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DVD
Encoding
DV to DVD
Archiving
Cleaning
Deshaking
CCE
encoding Tests
MPEG2 encoder
resolution tests
Authoring
IFOedit
DVDstyler
- easy menus and portable
GUI
for dvdauthor, free and versatile
Correcting
source problems
TMPGEnc
DVD Author (1.5)
Dual
Language DVDs with TMPgenc1.5
DVD
capacities
Note: Many systems play back or decode DV with half resolution by default. If DV videos don't look really good on your computer, read this text box on the DV page.
For the first step (making a movie from
DV sources), I use Pinnacle Studio9. The easiest to use DV editor
in my opinion, lots of DVD menu options. Disadvantages: If there
are still some problems with the lately very much improved software,
then it would be in the DVD authoring section.
Anyway I prefer TMPGEnc DVD Author for the authoring: very easy,
very fast, very reliable.
Studio9 can meanwhile take any compliant MPEG2 from other encoders and do smart rendering, e.g. it can edit MPEG2 in/ MPEG2 out without unnecessary re-encoding (however, it always re-encodes the audio). Their own MPEG2 encoder is about OK at high bitrates but does not like lower ones (Same as with about any other all-in-one solution). Studio9 insists to recompress if the bitrate tag of the MPEG2 file shows a too large value (like with all CCE encoded files). You can repair this by patching the MPEG2 file with DVDpatcher.
CCE (Cinemacraft Encoder)
If you want the best MPEG2 encoder, try CinemaCraft (CCE) Basic, which can generate better compressed MPEG2 in about 2/3 of the time Studio9 takes and is twice as fast as the also quite good TMPG Encoder. It's as good as the legendary CCE pro encoder at a fraction of the price, only lacks some advanced features that I don't miss anyway. CCE allows for perfect reproduction of DV videos at just 4.500 kbps VBR, of 16:9 movies at just 2.500 kbps. For settings details see below. This requires that the source is clean and the clip is long enough to contain more and less difficult parts. If major parts of the video are noisy/grainy (low light shots for example), these will be encoded with maximum bitrate and steal too many bits form other parts. In this case, a higher average bitrate my be necessary, at least if the other parts are very crisp and should remain that way. There will be no major degradation or artifacts, but fine low contrast detail could become a bit blurred (I am talking of very fine detail here that the default filtering -'Quality Settings'- of CCE would wipe out anyway of you don't switch it off). For sources that were converted from analog formats, such effects could be neglected, because the noise reduction inherent in these systems degrades low contrast detail anyway.
Preparing/filtering
is best done with VirtualDub, Either you save the result as an
intermediate file (e.g., DV with the Mainconcept encoder to preserve
quality at a reasonable file size), or you frameserve to CCE (best
option for one-pass encoding). Installing the frameserver is described here.
In
Virtualdub, start the frameserver, give the frameserver any name and
give the .vdr (signpost) file the name and path you want for your
final output. .vdr files can directly be opened with CCE. You may
start several instances of Virtualdub including frameserving parallel,
and open them all with CCE, for sequential processing (overnight or
so). If you want to run this in background while using your
machine, give all the Virtualdub tasks low priority in Windows Task
Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del invokes it).
See these Examples to judge on your own.
HC-Encoder
A good freeware MPEG2 encoder is HC-Encoder. Other than CCE, it can also do HDTV, and at a very competitive quality, and constant quality VBR, that CCE offers in the utterly expensive pro version only.
HC-encoder is a bit tricky to use though.
It only accepts .d2v frameserving pseudofiles (from DVD2AVI or
DGindex) or .avs (AVIsynth) input, and it reads all its settings
from a .ini file that has to be prepared some way. If we don't
like to use our computer typewriter style, there are some tools
helping out.
First, we use DGindex
to prepare a .d2v frameserver file for HC-Encoder (MPEG2 input
only) and demultiplex the audio. A crispness problem has been
encountered with some High Definition sources, but so far not
with standard TV (sometimes check for this, especially if you
have archiving in mind).
