I am a new user to DVDWExpress, so please bear with my lack of knowledge in several areas.
We use Premier Elements on XP machines. Video is captured from DV tapes using the camcorder and a firewire connection.
We have made many DVDs using our setup and Premier Elements as the DVD writer. We have also used Roxio to create DVDs from mpegs exported from Premier. We have recently taken a project via an external hard drive and used Adobe Encore. During that episode, DVDWorkshop was recommended due to the multi-layer custom menus that we build in the project and the many titles that we use.
My point with the previous info is that our pre-Workshop DVDs were of suitable quality.
Now on to our issues.
We exported the files from Premier Elements into dvd avi format (with the lower field first - which I read about here). Is this the best way to export or should we let premier do some compression and make mpeg files instead of avi? We basically want DVDWorkshop to easily create a complex menu structure with good quality output.
The project is slightly longer than 90 minutes, so we chose the "Good" quality burn template.
After the first burn, the middle buttons on the menus did not work and the quality was horrible.
After reading some posts, I downloaded the patch (#4 since we have Express), I uninstalled and then reinstalled the software and disabled Norton Antivirus.
I made a small test burn and the menu buttons did work and the quality was better, but not great.
I noticed during the burn process that a few of the avi files that were from my long project did not go through a very lengthy compression process while some sample avi files that were "new" to Ulead went through a compression process. An mpeg sample file also was quickly handled by DVDW.
In looking at my test burned dvd, the avi files that zipped right by in the project were of the worst quality. Is DVDW remembering those files from a previous project? Why would the quality be significantly lower on particular clips. The entire test project was about 10 minutes.
Another issue:
When choosing various disk burn templates (High, Good, Standard), the project would refresh the disk space required on the burn screen and also in the project file just below the menu icons. After the reinstall, this number will not refresh and will only change if I close down DVDW and restart.
Sorry for the length. We had a project due this past Monday and we have missed that deadline. We are now hoping for this upcoming Monday, but I'm not sure we will make it with all the problems we are having. Any guidance will be helpful.
Regards,
jkdevl (Susan)
Poor Quality, Button Issues and Disk size refresh
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indigo345
poor quality too!
I too am experiencing poor quality with workshop 2. I am using premiere 6.5 and a canopus storm to capture.
I have updated all drivers that I can possibly think of and nothing seems to solve my problem! I am so upset.
I am a avid user of workshopSE and it is a workhorse. That progam works great everytime for me. (That is why I upgraded to 2.0 because I liked SE so much)
No one seems to have any answers to this problem and there is one!
I have lost more time than I care to count messing around with this program. And now I think I am going to lose some more money because I thought I solved my problem and burned a project and most of the discs are coming back with problems. There goes another 50 dollars.
I have updated all drivers that I can possibly think of and nothing seems to solve my problem! I am so upset.
I am a avid user of workshopSE and it is a workhorse. That progam works great everytime for me. (That is why I upgraded to 2.0 because I liked SE so much)
No one seems to have any answers to this problem and there is one!
I have lost more time than I care to count messing around with this program. And now I think I am going to lose some more money because I thought I solved my problem and burned a project and most of the discs are coming back with problems. There goes another 50 dollars.
Check what the actual settings are for your video and audio. For 90 minutes, I would edit the project settings to use 6000kbps for your video, and Dolby Digital (AC3) audio at 224kbps.
I believe the default video bitrate might be too low -- which might be why you don't like the quality.
In the EDIT STEP, click on the VIDEO Tab, and select "Convert to disc template" (do the same under the AUDIO Tab.
Regards,
George
I believe the default video bitrate might be too low -- which might be why you don't like the quality.
In the EDIT STEP, click on the VIDEO Tab, and select "Convert to disc template" (do the same under the AUDIO Tab.
Regards,
George
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sjj1805
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Whilst DVD Workshop can convert non compliant DVD files (AVI's) into compliant MPEG2 files, its main purpose is to create DVD Menus and convert your files into VOB's.
There is a 3 stage process in DVD Production.
1. Capture - getting what it is you have into your computer. This could be from a camcorder, TV card, Internet download, extractiing items from a DVD etc.
2. Editing. Cutting out unwanted material, inserting transitions. Moving clips from one place to another. Inserting titles, picture in picture effects etc.
3. Authoring. Taking the finished material from step 2 and making it into a DVD.
DVD Workshop is aimed primarily at item 3.
OK it can capture and you can trim the ends off a video, but after all said and done it is designed for item 3.
Now at item 2 above. When you have completed your editing (with products like Video Studio or Media Studio Pro) you should render the edited file into a DVD compliant MPEG. You will then find that DVD Workshop does not need to alter the "DVD ready" file and can spend all its time and effort producing the DVd menus.
If you take a look further down the Forum Index page there is an entire section devoted to Tutorials, You will find a lot of useful information and assistance there.
Regards
Steve J
There is a 3 stage process in DVD Production.
1. Capture - getting what it is you have into your computer. This could be from a camcorder, TV card, Internet download, extractiing items from a DVD etc.
2. Editing. Cutting out unwanted material, inserting transitions. Moving clips from one place to another. Inserting titles, picture in picture effects etc.
3. Authoring. Taking the finished material from step 2 and making it into a DVD.
DVD Workshop is aimed primarily at item 3.
OK it can capture and you can trim the ends off a video, but after all said and done it is designed for item 3.
Now at item 2 above. When you have completed your editing (with products like Video Studio or Media Studio Pro) you should render the edited file into a DVD compliant MPEG. You will then find that DVD Workshop does not need to alter the "DVD ready" file and can spend all its time and effort producing the DVd menus.
