puddy
6th March 2007, 19:06
I'm using TSUNAMI MPEG DVD AUTHOR PRO Version 2.1.5.77 for the first time. I'm trying to author a DVD of captured home video footage.
Wow, I'm really confused on this one. Does this software always reencode (transcode I guess in this case)? It is creating a final product larger than all of my footage, audio and menu combined. I don't understand this at all.
I've already converted the video to MPEG-2 using HC Encoder 0.20 with no issues. DVD Author brings in the footage without a complaint (MPEG-2, 720x480, 29.97 fps, NTSC). I separately encoded the audio to AC3 using Aften and have added that as the single audio track for the above footage (Dolby Digital, 48000 Hz, Stereo, 224 kbps). No complaints about that either.
After adding the clip to my project I do some cut-edits on the video and set chapter information. Everything works fine. I chose to edit in DVD Author instead of editing the raw avi file as that seems to cause major audio sync issues.
Next I build a simple one screen menu with video motion buttons. 15 secs in length.
Next I go to the output screen. I go to start building the DVD and get a warning that it is too big and I tell it go transcode it down to single layer DVD size. I figure this isn't a big deal because I'm just a few MBs over.
After 10 hours!!! I have a DVD that is indeed the right size but doesn't look very good. First thing I notice is that my video is no longer interlaced (playing back in Media Player Classic) and the quality is kind of poor. FYI, the audio is still in perfect sync, which is good.
So, I figured I would go back and tell it not to transcode it down and just let it be too large and I'll shrink it with a better transcoder later.
Now, 3 hours later!! I have a DVD that is 6.52 GB?!?! So now I at least know why it looked so bad, it was transcoding away more than 2 gigs of data.
But wait a second...here's the kicker. My original MPEG-2 file was only 4.28 GBs (and that's before cutting some of the footage out by editing it in DVD Author). My AC3 audio was only 197 MBs and the 15 second, single screen motion menu I designed turned out to only be 10 MBs in size (I checked this using DVDShrink by looking at the oversized DVD files created by DVD Author).
So, why did it bloat my video?
My first thought was that it was reencoding the entire clip because I had done cut-edits. But that doesn't make any sense as I can use other programs to do cut edits on MPEG-2 video and no reencoding is necessary. But in the docs for DVD Author there are some strange references to "smart rendering engine" (I assume this is their transcoder?) and this in the FAQ:
Q: Does TSUNAMI MPEG DVD AUTHOR PRO re-encode the video and audio?
A: Video is re-encoded if necessary and is limited to the edited parts of the clip. Audio is re-encoded if you change the format or enable the bi-audio option.
So what is going on? I made less than 10 edits for 2 hours of video. Something is not right. And why is it deinterlacing my video?
I'm really disappointed and I'm hoping that I'm just doing something stupid. I would expect the software to "butt-splice" my edits and create the DVD video directly from my original MPEG-2. I do not understand why it needs to reencode ANY part of the video.
Can anybody shine some light on what might be happening here? And if there is any other info you'd like from me to help solve this, please let me know. I'd be glad to provide it.
puddy
Wow, I'm really confused on this one. Does this software always reencode (transcode I guess in this case)? It is creating a final product larger than all of my footage, audio and menu combined. I don't understand this at all.
I've already converted the video to MPEG-2 using HC Encoder 0.20 with no issues. DVD Author brings in the footage without a complaint (MPEG-2, 720x480, 29.97 fps, NTSC). I separately encoded the audio to AC3 using Aften and have added that as the single audio track for the above footage (Dolby Digital, 48000 Hz, Stereo, 224 kbps). No complaints about that either.
After adding the clip to my project I do some cut-edits on the video and set chapter information. Everything works fine. I chose to edit in DVD Author instead of editing the raw avi file as that seems to cause major audio sync issues.
Next I build a simple one screen menu with video motion buttons. 15 secs in length.
Next I go to the output screen. I go to start building the DVD and get a warning that it is too big and I tell it go transcode it down to single layer DVD size. I figure this isn't a big deal because I'm just a few MBs over.
After 10 hours!!! I have a DVD that is indeed the right size but doesn't look very good. First thing I notice is that my video is no longer interlaced (playing back in Media Player Classic) and the quality is kind of poor. FYI, the audio is still in perfect sync, which is good.
So, I figured I would go back and tell it not to transcode it down and just let it be too large and I'll shrink it with a better transcoder later.
Now, 3 hours later!! I have a DVD that is 6.52 GB?!?! So now I at least know why it looked so bad, it was transcoding away more than 2 gigs of data.
But wait a second...here's the kicker. My original MPEG-2 file was only 4.28 GBs (and that's before cutting some of the footage out by editing it in DVD Author). My AC3 audio was only 197 MBs and the 15 second, single screen motion menu I designed turned out to only be 10 MBs in size (I checked this using DVDShrink by looking at the oversized DVD files created by DVD Author).
So, why did it bloat my video?
My first thought was that it was reencoding the entire clip because I had done cut-edits. But that doesn't make any sense as I can use other programs to do cut edits on MPEG-2 video and no reencoding is necessary. But in the docs for DVD Author there are some strange references to "smart rendering engine" (I assume this is their transcoder?) and this in the FAQ:
Q: Does TSUNAMI MPEG DVD AUTHOR PRO re-encode the video and audio?
A: Video is re-encoded if necessary and is limited to the edited parts of the clip. Audio is re-encoded if you change the format or enable the bi-audio option.
So what is going on? I made less than 10 edits for 2 hours of video. Something is not right. And why is it deinterlacing my video?
I'm really disappointed and I'm hoping that I'm just doing something stupid. I would expect the software to "butt-splice" my edits and create the DVD video directly from my original MPEG-2. I do not understand why it needs to reencode ANY part of the video.
Can anybody shine some light on what might be happening here? And if there is any other info you'd like from me to help solve this, please let me know. I'd be glad to provide it.
puddy