videostudio10 vs. Nerovision7 (rendering time)

[sjj1805]

............Why do these procedures differ from the Recommended procedure given at the top of this forum?

These procedures tell you to render and produce a DV.AVI file after editing, but the recommended procedure tells you to render to a MPEG2 file.

I think a lot of users get confused at this stage so just to clarify.
Every time you render (create) a video file you risk losing some quality and you risk other issues such as out of synch audio/video. You therefore should aim to render a file the least number of times possible.

It is a generally accepted fact that if you can capture (or in the case of most camcorder recordings - transfer) your video footage in a non lossy format such as DV (avi) then you should do so. Not everyone can enjoy that luxury because with such a wide range of video recording equipment and a wide variety of video sources - TV cards - Digital cameras - camcorders - internet - mobile phones - CCTV systems - Sky+ boxes - DVD discs and so on. Furthermore different hardware systems have different connection capabilities - USB, Firewire, SCART, RCA and so on, that what may apply to some users cannot physically be done by others.

Think of the whole process as a 3 step procedure.
Step 1. Get it onto your hard drive.
As described above not all users can do this the same way.
Establish what is best for YOUR setup and the best possible settings for YOUR equipment and source materials.
It is a widely accepted fact that DV (avi) is an easier format to edit than MPEG2 but that does not mean it is impossible to edit MPEG2 and as mentioned above, for some users it is unavoidable.

Step 2. Edit.
What this means is that you place your source materials from step 1 onto the timeline or overlay tracks. make your cuts, add your transitions, titles and extra backgrounds sounds - generally you tidy it all up, cut out the rubbish and put in all your Steven Spielberg Special Effects.

At this time, your original source materials remain untouched on your hard drive. You have simply created a very large text file which is a record of your intended cuts, transitions titles and so on. You save this large text file as a VideoStudio Project File - or in the case of MediaStudio - a MediaStudio project file.

Now what you do is to apply all those cuts, transitions, titles and so on and create a new video file. There are two ways to do this.

Method 1 which is my preferred method, is to create a brand new video file on your hard drive with all of those edits processed. It is no longer a project file it is now a standalone and playable video.
When you do this - you don't want to render it again - we are aiming to render ONCE to avoid loss of quality and any other side issues such as audio/video synchronisation. Our target device will be a DVD disc playable in a standalone DVD player and so we need to render to MPEG2.

If however you are producing a video to place on the internet you would no doubt create one of the following
DivX / Xvid / MPEG4 / WMV / Quicktime or some other format associated with videos you find on the internet.

The reason why this is my preferred method to Method 2 below is that you can now play this video on your computer before moving on to step 3 - authoring. You now have the opportunity to watch the video on your computer with those edits having been implemented. If you decide further editing is required you simply go back to your project file and edit it further.

Using this 'Method 1' you must work out in advance the appropriate bit rate and quality settings so that the completed project will fit onto your DVD - otherwise you will end up rendering the video a second time to reduce it to fit.

Method 2 - place the project file into the authoring module.
Here you have not rendered your video file but instead you render the file as a part of the authoring stage. Technically there is no reason why you cannot do this. Practically though you must consider what effect it will have on the entire project if you then create your completed DVD and then realise you needed to do further editing. Will this affect the placement of your DVD chapters and so on. You might end up having to redo the authoring stage again.

Either way your video will get rendered to the required format - normally MPEG2 as most users will be creating a DVD disc playable in a standalone DVD player. This will take the same amount of time no matter which method you choose. In other words if you create the video file first using method 1, your video has already been rendered and so will not be rendered again and so the authoring stage will appear to take dramatically less time than method 2 where the file must now be rendered.

Step 3. Authoring.
This is the stage where you now create your DVD menus and navigation structure, chapters, Menu background sounds and images and so on.
From this you burn your completed project onto your DVD disc ready to play in your standalone DVD player.

I hope this clarifies the procedure and from this you can see that you should NOT create an avi file from Step 2 but instead either create a DVD compliant MPEG2 file or place the project into the authoring module at step 3.

[Phil S]

Steve - I agree, I have made many sucessful DVDs using these steps which I think equates to the recomended procedure:

1. Capture in DV .avi format
2. Edit and include your music, titles, jpegs or whatever.
3. Render to MPEG2 (create video file)
4. Create Menus and Burn (create disc)

It's when I read the "Jonesgroup" procedure, which indicates rendering to an .avi file that confused me.

Are you saying then, that you would render to AVI, but only when you have captured in something other than an AVI or MPEG2 file?

[sjj1805]

If you have a source video in 'whatever-this.format-is' you generally stick to 'whatever-this.format-is' and create your edits then render to the required final output.