The procedure is to open the source MPEG2 file with DGindex, optionally
mark beginning and end frames, and save the 'project' as a .d2v
file. Now DGindex is busy saving the audio of the source separately
and making the (small) pseudo file that will later deliver video
to HC-Encoder via the VFAPI codec. With sound demultiplexed by
DGindex, you have to do the same delay adjustment as with DVD2AVI.
The AVIsynth method for frameserving is described in the HDTV section.
HCgui is a graphical interface to the
HC encoder. Conveniently, it is included the HC-Encoder package.
It relieves you of the command line work except that it does not
yet support HC's constant quality one pass mode.
The procedure is simple: open the .d2v file with HCgui, set average
and maximum bitrate, and encode. Finally, multiplex the encoded
file with the sound, e.g. with the MPEG tools of an older TMPGenc
version. Read the lines on audio
delay.
Archiving DV tapes to DVD
Even if you still
keep your original tapes it's a good idea to have a backup. I've
seen many tapes get defective, some 'eaten' by worn out drives.
This applies to analog tapes as well, capture them to DV format
first and then proceed as follows.
DVDs are actually so cheap now, that it makes sense to cut the original DV capture into approx. 20 minutes pieces and store them on a data DVD (UDF file system). This is easily done with VirtualDub (cut functions and direct stream copy).
If you want something that plays in your stand alone (DVD) player and looks great on your TV (DV always looks crappy on a PC screen, as the interlacing isn't handled properly), then my recommendation is to simply use CCE Basic at 9000 kbps CBR one-pass. This is fast, doesn't uselessly waste bits to noise, fits one 1hr+ tape to one DVD, and the quality is excellent. It's however extremely recommendable to apply VirtualDub's temporal noise reduction, gamma correction (levels or gradation filter) and if necessary, deshaking before encoding to DVD, even with the uncut material. This way, there is no further degradation if it's cut later on. Such uncut DVDs, if equipped with menus, can already be good enough for personal viewing. One-pass encoding is also very convenient as it also requires only one instance of frameserving filtered material to CCE. A huge time saving.
As said, encoding effectiveness as well can be greatly improved by applying some filters, especially temporal noise filters. Read about cleaning, for more details.
Here is how to use CCE Basic for DV and other sources:
First, start it and draw your avi into its window.
Double click on the avi and set the following parameters:
Always uncheck 'Quality Settings' if
the source is not too noisy. This will give you significantly
better sharpness. Leave the slider at 'Complex' (if it
does anything, it's better that way).
Check 16:9 if your source is widescreen.
If you want to archive
very crisp and difficult sources, select a higher bitrate or just
constant (CBR) bitrate as high as possible (9000). Settings (this
time for the newest CCE version) here.
You may specify an external audio source file, and you may select
"System stream" if you want to produce an already multiplexed
MPEG. Default is that video and audio are written to separate
files (OK if you use TMPGEnc DVD Author, but not for most others).
Now press the Video Button.
Offset line 1 (default) is already correct
for DV sources. For scenes captured with MJPEG or frameserved vith
Virtualdub from non-DV sources such as MPEG, 0 would be appropriate.
For non interlaced sources, Progressive frame and Zigzag should
be selected. For NTSC video, set N/M to 4 !
The Luminance setting here is valid for PAL, but I could not find
any effect of it at all, anyway.
Then Audio. Set it to Stereo
! (Joint stereo is for people without ears, because in CCE this
is intensity joint stereo, e.g. it kills all spatial information
and makes shortwave effects).
If not yet so, set 48.000 Hz. DVD needs that.
Finally, you should disable YUY2 (this is one setting where the default is faulty):
(otherwise, contrast would be increased, bleaching some detail in bright image areas !).
Press all OK and encode.
Some
tricks for movie encoding:
Don't forhet to set osset line to 0 with all aother than DV sources.
16:9 non interlaced films can be done with less than 2500 kbps,
especially if the source is cleaned. For example, try 1500/2000/6000
for the min/avg/max bitrates. It's important not to choose the
minimum bitrate too low if the average is already low, otherwise
some low action scenes might get blocky. The quality at this bitrate
is quite good, believe it or not. For an average of 2500 or more,
the minimum value can usually be set to zero. The maximum bitrate
could also be 9000, the only reason to sometimes keep it lower
is to avoid wasting bits to noisy scenes.
