B
Barry Watzman
I need a suggestion for DVD authoring.
I am making DVDs of 2-hour VHS movies. I want nice menus with
backgrounds and music, and I need to do "cut and paste" editing. And I
want it to be easy, with almost no learning curve. The video has
already been captured to very high-quality AVI files, so capture is not
part of the issue.
I have Pinnacle Expression (and it's predecessor, Express). In many
ways, this is the perfect product. It's very easy to use and has all of
the features that I want and need. I could really like this product.
But it has "issues". My CD is version 2.0.37, the first released
version. This version actually does work, but with one glaring fault
(below). There are also a bunch of updates, to what is now 2.2.0.x.
Only version 2.2 doesn't work at all. Period. It both doesn't see any
of my optical drives (either CD or DVD) and it gives "This program has
performed an illegal operation and will be shut down". And it does this
very often, consistently, every time, after you do a number of major
functions (without which the program can't function). This is well
known, apparently, it's not just me, and Pinnacle has not fixed it or
responded in any way at all for about 4+ months now since the 2.2
upgrade was released. There were intermediate upgrades, that apparently
were better than 2.0.6 and still worked, but Pinnacle only offers the
"latest" update on their web site (not withstanding that it doesn't work!).
The ONLY problem that I have with 2.0.37 is that it's producing
relatively poor quality DVDs because it's using too low an encoding
bitrate. I'm trying to get 2 hours on a DVD, and a DVD will only hold 1
hour of "DVD quality" video. But VHS isn't DVD quality anyway.
Expression gives you either automatic or manual bitrate control.
Automatic is supposed to be the highest bitrate that will fit the video
being created onto the media. But the problem is that they are only
writing about 3,600,000,000 bytes to a DVD-R media that holds
4,700,000,000 bytes. Thus, by not using over 20% of the DVD at all,
they are also not using the highest possible bitrate for the media to be
written.
I tried "forcing" a higher bitrate, but the program then won't let you
do the burn at all (even if it's only 3% over), it says that it won't
fit (which is only incorrect by over a gigabyte). I know that you can't
know the exact size of an MPEG2 file encoded from an AVI until after you
create it, and so they have to allow for some "slop". But they check
the size before they do the MPEG2 encode (which takes 6-8 hours, by the
way), not between the encode and the burn, when the actual file size is
known. I'd prefer that they let me set the bitrate manually and then at
least try it, possibly with a warning that "your video may not fit".
But that's not what they are doing and the result is suffering badly.
This is really a shame, because Expression is a perfect product for
easy, quick "dumb-consumer" DVD production if they would only fix it's
bugs, which can't be TOO bad since 2.037 does work.
I tried loading Video Wave 5, but it's DVD production, while in some
ways more powerful than Expression's, is horrifically difficult and time
consuming to use (Expression really does have the user interface and
feature vs. ease of use mix "just right").
I also have, but have not loaded, Ulead Video Studio 6 (came with the
All-in-Wonder) and Pinnacle Studio 8 (which is reported to share some of
Expression's problems, but which is also more powerful and gets more
"support attention").
So, here are my questions:
Does anyone know of a fix for Pinnacle Expressions?
Does anyone know where I can get the intermediate patches for
Expressions (someone may have them somewhere)?
What are the views on the best way to make a nice DVD with menus, etc.,
cut-and-paste clip editing and a low learning curve and good
ease-of-use? In other words, what's a good alternative product to use?
I am making DVDs of 2-hour VHS movies. I want nice menus with
backgrounds and music, and I need to do "cut and paste" editing. And I
want it to be easy, with almost no learning curve. The video has
already been captured to very high-quality AVI files, so capture is not
part of the issue.
I have Pinnacle Expression (and it's predecessor, Express). In many
ways, this is the perfect product. It's very easy to use and has all of
the features that I want and need. I could really like this product.
But it has "issues". My CD is version 2.0.37, the first released
version. This version actually does work, but with one glaring fault
(below). There are also a bunch of updates, to what is now 2.2.0.x.
Only version 2.2 doesn't work at all. Period. It both doesn't see any
of my optical drives (either CD or DVD) and it gives "This program has
performed an illegal operation and will be shut down". And it does this
very often, consistently, every time, after you do a number of major
functions (without which the program can't function). This is well
known, apparently, it's not just me, and Pinnacle has not fixed it or
responded in any way at all for about 4+ months now since the 2.2
upgrade was released. There were intermediate upgrades, that apparently
were better than 2.0.6 and still worked, but Pinnacle only offers the
"latest" update on their web site (not withstanding that it doesn't work!).
The ONLY problem that I have with 2.0.37 is that it's producing
relatively poor quality DVDs because it's using too low an encoding
bitrate. I'm trying to get 2 hours on a DVD, and a DVD will only hold 1
hour of "DVD quality" video. But VHS isn't DVD quality anyway.
Expression gives you either automatic or manual bitrate control.
Automatic is supposed to be the highest bitrate that will fit the video
being created onto the media. But the problem is that they are only
writing about 3,600,000,000 bytes to a DVD-R media that holds
4,700,000,000 bytes. Thus, by not using over 20% of the DVD at all,
they are also not using the highest possible bitrate for the media to be
written.
I tried "forcing" a higher bitrate, but the program then won't let you
do the burn at all (even if it's only 3% over), it says that it won't
fit (which is only incorrect by over a gigabyte). I know that you can't
know the exact size of an MPEG2 file encoded from an AVI until after you
create it, and so they have to allow for some "slop". But they check
the size before they do the MPEG2 encode (which takes 6-8 hours, by the
way), not between the encode and the burn, when the actual file size is
known. I'd prefer that they let me set the bitrate manually and then at
least try it, possibly with a warning that "your video may not fit".
But that's not what they are doing and the result is suffering badly.
This is really a shame, because Expression is a perfect product for
easy, quick "dumb-consumer" DVD production if they would only fix it's
bugs, which can't be TOO bad since 2.037 does work.
I tried loading Video Wave 5, but it's DVD production, while in some
ways more powerful than Expression's, is horrifically difficult and time
consuming to use (Expression really does have the user interface and
feature vs. ease of use mix "just right").
I also have, but have not loaded, Ulead Video Studio 6 (came with the
All-in-Wonder) and Pinnacle Studio 8 (which is reported to share some of
Expression's problems, but which is also more powerful and gets more
"support attention").
So, here are my questions:
Does anyone know of a fix for Pinnacle Expressions?
Does anyone know where I can get the intermediate patches for
Expressions (someone may have them somewhere)?
What are the views on the best way to make a nice DVD with menus, etc.,
cut-and-paste clip editing and a low learning curve and good
ease-of-use? In other words, what's a good alternative product to use?