Sometimes it might be necessary to render Twice due to the nature of the
'whatever-this.format-is'. many users report difficulties working with the very highly compressed formats DivX / Xvid / MPEG4 and often it is necessary to alter them to a less compressed format. Here you can choose between MPEG2 or DV (avi) the choice of which would vary dependant upon what the quality of the original 'whatever-this.format-is' material was and the software available to you to alter the format.

Remember to aim to render the least number of times - preferably once.

[maddrummer3301]

.

[heinz-oz]

I personally don't care what any recommended procedure says, it's just that, a recommended procedure for someone who is uncertain. I cannot see a valid excuse to render out a new DV-AVI (or uncompressed AVI for that matter) unless you want to have a relatively low compression version of your final edit for safe keeping and possible later re-editing. Other than that, it's a redundant step and should be avoided.

[alfc76]

what about if i acquire the dv-tape directly into mpeg2 (usually, variable 6000 kbps) ?
isn't this faster?
are there any contraindication?
have I significant quality losses? (i've not noticed this)

thanks

[Phil S]

You can do that but you need to have a high spec PC to be able to do this reliably.

I tried it and it failed miserably giving jumpy captured MPEG - all down to the PC spec not good enough. See my System button below.
Have no trouble capturing to .AVI format and converting after edit.

I should think the new Core 2 Duos will cope with this without a problem.

Anybody got an idea of the minimum processor (or other config) that will cope with direct MPEG capture reliably?

[2Dogs]

Anybody got an idea of the minimum processor (or other config) that will cope with direct MPEG capture reliably?

There have been a number of posts on this in the past. In tests I did with my own P4c 2.8, I was able to capture directly to mpeg2 with the quality slider at a maximum of 89%, when running the pc in a dedicated video editing hardware profile, with only the bare minimum of Windows services running. Above this value, the frame buffer would fill up, and there would be a discontinuity at the point where the camcorder was paused as the buffer was flushed.

By default, VS estimates the value of the quality slider based on your system. On a slower cpu, if you were to set the slider to 100%, the transcode buffer would fill up rapidly - and more rapidly if you have only a small amount of RAM. The resulting footage might well look "jumpy".

Although I don't generally capture to mpeg2, as long as I stayed at the "magic" 89% on the quality slider, there was no jumpiness in the captured video. I would expect an Athlon XP3200+ to give largely similar results. I used Windows Task Manager to monitor the available RAM. Any setting above 89% would cause the available RAM to diminish, and when it reaches zero, the transcode buffer has to be flushed. Having more RAM means that you can capture a longer segment before this happens, but doesn't change the maximum value of the quality slider for which this doesn't happen.

Might be interesting to hear from people with more recent and faster cpu's, at the risk of straying off topic a bit and incurring the wrath of the mods....

[alfc76]

i've an AMD XP2400 1gb ram 400mhz

i've setted the system without all the windows XP fripperies...and i fell it pretty fast

my mpeg2 directly acquired videos are fine....or at least ...they seem so to my eyes ... i'ven't noticed differences with the avi captured ones

i acquired into 8000kbps (and the sound as mpeg2 224kbps)...now into 6000....i will try also 4000...just for testing

bye

p.s.
i think quality is 70 (not less) or 80 (not more)...

[Ken Berry]

FWIW, my system also has no difficulty in capturing smooth mpeg-2. See my system button for details, but essentially it is a P4 3.0 with hyperthreading and 2 GB of RAM. I would add the rider that on the few times I have done it, I was only capturing in takes of no more than about 10 minutes. That could have contributed to the successful capture. Only once did I capture a clip of not quite 20 minutes, and again no problem. But I can't comment on anything over that.

Oh, and my quality/speed slider was at its default 80%. In fact, it has always been at 80% with successive computers I have used with VS, and I have never seen any need to change it.

[heinz-oz]

I also have no problem capturing straight to mpeg2, usually only when I just want to copy an analog tape to archive on DVD and only if the tape contents do not require any subsequent editing.

More often than not though, I capture my PAL VHS tapes to DV-AVI via the pass through function of my Pana GS 400 because these tapes could be full 3 hours with lots of stuff that can be discarded. I dislike editing mpeg because it causes me grief . And, no, I don't want to hear now from certain quarters of this forum how easy it is to edit mpeg, we have covered that often enough, If I could capture to mpeg2 at 25000 kbps, I might give it a try as it stands, I won't.

Time is not that important to me, quality is. Even though VHS hardly falls into the "quality" category these days, there is no need to degrade that further by having to edit mpeg at 6000 kbps.