DVD Studio Pro Questions

[cwright]

I've got a few questions for all the DVD Studio Pro–Pros out there, but first... some background info:

A couple weeks ago, the Youth group I'm a part of went on a mission/choir trip to Chicago, Illinois. I was given the privilege to get out of singing and instead bring my camera (brand new GL2!!! ) and make a music video/documentary of the entire trip. Well, the video is now finished and it will be shown to the entire congregation this Sunday. I have some concerns about making the video play back flawlessly on DVD, because I have had some problems in the past.

First off, I refuse to show this video on VHS. I'm too proud of it and VHS looks like crap. The DVD player in the church has had some issues playing back my bulk DVD-R media in the past (ProDisc, I think). It would play the disc, but occasionally had audio hiccups or would stop playing unexpectedly.

Can someone tell me the best way to author a DVD in DVD Studio Pro 3 in order to be most compatible in all DVD players? For example, what is the optimal bitrate to encode at? how high is too high of a bitrate? should I let DVDSP encode the video, or encode in Compressor first, and then import? what is the best brand on DVD-R media?

I would just use iDVD, but it's not installed at the moment, and my dad borrwed the install discs and left town
Unfortunately, I do not know the brand/model of the DVD player that this will be played in. If I had to guess, I'd say it's a Sony.

One last thing, but not as important:
Why is it that in a DVDSP disc, after playing one video from the menu, it automatically starts playing the next one instead of going back to the menu? Could anyone tell me how to change that?

Thanks for all your help, and sorry for the long post!

Chris

 

[stoid]

I would use Maxell or some name-brand DVDs. There should be no difference in compatibility based on burning and bitrates. The biggest problems I know of in DVD burning is from people using substandard off-brand DVDs.

 

[FlamDrag]

I am not a DVDSP Pro, but I've burned my share of DVD's with it.

My experience has been that it's all in the media. Same with iDVD. It's the media.

This site: http://www.dvd-recordable.org/index.php

has some reviews of the different media; Some folks are obsessive about the media. I can't find the forum link that I referred to when I was having issues, but if I run across it soon, I'll re-reply here.

 

[cwright]

thanks for that link. I'll make sure to read through the site more thoroughly when I get some more time.

Does anyone else have any recommendations for the best DVD-R media? Stoid mentioned Maxwell, but are there any other good ones? Also, what about brands to stay away from? I have heard rumors that Memorex and Verbatim DVD-Rs are not very good at video playback, and better for data storage. Is this true?

Since 50 or 100 packs of the name-brand media is so expensive at the local Best Buy, are there any good websites that offer good deals on different brands of DVD-Rs?

Thanks!

 

[WinterMute]

DVD media: Imation standard, I burn 20-30 DVD's a month, just did 17 in 5 days, never had a media related failure yet with them.

Bit rate: Max rate is 9Mbits/sec, but that includes audio too, if you are using aiff at 48Khz (which you must) the the audio data rate is around 1.4Mbits/sec, when encoding assets for DVD I tend to stay below 6Mbits/sec on the video stream to be sure.

I pre-encode to MPEG2 using Quicktime directly from FCP, I use the 2-pass VBR codec with best motion estimation and highest quality, this is slow but looks great.

Make sure you remember to export an audio track as well.

DVDSP will encode with the same codec as it uses QT, but I always like to keep the various stages discrete, so I can check quality as I go. I used to build a VIDEO_TS folder and burn the DVD with Toast, as early versions of DVDSP were a little flaky, but DVDSP2 and 3 will both build and burn with no problems, and they do it very quickly to.

 

[WinterMute]

One last thing, but not as important:
Why is it that in a DVDSP disc, after playing one video from the menu, it automatically starts playing the next one instead of going back to the menu? Could anyone tell me how to change that?

Thanks for all your help, and sorry for the long post!

Chris

Sorry for the double post, forgot this one.

You can set the end-jump connection state of each individual track, click on the track in the top-left menu and then select cnonections page in the viewer, you'll see a parameter called end-jump which decides where the disc goes at the end of the track, set it to a menu and it'll go back once the video's finished. DVDSP automatically defaults to next track as a precaution against hanging in the navigation.

Hope this helps.

 

[cwright]

well it looks like you answered everything, thanks!
so now i'm gonna throw a couple more questions out there:

I will probably encode from final cut like you said, but just out of curiosity: in the encoding preferences menu in DVDSP3, there is only one quality setting, not one for video and one for audio. Does that mean if I set the encoding setting at two-pass VBR between 8.0 mbps and 9.0 mbps that it will automatically leave enough room to encode the audio as well without going over the 9 mbps limit?

Last question: I am using the "Mosaic" theme on this particular DVD project. I made a simple 4 minute video to put in the drop zone on the main menu that just fades between about 15 different pictures. However, the video only plays for about 10 seconds or so before it repeats itself. In the Menu Preferences tab, I entered 250 seconds into the Motion Duration blank, but it did not fix the problem. Any ideas?

Thanks again!

 

[WinterMute]

well it looks like you answered everything, thanks!
so now i'm gonna throw a couple more questions out there:

I will probably encode from final cut like you said, but just out of curiosity: in the encoding preferences menu in DVDSP3, there is only one quality setting, not one for video and one for audio. Does that mean if I set the encoding setting at two-pass VBR between 8.0 mbps and 9.0 mbps that it will automatically leave enough room to encode the audio as well without going over the 9 mbps limit?

Last question: I am using the "Mosaic" theme on this particular DVD project. I made a simple 4 minute video to put in the drop zone on the main menu that just fades between about 15 different pictures. However, the video only plays for about 10 seconds or so before it repeats itself. In the Menu Preferences tab, I entered 250 seconds into the Motion Duration blank, but it did not fix the problem. Any ideas?

Thanks again!

I think the DVDSP encoder only deals with the video, which is why you have to import audio and video files seperately, (called de-muxed files) so the same data rate issue applies.

If you click on the menu outside of the drop zone in the menu viewer, then the controls for start, end and loop point of the movie become available in the inspector. Simply set the values you require. This also means you don't have to encode a 30 min menu to get a 10 second menu loop.

Remember that all the motion cues in the menus have to come out of the 4.2 gig available on the disc, so don't go mad if you have a lot of media in the feature. If you find you're running out of space, shorten the loops in the menus. DVDSP encodes motion menus at the set rate for the feature.

 

[cwright]

thanks for the tip on the menus.

Are you sure DVDSP doesnt encode audio? When I drag in a quicktime movie exported from final cut, it automatically turns the file into a seperate audio and video file for me, and starts encoding both.

 

[WinterMute]

thanks for the tip on the menus.

Are you sure DVDSP doesnt encode audio? When I drag in a quicktime movie exported from final cut, it automatically turns the file into a seperate audio and video file for me, and starts encoding both.

It probably does then, I still favour creating audio and video outside the app, a legacy of the old DVDSP where it would only accept correctly encoded files. Apple have gone a long way to make DVDSP as user friendly as possible without sacrificing power and flexibility.

Being as both FCP and DVDSP use QT pro for the codec, it makes no difference if you do it in DVDSP or export from FCP as long as you have control over the encoders settings. I do find it easier to store the files for archiving if I take each step manually as it were.

DVDSP does still deal with each stream seperately though, and you'll still need to honour the bandwidth requirement.