For movies already coming from VHS tape, maybe even in long play,
you can set CCE to "half horizontal resolution". Uncheck
the "DVD compliant" box with this, or it won't do it
(the stream will nevertheless be DVD compliant, DVD standard allows
for half resolution encoding).
This is still about as sharp as long play VHS. Bitrates for this
can be set as low as 1000/1300/4000, allowing for about 7 hours
on a single DVD. I would not recommend it for standard play VHS
in PAL countries (Europe etc.). There, "half" resolution
is visibly below that of the VHS tape.
Basic DVD authoring is just making menus (assumed your movie is already cut, of course).
I've done tests with several softwares, but only a few got into closer selection:
Pinnacle Studio9 has relatively complex menu options and has become much more stable than previous versions. However as said, some people have problems with the DVDs produced, and as I can't say that the menu creation with it is as straightforwrd as the edtiting (TMPGEnc DVD Author is much easier for me), I didn't do further tests.
A Look at some more professional tools revealed that they are too user unfriendly. Dissed.
Ulead DVD Movie Factory is simple, but you should avoid installing version
2.0 because it had several bugs and It installed a pack of Ligos
codecs that took Media Player hostage: Playing MPEG2 with it became
jerky or - at full screen - a slide show. I did not find a registry
hack to revert this mess.
With version 2.1 (still displays 2.0 when installing), the Ligos
encoder Issue seems to have been cured.
I recommend not to use any 2.0 installer first and update afterwards,
but to install 2.1 clean and first place.
Chapter editing is still much clumsier than in TMPGEnc but it
works. Other bugs have been cured as well. Easy for beginners:
you can simulate your DVD before burning.
If you want to feed it separate audio/video streams, the 'replace
audio' function will do this.
You cannot do motion menus, separate tracks or dual audio. What
is good and easy to create are menus with background music.
DVDlab is a very flexible tool, due to its special approach to authoring, but also pretty hard to learn. Meanwhile, I found the time to test it but I could not get through to real results because it pretended to make a DVD folder but created only VOB but no IFO files and then crashed when trying to burn. As it is so time consuming to use, I did not do further tests. Meanwhile there are several freeware programs way better than necessary for private use.
IFOedit is more of a tool for final finishing and such, but if you just want to make a DVD with one or more sound tracks but no menu (one that starts playing when inserted), IFOedit can do the entire job easily (freeware).
Simply select DVD authoring, add your
(demuxed; MPEG2CUT2
can do this) video and one or almost any number of audio files,
and tell it to go ahead.
What would be nice if the DVD had chapter to quick navigate it.
IFOedit expects you to provide a text file containing frame numbers,
then it will insert chapter marks in its output. You may us Excel
for example, make a list of numbers and export it plain ASCII
to make such a text file. One second equals 25 frames in Europe
and 30 in the US. Here are some prepared
text files for chapters every 1,2,5, and 10 minutes. Note
that 99 chapters are maximum in any DVD title.
When the DVD is finished, open the IFO files generated, again with IFOedit, check if the aspect ration is set correctly (4:3 or 16;9) and give the sound tracks their correct language tag.
DVDstyler - easy menus and portable
DVDstyler portable is probably the easiest-to-use software if you want to do a little authoring, it is freeware, and it has lots of features. Best of all, it runs without installation, from a USB stick for example. Multiple title sets, multi audio etc. are possible, so it allows for pretty complex DVD designs. The only drawback I've seen so far, there is no utility in it to grab pictures out of video files for the menu design (dragging a video into the menu just makes a picture of the first frame), and chapters need to be defined as numbers. Anything else is quite intuitive. There are several descriptions and a manual linked at the DVDstyler website so I won't repeat these things here. As to reliability I can't say much, as I have just tested it a little bit so far.
GUI for dvdauthor, free and multi language
GUI for dvdauthor is finally a user interface for the freeware 'DVDauthor' project that allows to use most of its features at ease. Currently my favorite. Only problem that like all typical Visual Basic applications it's unaware of large fonts settings in Windows, so if you have corrected Window's illicit font metrics you may get scrambled menus. But that only affects the visual chapter editor in the latest versions, and it can be used nevertheless.
