Better dvd encoding.

Amadou

Amadou

Carbonite Member
I gave up on Creative Cow. At creative COW they recomment HC Encoder. However, HC Encoder can only use .avs and .d2v files for encoding. I am on PC and have no idea what those formats are. So unless there is something I don't know, I would say the HC Encoder is totally unusable. They also recommend Roxio Titanium Toast Pro. However Roxio Titanium Toast only works on MAC and I'm on PC. So here again, I can't use their advice. Then they have some strange HD2SD conversion technique using some script with Visual Dub. However, I have no idea what a HD2SD script is and how to use that with VirtualDub. It makes no sense at all.
CONCLUSION: Unless I'm missing something, there is not one piece of USUABLE advice in the Creative Cow thread to help someone make a better DVD.
I also use ENCORE and ANTHORING WORKS 5. Neithert has yielded the type of quality I am looking for. Is there a way to improve the quality by using another software program which a normal person can understand? Thank you.
 
First, all the tools you mentioned from the cow are out there and fairly well documented. Roxio has windows tools as well, they just aren't called toast. You could visit the roxio site to see them. Things are almost always 'not obvious', such as the script and Visual Dub until you do a bit of digging and reading. It's hard to give people detailed info in a forum without someone else telling you you'e being condescending and treating them like an idiot etc ;)

Now, we make DVDs on both the Windows and Mac platforms and have done a LOT of digging. The Adobe media encoder is not the best out there, but you can get reasonable results. Firstly, if you're coming from HD make sure you are exporting to DVD with hardware (CUDA) turned on, because this provides by far the smoothest downscaling. Without it you can get lots of aliasing, but with the CUDA algorithms it's mostly gone.

Next, the mpeg2 encoder in Adobe has some pretty nasty artefacts in certain situations and I often encode the same material in both Adobe and Apple's Compressor (which I know you can't use) and compare them, choosing the best one for any given project. For some scenes I'll step through frame by frame looking for the nasty artefacts which may be present in one but not the other.

To get an idea what your DVD will ultimately look like (I actually do this as an interim steps every time now), export a file from your HD to a file that it DVD standard size (but not a DVD encode) and make sure you are exporting anamorphic if you are going for DVD widescreen. I'm in a pal area so normally people tell you to downscale to 1024x576 (it's different for NTSC - 1024x480 I think) but this is not what the final DVD is going to look like. You really need to be downscaling to 720x576 anamorphic (720x480 NTSC), and this is where so much of the detail is lost. The difference between 1024x576 and 720x576 anamorphic can be quite staggering. Check on the web for what the NTSC settings are (I think it's 720x480 but it's worth checking) and downscale to it in order to see what the final output is going to be "at-best", because it can only get worse, never better with MPEG 2 encoding. If you're not happy with the quality of the downscaled file prior to encoding then encoding it to MPEG2 will not help. You have to figure out how to improve it before you throw it at the encoder.

Don't do the downscaling on a Premiere Pro timeline, export your PP timeline (using max quality, hardware MPE/cuda turned ON) to an external file, so that it does the downscaling as it exports. Trying to scale on a timeline won't give you the same results.

I found that adding a (very) small amount of sharpening (very easy to over do) in the encoding stage can help too, but I tend to do this in Apple Compressor since Adobe doesn't give you this option (it only lets you blur!). But, you could try adding this to the anamorphic file prior to encoding by bringing it back in to PP (or AE) and sharpening prior to using media encoder to encode to DVD MPEG2. Downscaling the file first makes the encoder's life a LOT easier (and it also runs a lot faster) and I've found that the results are never worse and often much better than feeding HD directly in to the encoder.

You can of course play with the quality settings in media encoder too. Set the quality to 5 and set the bit rate as high as your space allows without going over the top! 7-8 is usually plenty. I've even had great encodes using 5 or 6, but it really does depend on the source material.
 
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MPEG2 encoding is an art form which is why there were specialty positions called "compressionists" on the studio titles. High quality compression is a combination of many factors starting with source material complexity, high frequency artifacts, length of program, size of disc, etc. Of course technology got to the point where much of this got automated into some overall good preset settings, but knowing when and where to tweak when results are not acceptable still takes a little work. There are very good encoders for Windows systems, but they will cost money. Mainconcept is one of them: http://www.mainconcept.com/products/applications/totalcode-studio.html
There is a free trial, give it a shot and see what you get.

Michael
 
I already tried SQEEZE but can't seem to get a full screen image when exporting to DVD. As for total Code, I don't think you can burn a DVD with it. I tried everything.
 
Yes, you are missing something. It shouldn't take more than a moment on Google to figure out that avs is an AviSynth script, which is fully Windows-compatible.

