Long DVD rendering time

cek333 · Post by **cek333** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 6:29 pm

I was hoping to get some advice with regards to DVD creation with Ulead VideoStudio 10 Plus. I'm using a trial version of the product. I was able to make one DVD before but my second attempt has so far been unsuccessful. Specifically, after about 6hrs, the total progress was only about 30%. Ideally, I'll like to kick-off the project before I go to sleep and have it done when I get up.

Here are some details:
1st Attempt: Successful.
Source: One WMV file (WMV9 encoding), about 600MB, 640x480, no editing required, 1hr in length. Recorded from TV Tuner card using Windows Movie Maker. I created 1 title screen and 3 screens of chapter thumbnails.
At first, DVD rendering was running about 6+ hrs before I aborted it. I then disabled the menu background music, disabled moving menus, and disabled menu transistions. After that it took about 5-6hrs, and for 2-pass encoding 6-7hrs.
DVD output format was set to MPEG2 Variable 7000kbps, Dolby Digital audio 256k. I can't recall the exact project settings I used.

2nd Attempt: So far unsuccessful.
Source: Two WMV files (WMV9 encoding), 352x240, multiple mark-in, mark-out points. Total length after trimming is 1hr 20min. Each file is about 600MB. Recorded from TV Tuner card using Windows Media Encoder. I created 1 title screen and 2 screens of chapter thumbnails. DVD output format set to MPEG2 Variable 7000kbps, Dolby Digital audio 256k and the project settings is set to the same as the intended output. Like my first attempt I disabled the menu background music, moving menus, and menu transititions. As I reported earlier, after about 6hrs, it only about 30%. The screen shows that its working on "Converting video of the title [001/001]" which, if I'm not mistaken, is just the menu screens. It's not clear why the menus screens will take so long to encode.

My PC is 1.1GHz with 512MB of RAM with Windows XP.

By comparison, I also used Mediostream NeoDVD5 (which I received about 4 years ago when I purchased my DVD burner). I imported the two WMV files with total length of 1hr 20min after mark-in/out, and 2 screens of chapter menus. The DVD takes 2-3hrs to render the whole thing and the quality is pretty good. Mediostream claims on their website that they have the fastest encoder, and from my experience I have no reason to doubt that. However, their program has a number of limitations. Firstly, editing video clips is not as straight forward as in Ulead. You can only do one mark-in/mark-out operation for each clip you import. The workaround is to import the same file multiple times into the project and perform a different mark-in/out each time. Each time you re-import the file however, it creates a new chapter thumbnail (which isn't always desirable). Also, for a given clip, you can only add about 10 chapters. In most cases, these limitations are acceptable but in other cases it's not. For example, the first successful DVD I made with VideoStudio 10 had 23 chapter points which I couldn't do with NeoDVD. Some other advantages of Ulead are the audio splitting from the Video, and the ability to export to other file formats. NeoDVD is strictly for creating DVDs. Hence the reason I was looking into acquiring another program. So far Ulead seems the best of those I've evaluated, but it's still giving me some problems.

I'm thinking that maybe I accidentaly enabled something the first time around that I failed to do the second time. Any ideas.

Thanks.

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:16 pm

Video Studio does take a long time to convert highly-compressed formats to DVD compatible MPEG-2. And in fact, sometimes it will fail altogether!

Of course 2-pass encoding is going to take longer. In fairness, these formats (WMV, DivX, Xvid, etc.) are designed to be watched on your computer. They are not designed to be converted or edited.

You can try using a 3rd-party program to convert the files to DVD compatible MPEG-2. There are some DVD format specs on this page. Maybe you can make a simple DVD with NeoDVD first??? Or, you might try SUPER, which is a FREE universal conversion program.

If your tuner card allows it, you should use a less-compressed format in the future. If you plan on doing alot of this, WMV is not a good format! AVI/DV is 13GB per hour and it rarely causes any trouble. MPEG-2 is generally OK if you are making a DVD, but you can sometimes run into trouble if you edit the MPEG. (In fact, I use a special-purpose MPEG editor.)

FYI - There will always be some quality loss when you convert from one lossy compression format to a different lossy format. There is also some quality loss when you re-code to the same format. (Most editing requires the video to be decoded and re-coded... at least the edited parts.)

cek333 · Post by **cek333** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 10:56 pm

Thanks DVDDoug for the info. I took a quick look at the DVD format specs, but I'll try to review it in more detail later. I'll probably try a few of your suggestions i.e. going through NeoDVD first, or recording in AVI/DV from the TV Tuner.

I guess I use WMV by default for recording because it gives good quality for a small file size. But if I intend to convert it later to a DVD then I should probably go for the AVI/DV format instead.

I guess the speed at which NeoDVD encodes gave me a false impression about what to expect from other DVD Authoring programs. And the DVD format specs you refer to is right, programs like NeoDVD don't really give you control over resolution and bit rates.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 10:58 pm

It also needs to be said that your computer is down towards the bottom end of usability by VS10+. I have a second computer with roughly the same resources, and I have not even bothered to install VS10 on it as it would be just too slow. VS9 works nicely on it, but it too is rather slow.

Add to that the fact that you are using WMV as your source format, and long delays are inevitable.

I have to say I have never before heard of Mediostream NeoDVD5 but will take a look at it to see if it is still on the market or what the current version might be able to do.

EDIT: I have now looked at the Mediostream website, and the current version NeoDVD 7. It is roughly equivalent to Ulead Movie Factory, though appears to be rather more basic, and only now claims to be able to handle Dolby audio.

However, it repeats the claim about having the fastest encoding engine. There is also an interesting comparison chart at http://www.mediostream.com/pdf/neoDVD_s ... arison.pdf to show the encoding times of the same file by different programs. In this case, however, it uses NeoDVD 6 and the relevant Ulead product is the now positively ancient MF3.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:31 am

What TV card do you have?

cek333 · Post by **cek333** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 5:09 am

I have the ATI TV Wonder Elite.