Hi! I'm trying to fit 5 hours of video onto a 4.7 DVD I'm trying to encode .wav to .ac3 using Sony Vegas but I don't know how to do that. Oh, and also, I'm trying to convert VHS to DVD. I'm using Ulead DVD Movie Factory to record the videos to the PC. I've set the video settings like this: MPEG-2 , Frame Rate: 25 , Constant Bit Rate and 1777 kbps to try and get a good quality video but with low file size. Is there a better way of doing this? Or a better software program? Can anyone help me out? I'd really appreciate it Thanking in advance!
For Sony Vegas, do you want 2.0 AC3 or 5.1 AC3? For 2.0 click on file=>render as. Then look for the "render as type" drop down menu. Click the drop arrow and select "Dolby Digital ac3" (it is the second option from the top). Name your file and click save. For Dolby 5.1, you have to first set your project properties. Click on file=>properties. Once the properties window loads, click on the "audio" tab. Set the master bus mode to 5.1 surround. Click apply and then ok. To render the file, follow the steps for rendering the 2.0 channel. I am not familiar with capturing video to a PC. For encoding, generally Variable Bit rate will give you better results (takes much longer to encode though), but constant bitrate is ok. Your bitrate of 1777 kbps (if total bitrate) means you can put nearly 6 hours of movie on a DVD. If it is separate bitrate (video only) then it will be 5 hours. I do not know how well this will look during playback. I would assume for actual movies (not animation), it would have quite a few artifacts and pixilization, but very viewable. I would suggest you use 2 channel ac3 audio though, as 5.1 will eat up all your bitrate.
Thanks for the advise, I'm going to try it out now. Do you know where to find a tutorial for using DVD Lab? I'm trying to create a DVD with menus and stuff to make it look cool, but I'm not very good with this program.
I do not know of any guides or tutorials (the included help file is very good though), but I posted a mini guide in this thread yesterday: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/239955 It deals with re-authoring many DVDs into 1 DVDR with a Title menu and root menus for each DVD. You could use this if your videos are unrelated, or you want that structure. DVDlab is pretty simple to use. Since you have Sony Vegas, you can actually make very nice menus to use in DVDlab. The only thing is that Vegas does not import .m2v files (never tried .mpv though). I think it can handle .mpeg though. If you want text or other stuff to apear in your video make sure you add another video track and have it above the background video. Making a menu in DVDlab is fast and easy. You can actually create a simple menu with the library and backgrounds available within the program. Before launching the program, you have to decide how you want your DVD to navigate. It is always better to have just an idea, as this speeds things up. Basically there are two options: A dvd with several Title sets (VTS) or a DVD with one Title Set. The post in the other thread dealt with multi VTS, so I will post a quick guide here for a single VTS. When you launch the program, select normal mode. You will not need a VMG menu for a single VTS, unless if you have different ascpet ration movies (both 4:3 & 16:9). If you already made a menu using Sony Vegas, you can import it into your media assets (Ignore any open GOP messages). Double click menu1. It will open the menu creator window. Simply drag and drop your video file. Since Vegas is capable of adding text to video, all you have to do is create group hotspots wherever there is text that you want to be a button. This is the tool that is above the blue fountain pen button (Embedded Vector object). Using the group hotspot, simply draw a rectangle around the text (or other shape) that you want to be a button. You will later on have to add links to your buttons, but that's all. If you have a program that can create DVD resolution images (photoshop is the best, but even mspaint can do it if you have patience), you can import the image file. You can then add text using DVDlab pro's text tool. This it the "Aa" button. You can also use the object library to add effects to the text or textures. The third way to create a menu is to use the backgrounds provided in DVDlab pro. Just drag and drop a background and then add text or objects for buttons. Name your menus for convenince (main, scene selction, audio, etc...). Now it is time to add your movie files. Import them into lab, by right clicking the asset manager (the white screen on the bottom left, but make sure it is in "Video and Audio" tab). For each episode or movie that you have, create a new movie, by pressing "alt+m". Then drag and drop your first movie/episode/clip into movie1. Next add your audio to the audio portion. If you want chapters, since you are importing from a Camera, you will have to create them yourself. You can either use the black preview window in the bottom right, or the thumbnail bar of the movie window (where you drag and dropped your video file). To enter a chapter point, click on the "+" on the slider if using the thumbnails, or the insert chapter button on top of the preview window (looks just like the "+" on the slider). You should not create a scene selection