This software has a huge lot of features,
and even an automatic chapter generator and a utility to grab
frames for styling. A bit complicated at a first glance, but can
be managed.
Important: It comes with a choice of 2 different engines, DVD
author and Muxman. In my opinion, Muxman is the better choice,
as it does not produce an intermediate file set as DVDauthor does
(taking much disk space and time, and it seems to be less picky
about errors in the audio streams. The only issue I found with
Muxman so far: auto play did not work (for DVD with just one movie
where I did not need a menu anyway), had to start the DVD manually.
But in such a case, just using IFOedit would also do the job.
For quick DVD making, GUIdvdauthor is the absolute winner, as you just chose your files, tell it to make some chapters automatically, drag the videos into the screen to make buttons, and off you go, making a DVD with title sets and all.
Correcting source problems
Satellite recordings may frequently have defects in the audio or video streams that may cause failures at re-encoding or multiplexing.
Video problems can be addressed by cutting your sources (demultiplexed video and audio in parallel) with MPEG2schnitt. Needs demultiplexed files, which can be done with MPEG2CUT2.
Audio problems MPEG2Schnitt usually won't mend, but these can be corrected with mp3val-frontend, that even does many files at once, or if it's AC3, with Delaycut.
Very severe audio problems can almost for sure be mended by reading the file with Adobe Audition ("audio from Video" option), saving and re-encoding.
TMPGEnc DVD Author
This is about older versions (1.5), that are good but a little obsolete meanwhile as there is good and more capable freeware available. I'll keep this DVD making description here for a basic recipe however that can also be transported to other authoring tools. Newer versions also now require periodic "online validation" to work. While this activation stuff is already an Imposition with an operating system like Windows, it is totally unacceptable with single applications, and even more so if periodically repeated at haphazard. Imagine the web is down, the app wants to call home and you have to finish an important project. Imagine all your most probably several dozen legally registered applications act like this. So don't expect any more words about newer TMPGenc products here.
TMPGEnc DVD Author
(TDA) works quick and almost free of bugs. It has the best chapter
editor and even allows extensive cut editing of scenes. Making
a DVD is a few clicks and the program is absolutely stable.
From v.1,4 it also got a menu editor, so you can create your own
menu designs. It also supports motion menus and hierarchical menus.
Remaining problems: Just adding sound to a menu is complicated
(you need to encode the background picture as a video clip), and
the repeat function of motion menus and menu sounds apparently
has a compatibility problem, most motion menus work but some don't
work correctly on my stand alone player. Real One Player for example
always works with TMPGenc's motion menus, so my stand alone seems
to be part of the problem but not all, because all commercial
DVDs so far worked well.
A necessary warning:
Although TDA nags about many things, it may not warn you if it
just dumps the better part of a sat TV transmission. A tiny stream
error is enough, and the program will stop reading. You may see
this when adding chapters, but it may also happen that it shows
the right clip length, adds chapters through to the end, but finally
when making the DVD half of the clip is missing. Not warning at
all. It's not a frequent problem, but it's definitely wiser to
check the finished DVD thoroughly before deleting the source files
!
Here
are some first steps with TMPGenc DVD Author 1.5:
BTW, the fastest way to find the right chapter cuts and thumbnail pictures, is VirtualDub on the source videos . Just write down the frame numbers.
The example project consists of several TV recordings, with the objective to make a DVD with menus and chapters for easy access. All clips had originally been captured in MJPEG and converted to DivX4 some time ago . One was even encoded to DIVX4 interlaced as it was. The videos were expanded to MJPEG (Q=18), PCM audio, letterboxed to 720x576 frame size, to make them work with CCE encoder. Encoding was done with the same parameters as recommended for DV above, only bitrate was 2500 kbps for the 16:9 clips and 3500 kbps for one (partially) full frame interlaced clip. About 3:20 hours fit on the DVD without any further degrading of quality compared to the source. The interlaced parts now played back clean for the first time.
Now here we go:
First, we will create a new project.
