I have come to trust you guys, and I need some off topic advice. If you had the option to render your work to an .avi or an MPEG2 file, which would you choose and why?

I am trying to speed up DVD burning without sacrificing quality.

Depends entirely on your non-linear editing system... some edit in AVI, some in MPEG. For instance, I use a Canopus DV Rex RT which uses .avi and it's a real-time editor. The final edit is then authored to DVD in the mpeg2 format.

If you are going to DVD you should render to MPEG2. That is your
target. While editting and doing post work (ie, before the final
render) I would personally stick with DV based compression or
uncompressed.

If your Premiere edit is the final cut and it does not need to
go through any other program (like After Effects for example)
then you can even frameserve (through a special little tool)
directly to the MPEG2 encoder (TMPGEnc or CCE) without the
files being re-encoded to DV or some other format. They will
be straight transcoded to MPEG2 without an intermediate
file on your disks.

Does the video card make any difference in the quality of a AVI to MPEG2 conversion. My AVI looks great, but after the MPEG2 rendering, it looks like crap. I've even created DVD's using the original AVI (Sonic MyDVD will do that) and the footage looks perfect. The same clip rendered to MPEG2 looks like crap. I'm wondering if upgrading to the big 128MB GeForce would help?

The video card will have a little to do with the look of MPEG2 playback, but if you're viewing DV just fine, then I doubt your video card is playing a part in bad looking MPEG2. It's much more likely related to the mpeg2 encoder or player you're using.

You said a dvd looks fine but mpeg2 doesn't, which doesn't really make any sense, since the DVD *is* mpeg2. Are you using a different encoder, or different settings when you do the standalone mpeg2 encodes, vs "creating dvds using the original avi" in Sonic?

Now that you say that I probably am. I quess Sonic is doing a conversion internally, but if it is, it's very fast because is takes no time at all.
Here's the deal:
When I make a DVD with Sonic directly from an AVI = perfect.
When I convert the AVI to MPEG using Ulead and then make the DVD = not perfect.

That's why I thought my video card was the bottleneck. So you think I should try a different MPEG codec?

Yeah, your problem is definitely the Ulead encoder. You might look at MainConcept or TMPpeg. If you have Sonic Foundry Vegas, the mpeg2 encoder included is MainConcept.

The video card will not play any role in MEPG2 encoding. It
will (and more importantly your monitor!) when viewing it, ofcourse!

Now the best software encoder that I know off for the price ($48)
is TMPGEnc which can be found at www.tmpgenc.net. It
takes some getting used to but it can create beautiful mpeg2.
It has a demo available if you want to try it out. It can be quite
slow though, but that is what you pay for a high quality output
file, which in my mind, is a little thing to pay!

Rob, thanks. I downloaded the trial version, but it seems it only converts one existing "file" to MPEG. Is it possible to get it to create directly from the timeline? Because if I have to create a file first, then I'm still using my Ulead codecs.

There was no notice anyone was responding. Sorry for not participating in a thread I initiated.

I have been using Sonic MyDVD and Vegas' included MainConcept MPEG2 encoder. The difference has been primarily in the audio where the MyDVD .avi to DVD conversion has proven to be the best quality option tried thus far.

My only complaint is the time. It takes more than an hour each DVD (30 min from a 6 Gb .avi file).

If anyone knows a way to shorten the time without sacrificing quality, I am very interested.

Yeah that's because it's doing an internal avi to mpeg2 conversion. I'd be happy to get good results regardless of the time. You are having the same problem I am. You want a GOOD way to convert to MPEG2. I'm going to keep playing with the TMPGenc.

Alex, you need to use a frame server to move it to TMPGenc. take a look at Avery Lee's Avisynth and Virtual Dub for pulling it all together

I hate to sound like such an idiot, but much of this thread is thoroughly confusing me. It sounds like in order to get the best quality DVD Brad is rendering to .avi and then encoding to mpeg2? I was under the impression that rendering to mainconcept mpeg2 DVD NTSC with Vegas would be top quality. Should I encode my videos with another program after I render with Vegas or am I completely missing something here?

Hey Dan,

The real problem I am finding with MainConcepts MPEG2 encoder is in the audio. There is an obvious distortion that exists on what was originally a very clean audio track.

In addition, you can see on the created DVD that the amount of disk space used for the original .avi file conversion to MPEG2 through MyDVD is considerable more than the amount used from the MainConcept MPEG2 rendering. The difference would indicate to me that not nearly as much data was being burned to the disk using MainConcept's rendered MPEG2.

I don't know if this will help, but I have accepted my 1.5 hour DVD production rate knowing the quality is excellent going the long way.

Brad

Brad,

Thanks that is very helpful. I am looking into getting a DVD burner and authoring software and trying to make sure I get the right stuff. As someone new to digital video I didn't know Sonic DVD and other DVD software would convert the videos into DVD format. I thought I would need to render all of my files as MPEG2. I did this with Vegas and was surprised that it took up less disk space than I expected. It sounds like you are rendering to avi with Vegas and then Sonic DVD converts the video to MPEG2 during the authoring process, correct?

Thanks again.

That is correct. I am rendering to an .avi and letting MyDVD (free with the HP 200e) do the rest. Of the 1 hour and 30 minutes I wait for each DVD, about 1 hour and 20 minutes is spent "transcoding" the data. True burn times are very fast (as noted in cnet.com's tests.

I went into this without much advise as to how to make quality DVDs, and I am very pleased with the results so far. I bought an HP 200e burner, and every disk I have burned (about 30+) has worked. The only problem (so far) is that my dad's nearly 4 year old DVD home player could not play the disk I sent him (however his Mac could). With that noted, we have been able to play our disks on every other home player we have tried as well as Macs and PCs. I personally believe the DVD+R is worth the extra expense.

