Dropped Frames During MPEG Conversion

[MPEGer]

I'm using MovieFactory 4.04 and a WinTV USB2 capture device. I usually encode using WinTV's DVD Standard Play, and PVAStrumento never reports any problems with the original MPEGs (no dropped frames). But when I downsample an MPEG to fit on DVD, I *always* get dropped frames -- oodles of them. However, if I downsample using a two-pass conversion there are never dropped frames.

Note that I'm downsampling the original MPEG using MovieFactory's export function, then loading that file into same for authoring. I prefer to use a two-pass conversion but this takes 4-5 hours, so usually I like to do a one-pass conversion and burn it just to have a look at things on my consumer player while the computer churns away on the two-pass conversion.

In some cases an original MPEG from WinTV will almost fit to DVD but requires a slightly smaller bitrate. (I'm using Dolby audio for efficient use of disc space.) For these it's not worth the effort to do a two-pass conversion, but I'm forced to because MovieFactory will drop frames if I don't.

MovieFactory is generally working well for me except this downsampling problem. I'm not using the Disc Creator version, though, otherwise I would try its shrink to fit function. So it's the full 4.04 version without Disc Creator.

Any ideas?

[DVDDoug]

You will get better quality if you set-up WinTV for the correct bitrate, and encode to MPEG only once. A Bitrate Calculator can be helpful. If your version of WinTV is similar to mine, you can manually set the bitrate. You are not stuck with the presets.

An alternative - If you guess wrong, and it won't fit, you can "burn" the DVD to your hard disk (Uncheck Create Disc, and check Create DVD Folders). Then, use DVD Shrink to shrink it down. This takes awhile too... But less than 4-5 hours, I think.

[MPEGer]

I considered dropping the bitrate in WinTV but prefer not to.

Thanks for the tip. I'll try DVD Shrink -- a program I've never used -- to compare the quality and conversion time compared to MovieFactory. I must say, though, that I'm impressed with the quality of MF's two-pass conversion, albeit time-consuming.