And so on ..
 
If you're having this much trouble getting the results you want, have you considered hiring out the job? I'm a big fan of doing it yourself, but I also recognize that there are some skills that aren't necessarily worth the time to learn, or that take too long to get the desired results. This is why there are specialists out there.
 
I have yet to figure out where to look for specialists. I don't know of any DVD ENCODING companies in Paris.
 
I'm sure there are DVD authoring studios or freelancers in Paris. I work in Seattle, and I'd offer to work on this, but I think you can find someone to do this in your area.
 
Hi Amadou,

I'm sorry you felt like we didn't help enough at the COW, but as I posted there, I can't post the entire set of instructions on how to use HD2SD, it is very involved. And that is why I suggested a web search for "HD2SD" as that would provide thorough tutorials to get you going. It takes some effort. It sounds like you want a quick and easy fix, and I have found in life that things that come quick and easy do not provide quality results, they take extra effort.

When I search "HD2SD" these two links come up, which are the ones I got my information from -

http://bellunevideo.com/tutdetail.php?tutid=12

http://www.precomposed.com/blog/2010/10/hd-to-sd-dvd-cs5-revisited/ and this is linked within - http://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/07/hd-to-sd-dvd-best-methods/ which has hotlinks for the needed downloads.

To provide an overview for you, you will need to download and install several (free) things including aviSynth, VirtualDub, HC Encoder, Lagarith Codec, and HD2SD. There are some instructions in above links, and the downloads also have READ_ME files that explain how and where to install things. When downloading the apps, go for the 32-bit versions, the 64-bit versions are not complete yet.

Once everything is installed, the workflow is basically this -

From Premiere HD timeline, export an .avi file in the Lagarith codec. Setting will match source footage. So not converting yet, just exporting an HD master clip as an .avi file. So if I export from a 1080i 29.97 sequence, then the .avi is also 1080i 29.97 format.

Then you will create a SCRIPT using a text editor (NotePad) and the script ends in .avs rather than .txt. What is in the script? Depends on the input format and desired results, see documentation for that. The script is not long, about one line of text with some parameters that tell HD2SD how you want the conversion done.

In VirtualDub, your load the script and that runs the HD2SD conversion process that creates a nicely downconverted SD file (Lagarith avi) from the HD file.

Now that you have the nice SD .avi file, that goes into HC Encoder. Very simple script for that - which reads " avisource ("filename.avi") " and this is saved again as .avs text file.

So not terribly difficult, ONCE all the parts are installed properly. And then you must experiment with short trials and figure out what script settings provide the best results for YOUR footage.

That's about as detailed as I can get for now. In the Bellune tutorial, you will see info about exporting from Premiere via FrameServer - I'm not doing that, I export the Lagarith .avi instead, so you can disregard some of that info.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor
 
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Amadou said:
I have yet to figure out where to look for specialists. I don't know of any DVD ENCODING companies in Paris.
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Any production or post facility should be able to either encode the file ready for authoring or so the entire encode and authoring.

Michael
 
I've changed the title of your thread. Please refrain from bashing other forums on this site. It is not something we support here. Good luck with your issue.

Thanks.
 
I have finally decided to use AUTHORING WORKS 5 which yields the best results. However, its menu system appears to not allow for any button customization. One can only use English buttons. Impossible to change the text on the PLAY button. Am I overlooking something?
 
Amadou said:
I have finally decided to use AUTHORING WORKS 5 which yields the best results. However, its menu system appears to not allow for any button customization. One can only use English buttons. Impossible to change the text on the PLAY button. Am I overlooking something?
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I would like to know the answer to this as well. :)

I downloaded a trial of TMPGenc Authoring Works 5 and it's a nice program to work with, but i found the same issues with menus as you did. It seems very limited when it comes to customized buttons, customized button highlights. It seems to be a very template based program and some buttons cannot even be removed...

So my cuestion is the same: Am i overlooking something and how do i un-lock layers it TMPGenc Authoring Works 5?
 
Or better yet: Can I import a menu from another program of export the render to another program for authoring?
 
Amadou You can customize the menu buttons, I use TWA4 and In one production I changed the standard button to a fish , If i remember i used a PNG, It has taken me a while to figure out how to work it ,I have a different way of do my authoring and seems to work for me. The only thing I miss is to have animated motion menus and buttons which encore is able to do. It is by no means perfect , but its end results are probably the best Picture result I have found out there .
 
In TWA5, what is the difference between a chapter and a track? What is a I don't get their Menu options. What is the difference between a top menu and a track menu? What is a TITLE?
 
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