Burning a DVD

[abduls16]

Hello
I recently started using Ulead VS 11.0
I edited a movie, the total length of the project came up to 1hour 59Mins and 54Sec.

When I tried burning this project, The required amount of disk space was 6.33GB (DVD DL), unfortunately I did not have a Dual Layer DVD at the moment so I decided to create the DVD by de-selecting the option to burn onto the DVD and selecting the option of Creating DVD folders (Audio_TS and Video_TS)
After the creation was completed, when I checked the file size of the DVD folders they were a total of 3.66GB which allowed me to burn it onto a 4.7GB regular size DVD.

Question, is there a way to avoid this because I would prefer just clicking on burn to disk instead of creating the DVD folders and burning the folders seperately. Also why would it show the wrong size of the DVD. Even though the DVD size showed up as 6.33GB the time of the project was still the same (1hour 59Mins and 54Sec.)

Thank you.

Regards,
Abdul R Shaikh

[Ken Berry]

Welcome to the forums!

I can't answer the 'why did it give a false reading question'. No idea -- and I doubt anyone could give any accurate answer, particularly since we have no idea of the properties of your burning project. I would hazard a guess, though, that you have edited the project then gone to the burning module (Share > Create Disc > DVD) rather than first doing as we recommend and preparing a DVD compatible mpeg-2 of your project (Share > Create Video File > DVD). Then once that is done, you can open the burning module and insert that file for burning. Why do I make this guess? It is just that if you are not taking this recommended route, the program has to make a rough estimate based only on a project file and do so on the fly before the project has actually been converted.

Being approx 2 hours in length, though, and giving an accurate reading of 3.66 GB, your burning properties would have to be using a bitrate of (well) under 4000 kbps. This in turn implies it will be rather low quality. But there is no way of improving the quality except by a little, if you retain a project with that length. To do so, you would need to increase the bitrate to between 4000 and 4500 kbps and use a compressed audio format like Dolby or mpeg layer 2 if you aren't already. But this will still only be at best VHS quality.

If you are wanting to burn to achieve the highest quality, and don't use dual layer discs, then you would need to divide your project in two and burn two separate DVDs using a bitrate of 7500 - 8000 kbps.

As to burning a DVD folder, I *always* do that and use a third party program to burn it to disc. Why? The main objective is to be able to play the Video_TS folder on a software DVD player program like WinDVD or PowerDVD to see if the final product is exactly what I want. That way I don't waste a blank disc if it turns out it is not quite right. I also usually burn copies for friends and family, and simply find it easier to burn multiple copies using a program like Nero Burning ROM.

However, you can also still burn several copies in VS without first preparing a Video_TS folder. Indeed, VS cannot burn a Video_TS folder to DVD, though you can burn a disc image file (.iso) using a utility which is included in the VS package.

[bricynt3]

Ken - I'm a novice as well. Did I read correct that you use another program (Nero?) to do your burning?

[sjj1805]

Many of us use different programs for different parts of the entire video creation experience. I tend to use a program named CopyToDVD.

There is no reason why you cannot burn directly to disc from VideoStudio.
The reason many of us use other programs is because we tend to do further adjustments after the DVD has been created.

Firstly like Ken I check the DVD burned to a hard drive folder looks the way I intended so that I don't waste any discs if I decide to make further changes. Next I check the DVD Remote button flow - so that pressing the up / down / left / right buttons on the remote will select the option on the DVD Menu that I want. If not I tweak that with a third party program MenuEdit or PGCEdit. When I am fully satisfied I then burn the checked and if necessary tweaked DVD to disc.

I tend to think of VideoStudio as "the editor" for cutting out unwanted parts, adding titles, sprucing up the soundtrack etc.
In fact I do most of my authoring with DVD Workshop 2. There is no need to stick rigidly to one product, if you own more than one product then use whichever one is the best tool for the particular job in hand, they all have their strengths and weaknesses.

I tend to think that an item of software is intended for one main purpose - but for completeness they throw in the other bits and pieces necessary to complete the job so that if you don't want to spend more money you can do everything with the one item.

For example VideoStudio is an editor with authoring capabilities.
MovieFactory is an authoring program with editing abilities.

[abduls16]

Thank you for the replies.

However I do have one more question,
When I create a menu for my dvd, and then when I try to preview it,
a bar at the bottom loads but unfortunately, I am not able to preview the menu before creating my dvd, I also tried selecting the option to "pre-render the menu" but still no luck, any advice?

Thank you for the help and support.

Abdul R Shaikh

[Ken Berry]

It has become almost a mantra with me over the past couple of months to suggest people first go to the Microsoft DirectX website and download the latest update patch. The current one is dated March 2008 and can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en
Note that it updates both DirectX 9.0c (XP) and 10 (Vista). The number of your DirectX installation will not change, but the patch gives extra functionality in a number of areas and corrects other faults in VS11 in particular which do appear linked to Windows updates. The menu preview and 'building preview graph' problems seem to be amongst them.