I hope this helps.

Clarification, Sonic does convert it, but it doesn't do it well. I've spent the last 12 hours trying every possible combination of ways to get a good avi to mpeg2 covnersion with Sonic and was not happy with the results.

Alex,

I'm not sure what problems you are having, but I am very pleased with the results Sonic's MyDVD has produced from an .avi file. The time could have been shorter, but the resulting video and audio has been every bit as good as the original .avi file at three times the size.

As far as setup goes, I have done nothing to reconfigure MyDVD. The software is the latest release. The only changes I have made is in updating the driver software for the HP 200e DVD burner. According to some reviews, poorer quality DVDs from earlier software versions has been corrected. I never tried with the older release software.

How does your original .avi file look, and what are the properties of the file?

I'm learning as I go, but let me know if you think I might be able to help.

Brad

Alex,

I reread your earlier posts in this thread, and I read that your Vegas to .avi to Sonic DVDs were "perfect". Using any other method we both appear to be having the same results. I am not sure why, but I will do a little research with some of my more tech conscious contacts and let you know what I find. My suspicion is that MPEG2 lacks complete standardization.

Brad

To all who think they have rendering times. An hour, or an hour
and half is nothing in mpeg2 encoding!! Keep in mind that for
testing you DO NOT have to encode a whole movie. With TMPGEnc
for example you can set the range of frames it will process. You
can tell it to encode from frame 4000 to frame 5800 (for example)
to get 1 minute of footage for NTSC. You can judge settings and
filesizes from this.

I've done encodes that take 5 - 18 hours to complete. But I do
have gorgeous images as well. In my mind this is no problem. I
try out the main settings and then have it render a movie over-
night. It is mostly finished when I wake up again. If I think it didn't
do such a good job afterall (this can happen when you are doing
VBR encoding!) then I change some settings and render again
the next night.

Wat is a few hours on your movie to which you have already
given much much much more hours to make in the first place?

Rob,

What is VBR encoding?

Brad

Brad

VBR is variable bit rate, as opposed to CBR, which is constant bit rate. VBR encoding "reads" the material in the first pass to determine where high motion scenes will require higher data rates for good results and where relatively inactive scenes can be given lower data rates without degradation. The intent is to create optimum file sizes of good quality. If for example, you use 8 mbps as a CBR everything gets the same treatment and the file size reflect that. If you set minimum 2 mbps max 8, you should get equal quality at smaller size - so more material per disk.

I clearly have much more to learn, I thought NTSC DVD had to be a CBR of 6000.
Here's what I'm seeing, if anyone can help me fix it let me know:
The picture is sharp in places, but pixelized in others, especially if the subject is wearing a black suit or anything that is one color the image has blurred pixels (I can't sell that).
Also, even having shot in Frame Mode and set at Frame-based, high action shots have streaked scan lines. Like if someone waves at the camera, their fingers are blurred by the scan lines being out of sync. Other than that my MPEG's are great (sound, transitions, titles, etc.). Any ideas?

Alex, I'm curious about why you shoot in frame mode, and is it 30 or 15 fps (ie Canon vs Sony)? My impression is that frame mode is useful for stills and multimedia-targeted material, but not for NTSC which is of course interlaced.
I don't know this for a fact but having seen the results of overly high compression on files created for dial-up progressive download or streaming, I wonder if the constant bit rate you're using isn't too much compression for solid colours which are normally easy for an encoder to do with low bit rate.
Regarding the motion artifacts on a hand waving you might experiment with a higher bit rate to see what happens. Or recreate the action in a short clip shot in interlaced mode versus frame mode and see what that looks like at the same CBR you used before. I hope someone else has other/better suggestions.

Those are good suggestions. To answer your question, it's Canon 30fps and I did that because it improved upon the results of shooting it interlaced (60 interlaced fps). The Canon 30fps gives it a cool film look. I don't think that's the problem though, more likely I need to adjust my compression as you suggested. Will do.

Alex,

What MPEG2 encoding software where you using for this specific
example? DVD only has a maximum bitrate (9.8 mbps including
sound and titles etc.). I usually do VBR with a Minimal of 2000,
Average 5000 and max 7000 or something in that area. This way
it allocates all the bits and bytes more efficiently. This should help
with your blacks. But if you put a picture up showing the problems
with the black areas we can better suggest what you might do
to remove those "problems"

I ran multiple tests over the weekend with VBR at several different maximums and still got shotty results.
I'm using Ulead's encoder which uses a MPEG.Now codec (from MainConcepts). The MSPro6.5 comes with a Ligos codec, but the MPEG.Now is a "patch" which is encouraged on the Ulead site, so it's all I have right now.
Can anyone tell me if I'd have better luck with the DVStorm2 with the StormEncoder hardware encoder?

I do not know those products myself, so it is hard to judge them.
If you have the time, try the demo from www.tmpgenc.net
and see what kind of results you get from that one on both CBR
and VBR.

Thats the best thing I can think of to see what is causing the
problem.

If you have a way to put it online you can shoot me an e-mail
and I'll have a look at the original source and your encoded mpeg
and let you know!

Just an FYI, the new Premiere 6.5 edits and exports in mpeg-2 (and if you use the dv500 dvd, there's hardware acceleration to boot).

These settings have it dead on!! (see bottom of thread)
My customers have never been so happy!
But MOST important....I'm happy!!!
The quality looks pretty much like the original footage!


TMPGE
http://dvd-hq.info/Compression.html