sure you can do a Google search and come up with a bunch. I like Music Bakery, others are CSS Music, Gene Michael Productions, Sopersound, and many others.
Have fun!
Rob
Rob Neidig
R&R Media Producttions
Eugene, Oregon -
Erick, CSS can only be aplied by re-authoring your project. It cannot be added to an existing disc directly. You should be able to open up your old project and just set a flag that allows CSS to be added. It’s possible the lower cost DVD authoring software just does not have that option, I don’t know. Once you’ve checked to enable CSS, when you send the master to a replication plant, THEY add the key that enables CSS. CSS CANNOT be put on a DVD-R. And once you get back your discs with CSS from the replication plant that contain CSS, you CANNOT copy them (without using illegal ripping software – a whole ‘nother story). That is, after all, the purpose of CSS – to not allow the DVDs to be copied.
Hope this helps. Have fun.
Rob
Rob Neidig
R&R Media Producttions
Eugene, Oregon -
Bryan,
For most applications, 8mbs should work great – and of course is well within the specification. In the real world, however, you may want to reduce it just slightly. Some older DVD players – Toshiba’s come immediately to mind – had trouble playing higher bit rates, and they had trouble with DVD-Rs in general. You say you are planning to mass produce it, so that should take care of the DVD-R issue. Laptop computers are still a bit of a problem, however. I’ve found it best to keep the bit rates below 7mbs to increase the chances that laptops will be able to play back the material without stuttering, anomolies, etc. Of course you want to have your audio encoded as AC-3 (dolby digital). That will also help the playback issues.
Have fun!
Rob
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Hey, I feel your pain. I’ve been at DVD now for almost 8 years and compatibility problems are still very frustrating.
There are a number of things that can cause discs to not play in various players. Cheap media is one of them, but the Verbatims you mention I believe should be fine. I have heard some good, and some bad things about burning with Toast. I’ll let others who have more experience with that software chime in there. I will ask, though, if you make sure you have both a VIDEO_TS and an AUDIO_TS folder that you burn? Even though the AUDIO_TS folder is empty in a a DVD-Video title, some earlier DVD players experienced playback problems when they did not find an AUDIO_TS folder present. Of course there are a number of things that can go wrong in authoring. I’m just assuming that everything there is done correctly. How about your bit rate? Bit rates above 6.5 or 7 mbs can cause playback issues on some laptops, particularly older ones. And some real cheap DVD set top boxes just never have played DVD-Rs very well (again especially older ones). And finally, the burner. That very well may be a problem. There are lots of cheap burners out there these days. And while it’s not necessary to have one that costs $16,000 like the first DVD burner I used, I still think Pioneer makes the best burners (they started the whole burner thing after all). You might check into their products – either the 108 or 109 I think is the current version.
Hope this helps. Have fun!
Rob
Rob Neidig
R&R Media Producttions
Eugene, Oregon -
You might try writing an image file first if you haven’t done that. When I first got Encore, it would not directly burn to TDK brand DVD-Rs, though it worked fine with Maxell and Verbatims. I wrote an image file first, then went back and burned the disc using the image file (still in Encore) and everything worked fine. You might have to try a different brand of DVD-R also. Some of the cheap DVD-Rs are worth less than the cheap price you pay for them.
Hope this helps. Have fun!
Rob
Rob Neidig
R&R Media Producttions
Eugene, Oregon