best quality dvd mastering

C

Cesco

New member
hello guys, here's a question about dvd mastering with Vegas6+DVDA3, subtitling, then export on DLT. My footage is mostly DV, but might upgrade to HDV, 24P, SD/HD. What to do to get the best quality mpeg2, for a dvd supposed to be selled in stores ? For DV : simply edit in DV, render from Vegas timeline to mpeg2, and export to DLT. Edit in DV, render uncompressed, and convert with a soft like Canopus Procoder pro, Discreet Cleaner, Sorenson Suqeeze before getting it back into DVDA ? Will capturing via SDI with a Decklinck card help in anything ?
thanks for your answers
 
:thumbsup: thanks for your answer, Michael. After reading the site I think you're damn right : frameserving is the best. If I understand it correctly it sends the «native» captured footage from the timeline directly to the encoder, so you don't loose any quality in intermediate renderings ? wether you capture HDV, DV, uncompressed SD, etc ?
 
you're right, most of what I know about video comes from forums like this one. I followed the link of your last post : I'm impressed. And have a few last questions : does your dvd come with subtitles, chapters, etc ? did you author it in DVDA3 after encoding in Procoder, then output on DLT, still with DVDA3 ? (because it's what I intent to do, and it would be great for me to know if someone already did it succesfully)
 
The DVD has no subtitles but about 50 minutes worth of extras on top of the 120 minute main programme. There is also a full commentary. The workflow was as you guessed, using debugmode Frameserver direct from the timeline to Procoder 2.

There was a strange issue occurred, though. When the distributor's replicators burned the first test disk, one lot of the extras played at double speed! I have not found an explanation for this craziness but the problem was cured by re-encoding the offending tracks with different parameters in Procoder and laying off a second lot of DLTs. I think that maybe mixing CBR mpegs with VBR on the same DVD is not good. My advice is to carefully choose how you are going to encode everything to fit on the DVD and take care not to mix files with wildly varying bitrates.

The other fly in the ointment is that DVDA's estimation of the disk space used is rubbish - I ended up not being able to trust it at all. Part of the problem was that DVDA was telling me I had used up all 8.4GB so I brought the bitrate on some of the extras down so everything fitted. THAT's where I think the double speed playback anomaly crept in. However, I did notice that in the event there was plenty of headroom and the two DLT files were considerably below max capacity for a DVD-9 disk. Needless to say, when I had re-encoded the extras, I ignored DVDA's warnings and created the DLTs anyway. They were fine for size and the problem was cured. Weird. Anybody else out there have similar experience?
 
well... this is what I call... computer magic ! I've noticed too DVDA's fantasy disk space warnings, and cured it like you : by not taking care. but it was for tests, home burned dvd, no stress.. your experience makes me think of something : for my first release (in december) I'll deal with some local, cool, and reachable replicator to make all the necessary tests. if you get any interest in knowing how it worked with subtitles, I'll tell you..
 
Thanks guys, I learn something new on this forum everyday. I have a couple questions, what is DLT? Also what is the difference from rendering an Mpeg-2 Arch. stream in Vegas and going the other route, frameserve>procoder>then to a Mpeg-2 dvd ready file? Is the difference in quality really that much better.
I've never been happy with my burnt dvds coming out of Vegas using the highest settings, my original minidv footage looks sooo much clearer and more fluid.
Will Procoder make my dvd's look exactly like my original footage, is this what the majority of pro's use?
Thanks for any responses.
 
Hi,
DLT means Digital Tape : it's a tape cartridge that's used to bring the dvd'S data to the replicator. It's mandatory if you want to print a commercial dvd, otherwise it's useless.. I'm waiting for my workstation and soft yet, so I can't tell you about my opinion on the different workflows. But you can start tests with frameserver and Tmpgenc : costs nothing, they're free, and used by many pros...
 
LostInSound said:
Thanks guys, I learn something new on this forum everyday. I have a couple questions, what is DLT? Also what is the difference from rendering an Mpeg-2 Arch. stream in Vegas and going the other route, frameserve>procoder>then to a Mpeg-2 dvd ready file? Is the difference in quality really that much better.
I've never been happy with my burnt dvds coming out of Vegas using the highest settings, my original minidv footage looks sooo much clearer and more fluid.
Will Procoder make my dvd's look exactly like my original footage, is this what the majority of pro's use?
Thanks for any responses.
Click to expand...
Hi LostinSound. Sorry only just caught up with your question. Cesco has answered the DLT question but as far as the workflow question is concerned, yes - I think the result is much better as you are avoiding an intermediate render. If you've got a lot of FX and/or compositing going on in the timeline then your clips are going to be recompressed by Vegas to the new file. Then when you want to make the MPEG they get recompressed again. Frameserving cuts out that extra recompression.

No, Procoder, or any MPEG encoder will NOT make your DVDs look like the original footage. The footage must undergo massive compression to get on a DVD. Unfortunately something's got to give. Commercial movie DVDs LOOK like not much has been lost because the original material is so much better to start with and they use expensive hardware encoders to do the job. Software encoders like Procoder and TMPGenc are for Pros who can't afford the hardware encoders. The question really is: " can the majority of Pros AFFORD hardware encoding?" I know I can't.

Personally I much prefer the results I've got from the third party encoders to the Vegas Mainconcept encoder. They seem to be much faster too. AS for which I prefer between Procoder and TMPGenc - in a nutshell - if you're staying with your original format (ie PAL or NTSC) then it's TMPGenc for me, but if you've got to transcode then Procoder 2 is the best bet. Really there's not much in it quality wise, the big differences are in workflow and flexibility, but remember that Procoder is 5 times the cost of TMPGenc. Procoder is $500, TMPGEnc 3.0 Express is $58.
 
Hi Michae,

Finally I found the question I need help from you. I want to render CCE SP2 using Debugmode Frameserver. But the work flow is my question. I did tried rendering in Vegas Pro 8.0C saving as Debugmode Frameserver.AVI but after saving , it seems nothing happening all frame counters not counting at all. I found the file saving in XXXX.MPV , is this correct file ?
How about another option , how do you make debugmode frameserver point and linked Vegas 8.0C to Procoder 3. I also owned Procoder 3 and want to try it.

Thanks
 
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