Messages posted by TJ

Thanks, Roy, for the detailed response. I'm going to continue experimenting, and I'm sure that your tips will help.

One other update. Based on some earlier posts in this thread, I investigated HD media players, and decided to experiment with one from Seagate. The unit uses one of Seagate's small external hard drives, which I already owned, so the investment wasn't too significant. It has an HDMI outplut, so I can produce a move to a file, copy it to my hard drive, dock it with the player, and just hit play.

So far, I'm pretty impressed. It takes some time to figure out how to configure both the video editing software and the player, but my last test (using PD) was excellent. Similar experiments with Studio were not very impressive, but I'm still testing the settings.

I'm going to experiment with some of the output settings in PD, as discussed by Roy and others, but if anyone has any tips on what to use in this situation, please feel free to let me know. At this point, I'm basically using the best resolution available, since the only impact is hard drive space, which is cheap these days.

Thanks,

I was still hoping to get some tips on the encoding process discussed in this thread, particularly encoding for HD or blue-ray, then converting to DVD compliant MPEG2 in another app. Not sure how to do this or what software to use, so any tips would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Todd

I reviewed the posting you referenced, Tony, but it seems that the issue discussed in it is more about how to accomplish something specific within a menu template. I'm simply trying to get PD to allow me to modify and save a template.

Just to be sure I've provided enough information, here are some more details:

1. PD version: PD8 trial, 8.00.2013

2. Specific steps followed: (a) Under Create Disc, Menu Preferences, I'm selecting one of the existing templates, and clicking Modify, (b) In the Menu Designer screen, I click Save to save the menu under a new name, (c) PD prompts me for a name, which I provide as "Temp" for testing purposes, (d) PD starts processing the menus, and seems to cycle through each of the different sections, but it gets to a certain point, and Vista pops up saying that PD has stopped working. I have never been able to work through this issue, and PD always crashes at this point.

I'm not sure if it helps, but I'm attaching a DxDiag file.

I haven't purchased a full version of PD yet, partly because I want to be sure that I can create custom menus, and this error makes me question this capability, at least on my computer.

Any additional help is appreciated.

Thanks to everyone for the responses. I very much want to try some of the recommendations, but have a couple of questions.

Tony: I very much like the idea of using HD media devices, and will definitely look into this further. As these become more common, this does seem like a viable option.

Gardner: Thanks for the tip on using better quality. I had previously made this adjustment, but afraid it didn't seem to help me much.

James, Andew, and JL: It sounds like the approach you've recommended of encoding in PD using a HD/blue-ray setting, converting this to a DVD compliant MPEG2 file in another application, then generating the final DVD in PD. Can anyone offer any tips on other apps to use for the conversion? Also, if there's a procedure written someplace to help me make sure I don't miss anything, I would certainly love to get my hands on this.

One final question. When testing the quality of final DVDs, I have been using Rewriteable DVDs (DVD+RW) to avoid wasting standard writeable DVDs. Is there any problem with this approach? Do the DVD+RWs do a good job of representing final DVD quality?

Again, thanks for all the help.

I'm new to PowerDirector, but have been editing videos and slideshows for several years, mostly with Studio. I'm testing PD8 because it got some good reviews, and was hoping to get some input on a basic video editing question.

A couple of years ago, I bought a large (52", I think) HD TV. Since that time, I've felt that all of the DVDs I've created are inadequate. The quality just doesn't seem to be as good as it should be, especially for very basic projects, such as photo slide shows. As a comparison, I can take a memory card and plug it directly into my TV, and the quality of the images is spectacular. However, similar images in a DVD slideshow (standard definition) isn't anywhere close to this quality. I've tested this on both my previous application (S12) as well as PD8, and the results are similar.

What I was hoping to get is some suggestions or tips on how to optimize DVD output quality. Are there settings in PD8 or on my DVD player that will improve the quality? I realize that I can't expect HD quality output from SD discs and an SD DVD player, but I'm just trying to calibrate myself on what I should expect. Since most of my family has SD equipment, I'm planning to stick with it for now.

I don't have this in my profile yet, but most of my video clips and all of my photos are from my digital camera, a 8MP Canon Powershot A720 IS.

Sorry for the very general nature of this question; feel free to point me to other sites or postings for guidance on optimizing DVD quality. Also, if anyone has any tips on different tests I can run, please let me know.

Thanks.

I've been editing videos with another app (Studio) for several years, but based on some problems I'm having currently with it and some good reviews of Power Director, I'm testing v8 of Power Director now, using a trial version. I'm experiencing a repeatable problem, and I wanted to see if it might be because I'm using a trial version.

I have attempted a few times to modify one of the default menus, and save the modified menu under a new name. Each time, PowerDirector appears to be function properly, up to a particular point, and then it crashes. Vista immediately pops up the error message asking if I want to close the program or search for a solution on line. The latter does nothing.

If this limitation was based on the trial version I would have expected to get a warning of some sort, but thought I'd at least ask the question. If it's not due to that, does anyone have any ideas on what might be causing this?

Overall, Power Director seems to be working pretty well and is very intuitive. This error is making me a little nervous, though.

Thanks.