Messages posted by VBRoger

Jaime;

You said....

I think VBRoger made a good point. I have a bunch of DivX video that would barely play on a DivX compatible DVD player. I switched to a PS3 and they play perfectly from beginning to end.

I dont' believe I gave you anything worthwhile in reguards to that situation. because it seems that you are talking about "barely" playing which I take as meaning "Jerky and sticking" and acting as though the player is having problems "reading" the media. To me that means your DVD discs may not be totally compatible with the DVD player, so you may switch to another media. Don't be fooled by switching brands. Many brands use the same media. There are only a handful of companies that actually make the media. Verbatim makes their own and are very good, might give them a try. If you meant "barely" played as in the image playing was smooth but LOW quality, then my comments may have some relavance.

PIXELATION PROBLEM:
Here's something to consider. When you have a SOLID or near solid colored background or area of an encoded video, as the bitrate lowers, most codecs will STEAL bits from the large flat areas and give them to the areas that have detail. This can produce an ulgy/disappointing appearance in which the surface looks solarized. This is agrivating to me so I use a different codec that allows me to re-balance the bits and to give more priority to those flat areas. Thus even though I use a 1200 bitrate, the final product is still quite good. Of course not professional film quality, but for documentaries it's great. So, I can get a lot of hours on a single 4.7DVD. My last project has over 6 hours of video at 720x480 using around 1200 and it came out very nice. If you stay with the codecs provided by PD, then you are stuck with the preset balance of the flat areas compared to the detail areas. But if you stay away from low bitrates, you shouldn't see that anomoly very much.

VBDavie/VBRoger

PatC;
I see some of these answers don't address your concern. It seems you are disappointed with the FINAL quality of your burnt DVD. So, of course the "preview" mode has ZERO to do with it. I would hope that you had selected DVD HQ, and since you mentioned that you picked a bunch of all the options, I'm guess that one of your tests WAS with the DVD "HQ Best Quality" mode.

If that assumption is correct, then I will throw this out at you. resampling an image properly should not degrade the appearance of an image very much. Even going down to 720x480. I've written many resampling functions and understand the limitations of such. You said the following...

I must admit that the problem seems to be when rendering and burning to disk, as viewing the higher resolution produced files gives what appears to be reasonable results when viewed on the computer monitor.

Does that mean when you use the produce tab that the mpg files are of HIGHER quality than the VOB produced in the "Create Disk" tab"? You can view the VOB files just as you would an MPG file in most viewers. I use VLC to view practically any format. I hope I am not censored for mentioning another product, but I want to help you out.

I just did the test with the train and the results are pretty much IDENTICAL. No visual/perceptual difference between the "Produced" mpg or the "Create Disk" using DVD 4.7 and HQ Best Quality mode. I made two snap shots to see the outcomes of both and then overlayed them perfectly and then started to switch wiindows back & forth real fast and I could not tell any changes in the image.

So, I have a question.... Did you try to play the VOB file that you ¨Create Disk¨ on your computer and was it the same quality as the ¨Produced¨mpg file. If they are the same quality, but the produced file looks better on the TV than the DVD does, then MAYBE, maybe, it might have something to do with the way your DVD player DEinterlaces. See the "Create Disk" tab produces interlaced video, there's no choice to use progressive ;(( and no choice for resolution ;(( So, in order to see if that is the culprit, go into the PRODUCE tab and create a custom setting that is the same settings as the HQ Best Quality AND THEN set the format to Interlaced Bottom field First ... and then see if that mpg file play cleanly on your TV set. If you see a difference, then of course the interlacing is a factor, if you see no difference, then I can't explain what you are getting, because on my end, the TRAIN.JPG produce a VOB that clearly shows the lettering "Glacier Express 75".

Let me know what you find out.

VBRoger/VBDavie

Dafydd;

I am not using DV tape. I have no tapes. I only use MPGs, AVIs etc that I download or create through conversions. NO DV tapes. DV Tapes have ZERO to do with this problem. It's a bug, plain and simple, and I'm very happy to see that CLD has forwarded this on to development. Very pleased CLD. Thanks

VBDavie/VBRoger

I'll make it simple.

Read my original post... where I said I wanted 3 HOURS of video at the high resolution of 720x480. And where I said I wanted to be able to control the bitrate AND the resolution.

THEN read the reply that I got about "SmartFit". If any of you, who rose up to criticise my remarks, actually knew what smartfit does, then you would realize that it's NOT an anwer to my question. It does NOT keep the high resolution of 720x480.

SO, when I said that the answer was exactly as I expected, what I meant was that I expected to get an answer that was not really an answer to my question. And as you all now realize, that's what I got. And instead of pointing me into the correct direction or giving me an answer that was actually a solution to my problems and many other people's problems, you decided to attack my dissappointment. Very interesting.

