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Post by drweir on Jul 27, 2005 0:41:14 GMT -5
Can anyone explain exactly how to author DVD's? I just got a burner and I know there are tutorials on videohelp.com but it all looks greek to me. Basically all I want to do is learn how to use DVD Lab Pro to author stuff but I open that and it may as well be hyroglyphics. I can't open anything and I don't know the first thing as to what to do. I'm wondering if it's even worth it when I can fit 3 hours of video on a CD-R with menu screens.
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Post by Tyr on Jul 27, 2005 1:09:29 GMT -5
Can anyone explain exactly how to author DVD's? I just got a burner and I know there are tutorials on videohelp.com but it all looks greek to me. Basically all I want to do is learn how to use DVD Lab Pro to author stuff but I open that and it may as well be hyroglyphics. I can't open anything and I don't know the first thing as to what to do. I'm wondering if it's even worth it when I can fit 3 hours of video on a CD-R with menu screens. You'll soon find out if its worth it when your peeps dvd arrives. However, before working with dvd lab pro, you are going to need to be comfortable with encoding. Thats what I will touch on here. I can take you through the authoring process later. Here's a few points to ponder before starting. Before you can do anything much with this program, you have to make sure your source video is pre-encoded and in the right format. DVD lab pro does not have its own encoder built in so you will need to covert whatever format you want to use as video into mpeg2 with something like tpmgenc or pro-coder. I basically take an avi and convert it to mpeg2 using tpmgenc. This process will split your AVI, for instance, into what are known as elementary streams. You should see 2 of these streams. One will be a wav file for audio and the other will have an m2v extension for video. Once tpmgenc finishes with your file, you will be able to import them into dvd lab pro. I might add that with DIVX avi's, I have had reems of trouble getting the audio stream right with tpmgenc. You may need to use a program called nandub to extract the audio from the DIVX file first and then import this into tpmgenc. I can see this is getting confusing but the fact is, in the beginning, it is confusing. Not sure there is anyway around it. It may help to get familiar with encoding from different formats into mpeg2 first before taking on dvdlab. You might even want to start with ulead DVD workshop 2 to begin with. Although its not as good at authoring as dvdlab pro2, it does have its own encoder (average quality) which lets you concentrate on the artistic authoring and less on the encoding stuff. You can tweak the encoder and learn about bit rates and the different effects the different settings have. Of course, having a stack of dvd's is recommneded as you will be making coasters aplenty. Workshop 2 is also is much more user firendly to learn the basics with. The tradeoff is you dont have as much control over your projects. And the encoder is not the greatest quality and is slow as hell. Once you have all your source materials ready, you import them into dvdlabpro. So you would be importing the elementary streams i referred to above. The video and audio would be imported as 2 separate entities. The authoring is more artistic and is the fun part. I'll get into that with you shortly. |
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Post by drweir on Jul 27, 2005 12:25:46 GMT -5
This shit is so confusing. I'm trying out TMPGEnc DVD Author. Seems easy enough. I'm putting together the Peeps compilation along with Peep Kong to send to Rogelio and it also makes for good practice. made a decent little menu screen so hopefully that will work out good. Won't look as bodacious as yours Tyr, but hopefully it will give me a better understanding of the format. I can always revert to making VCD's since they are so easy and I can fit just as much info on a VCD as I can a DVD, albeit a little less quality. But I would love to learn how to make cool DVD's with commentary tracks and such.
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Post by jewbo23 on Jul 29, 2005 8:23:29 GMT -5
Get dvd lab pro and open the help thing and it gives you a step by step guide to making a simple dvd with menues and chapters. When you have done that It gets much simpler. I may still have a hack for it about somewhere I'll look it up. Great product.
I know what you mean about it looking scary at first. I opened it up and was like fuck this and closed it again. But I was bored so opened the help file and have never seen such a helpful one.
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Post by Tyr on Jul 29, 2005 19:32:37 GMT -5
Get dvd lab pro and open the help thing and it gives you a step by step guide to making a simple dvd with menues and chapters. When you have done that It gets much simpler. I may still have a hack for it about somewhere I'll look it up. Great product. I know what you mean about it looking scary at first. I opened it up and was like fuck this and closed it again. But I was bored so opened the help file and have never seen such a helpful one. yeah, its like a 300 page pdf file. Impressive. |
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Post by drweir on Jul 29, 2005 22:16:56 GMT -5
I'm trying out a couple Tmpgenc apps that came with a 5-in-1 pack I got from mininova. It's getting the ultimate test with 209 wmv 80's commercials. So far it's been one disaster after another. I'll know tommorow if I got it working yet.
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Post by Tyr on Jul 30, 2005 0:57:47 GMT -5
I'm trying out a couple Tmpgenc apps that came with a 5-in-1 pack I got from mininova. It's getting the ultimate test with 209 wmv 80's commercials. So far it's been one disaster after another. I'll know tommorow if I got it working yet. worst case scenerio has you adding the whole shitload to nero and doing it that way. Of course, thats worse case. Im suprised winavi can't convert the wmv's onto mpeg2? Still, your best bet is to struggle through the tpmgenc. It does make the best quality stuff..IMHO. |
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Post by drweir on Jul 30, 2005 11:54:49 GMT -5
Well all of the programs work and do what they are supposed to do. The problem is I have over 200 files I'm expecting them to work with and every single program chokes up on that workload. I finally just used Tmpgenc DVD Source Creator to make one big mpeg. Then I opened that in Tmpgenc DVD Author. My main goal of adding a chapter for each commercial proved impractical since that option also choked it up and made it crash so I opted for chapters every five minutes. Then I'll just print the list of commercials and include it with the finished DVD so you get a good idea where the commercial you want to see is. Right now, it's being authored with a dandy menu screen.
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Post by drweir on Jul 30, 2005 14:17:45 GMT -5
And now it's done and working perfectly.
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