If you take a look further down the Forum Index page there is an entire section devoted to Tutorials, You will find a lot of useful information and assistance there.
Regards
Steve J
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jkdevl
Project update:
We burned 2 dvds (multiple times). Workshop was very misleading because after the reinstall, DW would now make a dvd that was 90% good...
At the time, I was still using the AVI files (these are already edited with the effects and trimmed to the proper length). When Workshop would compress the files and create the VOBs, 2 or 3 of the titles would be of terrible quality, while the remaining 10 titles would be great. This was a random occurrence as to which titles would be of poor quality and changed from one file creation instance to another.
We tried various project settings from 3500 - 5800kbps to see if that was causing the problem and the project settings were not the issue. At the lower bit rates, the quality was acceptable for our purposes and fit more material on a single dvd and the higher bit rate did not seem to gain enough quality to justify splitting the project into 3 dvds instead of the original 2.
We did finally get an acceptable dvd by substituting mpeg titles in place of the ones that did not render properly.
I was under the impression from a review I read prior to purchasing the product, that Ulead had a good mpeg compressor as part of the package. We will be more successful now that we know to bring in only mpeg files to start with.
Thanks for the responses,
jkdevl
We burned 2 dvds (multiple times). Workshop was very misleading because after the reinstall, DW would now make a dvd that was 90% good...
At the time, I was still using the AVI files (these are already edited with the effects and trimmed to the proper length). When Workshop would compress the files and create the VOBs, 2 or 3 of the titles would be of terrible quality, while the remaining 10 titles would be great. This was a random occurrence as to which titles would be of poor quality and changed from one file creation instance to another.
We tried various project settings from 3500 - 5800kbps to see if that was causing the problem and the project settings were not the issue. At the lower bit rates, the quality was acceptable for our purposes and fit more material on a single dvd and the higher bit rate did not seem to gain enough quality to justify splitting the project into 3 dvds instead of the original 2.
We did finally get an acceptable dvd by substituting mpeg titles in place of the ones that did not render properly.
I was under the impression from a review I read prior to purchasing the product, that Ulead had a good mpeg compressor as part of the package. We will be more successful now that we know to bring in only mpeg files to start with.
Thanks for the responses,
jkdevl
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jkdevl
The original source files were dv-avi. All of the video clips were from the same source so the "random" poor quality was very confusing. I mentioned in the original post, that the editing is done in Premier Elements and we exported the finished title as a dv-avi file. This was done intentionally so that Workshop could compress the final product because I thought it would do a better job than Premier.
The quality slider was put at 80 for most of the output efforts, although I may have tried 90 one time. It was never at 70.
The final bitrate was 3800 with Dolby Digital for sound in the final product. This was lower than necessary to fit on the dvd, but we got one to work this way, so we left the settings alone to finish the second dvd even though it could have had 4800 and still fit on a single dvd.
The clips (titles) ranged in length from less than 1 minute to 10 minutes each. On the second dvd, we had 27 separate clips for a total of about 100 minutes. Of those clips (titles), 4 of them had a severe quality problem after Workshop compressed everything. Those clips looked like "double vision" when played on various televisions.
We substituted mpeg files for just the clips with problems and re-ran the VOB files at the same bit rate so that we could get a usable product.
In earlier attempts, we ran into problems fitting on the dvd when we adjusted the bitrate to fit onto 4.3 gig (with 4.4 available according to Workshop). Then, when we had a quality issue on 1 or more clips and tried to substitutue the mpeg files, we always had to reduce the bitrate a little more to get everthing to fit again and that meant that the whole project had to be re-rendered into new VOB files which often caused "new" clips to have the double vision quality issue.
Several weeks ago, we were extremely excited about Workshop because we were able to create great custom menus in a relatively short amount of time. A previous project had been authored using Adobe Encore and it was not stable, nor was it easy to create the custom highlighted buttons that we wanted.
Workshop evenutally came up with a decent project for us, but I wish we had been more aware that it had severe limitations when dealing with avi files.
Thanks,
jkdevl
The quality slider was put at 80 for most of the output efforts, although I may have tried 90 one time. It was never at 70.
The final bitrate was 3800 with Dolby Digital for sound in the final product. This was lower than necessary to fit on the dvd, but we got one to work this way, so we left the settings alone to finish the second dvd even though it could have had 4800 and still fit on a single dvd.
The clips (titles) ranged in length from less than 1 minute to 10 minutes each. On the second dvd, we had 27 separate clips for a total of about 100 minutes. Of those clips (titles), 4 of them had a severe quality problem after Workshop compressed everything. Those clips looked like "double vision" when played on various televisions.
We substituted mpeg files for just the clips with problems and re-ran the VOB files at the same bit rate so that we could get a usable product.
In earlier attempts, we ran into problems fitting on the dvd when we adjusted the bitrate to fit onto 4.3 gig (with 4.4 available according to Workshop). Then, when we had a quality issue on 1 or more clips and tried to substitutue the mpeg files, we always had to reduce the bitrate a little more to get everthing to fit again and that meant that the whole project had to be re-rendered into new VOB files which often caused "new" clips to have the double vision quality issue.
Several weeks ago, we were extremely excited about Workshop because we were able to create great custom menus in a relatively short amount of time. A previous project had been authored using Adobe Encore and it was not stable, nor was it easy to create the custom highlighted buttons that we wanted.
Workshop evenutally came up with a decent project for us, but I wish we had been more aware that it had severe limitations when dealing with avi files.
Thanks,
jkdevl