Here we have already opened 5 video files. For each one, we have Added a new track, then pulled the video into the track. This way we get a hierarchical menu structure because each track will have its own menu page.
The track chapters are selected with the "chapter cut edit" function. Either search the timeline and press "Add current frame to chapter", or if you already know the frame numbers, just press "Add".
The Timecode field will also accept a frame number as input !
Here is the main menu. The thumbnails represent the 5 video clips. Thumbnail pictures may be changed by double clicking on the thumbnails.
This is one of the sub menus. The background picture was exported from VirtualDub and the resized and saved as JPG with a graphics program.
Here we have selected that both main and track menus will be generated.
Here we can deselect some chapters from being displayed as a thumbnail. They are nevertheless still there and accessible with the seek keys. So we can keep the number of menus small but provide more entry points for fast seeking.
Here we selected that the chapter thumbnails will show up as little video clips, as well as the background of the main menu. Our main menu background menu has audio, by the way. It is 26 seconds long, so we select this as repeat time (the only bug I've found - the beginning of the menu clip was cut off; It would also be more convenient if the time value would be automatic in case of a video clip source).
We can now create our DVD folders.
Last but not least, TMPGEnc DVD Author has an easy to use DVD burning tool.
TMPGenc DVD author up to 1.5 supports dual language only if you force it. Next I'll explain how. If you have these tasks more often, you'd better use something else: IFOedit, DVDstyler or GUIdvdauthor presented above.
TMPGenc DVD author has a mode to encode
left and right channel as 2 separate language mono channels. Good
for TV sources, but sometimes you might want to have 2 stereo
channel sets.
Also possible, in theory:
Multiplex 2 audio channels with your video, drop it into a track
of TMPGenc DVD Author, and you can use the track's settings
button to open a window that lets you set 2 stereo channels:
(Example: in this case, only one 64 kbps audio was really contained
in the source video)
It even encodes the DVD for 2
channels, also even converts mono to stereo, BUT: both languages
will be the same, e.g. the first language is used twice and multiplexed
into the VOB file as 2 additional streams. So you can switch languages
when playing your DVD, but it will always be language one that
you get.
It's quite obviously a not yet fully implemented function.
Here's a trick to overcome this:
IFOedit is a modest but powerful tool do modify DVD sets, and it even has a rudimentary authoring function. It's free and you can easily find it on the web using a search engine like google.com.
Use it this way:
First, let TMPGEnc DVD Author create
the DVD folders with audio channel modes forced to dual stereo
like described above, where desired. It will generate some dummy
audio and you don`t even have to give it both audio streams for
encoding, it won`t use the 2nd one anyway.
(DO NOT enter the source setup again after doing the track settings,
you would erase them !)
Then start IFOedit and Select "DVD Author":
Choose your video stream, then the 2 audio streams, set the language names. (If you need a tool to encode audio separately, look for Beesweet GUI, or get GermaniXencoder (alternate download)). Toolame GUI is also a good alternative, as Germanix if fixed to one bitrate.
Start DVD creation.
IFOedit will then just make a new set of VOBs together with some
basic IFO and BUP files. Of these, we will need only the main
VOBs, named VTS_01_n.VOB, (n stands for 0,1,2,...).
Replace the files in the DVD image that you authored with TMPGEnc
DVD Author with the new VOBs from IFOedit.
Last cosmetics (not necessary, but it
looks better to have language names shown in the DVD menus): Open
the IFO files that TMPGEnc created, and correct the names of the
audio channels. Leave chapter settings and all else untouched.
Save the modified IFO files and say yes to "save as BUP as
well".
DVD
capacities
Actual capacities of DVDs often lead
to confusion because somewhere they are listed in GB, elsewhere
in MB, and so on. The following table should hopefully be exact.
Note that "-R" DVDs have slightly lower capacities.
| DVD capacities | GB | MB | KB | Bytes |
| "+R DL" | 7,961 | 8 152 | 8 347 648 | 8 547 991 552 |
| "+R" | 4,360 | 4 465 | 4 572 160 | 4 681 891 840 |
| "+R mini" | 1,360 | 1 393 | 1 426 432 | 1 460 666 368 |
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