BTW, I will make clear what kind of answer that I DO wish to have so ... as some one said... so that I don't waste peoples time in deciding what to reply.

What I want for an answer is an ANSWER. An answer that allows me and others to put 3 hours of video (IE: More than 1.2 hours) onto a 4.7DVD AND that does NOT reduce my resolution down. IE: I want to keep the res at the high end, 720x480. That is what I want an answer to.

Thanks
VBDavie/VBRoger

WOW, thanks for the fast reply.

Sadly though, your answer was EXACTLY what I expected to hear. Your answer IS NOT a solution. If you knew what "Smart Fit" does, then you would fully realize the dilema.

SMART FIT, sure enough, drops the bitrate, AND IT DROPS THE RESOLUTION, down to 352x480 or 352,240 DEPENDING on how many hours of video you have. For example: If you have less than 66 minutes or so, then you are lucky and get to keep the high resolution of 752x480. BUT, if you are unlucky enough to go over that time limit, then you are SCREWED out of your resolution. It cuts it in half.

SO, since you had no idea that this was going on in the "SmartFit" function, I suggest, you go back and review some of your older projects that were LONGER than let's say 70 minutes and view them with a media player that will tell you the resolution (I use VLC player) and then you will be sadly disappointed.

Sorry to disappoint, but I need and appearantly... you need... a solution to this fact that Cyberlink will not give us a custom bitrate.

Thanks
VBRoger/VBDavie

Batch convert SHOULD create mpg files that are consistant with the ASPECT RATIO that is set in the project files. 4:3 or 16:9 etc..

IF I have a 4:3 project open, AND THEN load up the batch produce function, then ALL of the produced mpg files are in the 4:3 aspect ratio. EVEN THOUGH I have selected 16:9 in each of those projects that I am batching.

IF I have a 16:9 project open, then the produced files are in 16:9 format.

Anybody else notice this?

When will it be fixed?

VBRoger/VBDavie

This whole program is very nice, but in the end, I cant create a DVD with 3 hours of video at a resolution of 720x480 from the Create Disc tab.

I KNOW I can use the Produce tab and create those videos and then suck in the MPG files into SOME OTHER DVD Authoring system to create my DVD Menu system. But that is a huge hassle, very big.

QUESTION:
WHY doesn't Cyberlink want to allow us paid customers the ability to select the resolution that we want?

There is no way to do it. I have to use DVDStyler to make my final dvd image folder.

Greeeeee

VBRoger/VBDavie

SRVT should kick in and you should end up with a DVD disc in no time.

I just tried what you said and it doesn't work. I "produced" an mpg2 file with 2000 bitrate. Then I went to "Create Disc" and selected SmartFit and the resulting VOB was over twice the size of my mpg file ;((( So, I tried the other option "DVD HQ" and the same thing occured... my resulting VOB file was much larger than my original mpg file. So, the SVRT is NOT kicking in.

So, what do I do how? And more importantly, why does PD NOT allow for a custom bitrate on this tab? Seems dumb to me. Maybe someone could explain it to my ignorant brain

VBDavie

I do it all the time. I did it with version 7 and now with version 8. What exactly is your problem? Make sure the connections "screen resolution" is set to at least 1024x768.

I have the same issue. I'm not even burning to a DVD, I'm creating a DVD Image folder. I don't have a fancy multicore CPU, it's an older AMD Athelon that is single core and about 1.3GHZ. I have 4 gigs of ram and of course XP only sees 2gb of it. I have plenty of space on my FAT32 partitions. The older Power Director 7 was just fine expect for a few lacking features. I decided to try out the new PD8 and it seems nice, BUT when I go to "Create Disc" and then when it gets to about 20 or 21%, it bombs out and I have a VOB that is either ZERO bytes or sometimes 150MB and is way to short and no other files in the VIDEO_TS folder ;((( I've been messing with it for several hours and can't get it to work.

I am making a regular DVD with SP or HQ or Smart Fit and it all does the same thing, I used DolbyDIgital5.1 and just stereo. I've tried everything I can thinik of and it just stops after about 20%. I can tell you from past experience that 20% seems to be the point at which all the MENU creation is done... if that helps you any. PLUS PD7 was MUCH MUCH FASTER at this create disc function, it would get up to 20% in about 3 minutes. In, PD8, it's been taking about 17 minutes.

It says it burned successful, and it shows 100% done. But if you sit and waste your time staring at the screen, you will see that after it gets past 20%, it won't take long and POOOF, it jumps to 100% done and it says it was successful. lolol

Very disappointing.

Davie/Roger Reed