menu for a single VTS project with multiple movies unsing the auto creation tool. There will be too many menus then and that can lead to problems when compiling. Ok, once you are finished adding all of your video and audio, you must create a scene selection menu manually. You can either use a video, prepared picture, or a background from DVDlab. Creating this menu will be the same as creating the Main menu. When you are finished creating the menu and adding your buttons, it is time to link everything. First the menus. Since you are already in the Scene selection menu, you might as well start here. First right click on the text/object that points to the first movie. Select link=>movie1=>chapter1 movie start. Do the same for the other buttons, but pick the appropriate movie. Now make sure there is a link to the main menu. Now double click the main menu. Add your links to this menu the same way as you did it in the scene selection menu. Have a button or text for playing everything and a button to link to the selection menu. Next comes the movie connections. Double click on "connections" in the project tree window. You will see that the arrow tool is selected. Select the tool right underneath it. This is the "Draw connections" tool. Click on movie1 and drag the line that is being created to movie2. Now go from movie2 to movie3 and so on. On the last movie, do not do anything as that one is set to go to the main menu. If you want to change it to go to the scene selection menu, you can then change it by dragging a line to this button. Now you are basically finished. Double check all your connections and make sure buttons are not overlapping and that they all point to something. When you confirm this, make your final save and select "project=>compile DVD...". After about 10 or so minutes, you will havce your VIDEO_TS & AUDIO_TS folders. I think the default is c:/DVDvolume. Do not burn this just yet... First download IFOEdit. You do not need to install this program. Just double click the .exe. When you launch it, select "Open" and then open VIDEO_TS.ifo. Then press DVD Play. This will simulate actual DVD play on a DVD player. Ignore any messages about no DVDlabel. If you get another message, that means that something may be wrong with your compilation. Make sure you go through all the button navigations and chapter skips. IFOEdit will not let you skip from one movie to another, but you will be able to using your DVD player. If everything is ok, Burn your movie. Once you get a few projects under your belt, DVDlab becomes a breeze to use.
To JaguarGod I've been having trouble with Nero, for a variety of reasons. I have been researching other programs for dvd editing and DVDLab seems highly recomended. Do you have any comments, good or bad, about DVDLab over Nero? Any advice on which level of DVDLab is best for a part time, hobby type dvd enthusiast?I know that the DVDLab Pro would do more, but I'm not looking to make a "lord of the Rings" epic-just holiday video's, stuff like that. Plz advise. Thx.
I am only familiar with DVDlab Pro and that is much much better than Nero. I think the Standard version limits how many VTS you can have or something like that. The good thing is that DVDlab comes with a 30 day, fully-featured FREE trial, so you can try it for free!!! You can also try out TMPGEnc DVD author. This one seems good, but I have no experience with it. Now $200 may be a bit too much if you are just going to make holiday videos, but it looks like the standard and studio versio of DVDlab cut out some features that may be important. I think the standard and Studio versions will not be much better than Nero, just that they will have less problems when making the DVD. I was wondering, what is it with Nero Vision Express that is making you want to purchase a real DVD authoring program? If you are just drag and dropping .avi or .mpg clips into Nero and letting it encode, then DVDlab will not solve issues with that. NVE is enough for just holiday DVDs. If you are having issues with converting .avi files, then you can try out avi2dvd which is free. Then after it makes the .vob files import those into NVE.
Greetings. In the 2 years I have had Nero, I've had a variety of problems-not a lot,really. I have found that the ultimate problem was with my lack of knowledge, but after speaking to the afterdawn Nero "rep" (C.C.), I have rectified these problems. This is the same scenario here. I have tried to edit video shot on 2 different still camera's-The problem was in the audio; I could add songs to one set but not the other-I did some playing around this weekend and have determined that it's just one of those"computer mysteries",never solved but ultimately resolved anyway.I started checking out other editing programs reluctantly as I really like Nero. I thought that maybe this audio problem would be solved using a different editing program (DVDLAB)-I now know that is not the case. I've burned a suitable dvd of all this footage-looks good; I think looking at something else was just frustration. Note: these clips are not avi or mpeg;One was from a Kodak camera-file ".kdk"-the other (that didn't work) was a Canon S-40. I have not tried any "free" programs because I've had some nasty experiences with "supposed" free programs before. Thankyou for your help.
