Novice needs advice please! No Groans Please!

[louielp53]

Having recently purchased a Sanyo VPC-HD1000 camera which came with a free copy of DVD Movie Factory, which took 28hours 10 mins to make a DVD 1hr 28 mins long. So I decided to purchase VS11.5 Plus, Question should I have uninstalled Movie Factory First?
After editing my film from MPEG4 files I can't progress to make a DVD, can you please outline the steps I should take? The User Guide tells you how to do many things, but what do I need to do?
I have 25 clips (MPEG4 @ 1080) which I've imported, added an intro and titles and end page, this part is fine, running time 41:15 2.42GB.
If I go to Share and Create Disc it gives me 1 file and the Next Button is Greyed out, what have I done wrong.
Thanks in advance
Ian Lewis[/b]

[Ken Berry]

Welcome to the forums!

First off, I trust you realise your Xacti is a high defintion camera using about the most difficult format around these days, the AVCHD one. Moreover, lots of Xacti users in particular (plus PanasonicS9 users) are having difficulty with the output of their cameras with VS11.5+. In general terms, VS11.5+ can handle AVCHD, but that in turn depends on your computer resources, which have to be pretty strong to handle the format. At a minimum, Intel Core 2 Duo or above.

Now part of my problem is that I am not overly familiar with AMD performance. Thank you, though for filling in your computer specs, since so few users do!! But correct me if I am wrong, but I think your computer is equivalent to one of the now slightly older dual core -- as opposed to Core 2 Duo -- processors... If so, it will inevitably have difficulty processing the files from your Xacti smoothly. Heck, many computers have difficulty even playing such files back smoothly!! No kidding!

Now you might be asking at this stage what AVCHD video is all about. Essentially, it is high definition mpeg-4 and using a frame size in your camera of 1920 x 1080i and a high quality, high speed bitrate. You are wanting to produce a standard definition DVD which uses -- no ifs no buts -- a frame size of 720 x 480 for NTSC and 720 x 576 (or lesser proportional fractions thereof) for PAL. So at some stage or other, your high def mpeg-4 is going to have to be converted downwards to standard definition and DVD compatible mpeg-2. But again with pardon about my AMD knowledge, the times you cite are way over the top even for an under-resourced computer.... especially since you are in effect down-converting and not actually repoducing the difficult AVCHD format.

I also don't know what your camera allows, but I am assuming your capture either directly from the camera or else transfer the files to your computer hard disk and process from there. I don't know if the camera does any down-processing of its own i.e. transferring to computer but at the same time converting the high def mpeg-4 to standard def mpeg-2. In your current situation, that would be the optimum.

But if this is not possible (as I suspect it is not), then you have the mpeg-4 in the VS timeline (and it absolutely has to be either VS11.5+ as fully patched or else Movie Factor 6 Plus as patched), and you might have to do your editing using SmartProxy. Then instead of burning it directly, you first convert the (edited) mpeg-4 to DVD compatible mpeg-2 by using Share > Create Video File > DVD. For your files, the two essentials are to maintain the Upper Field First field order, and a high bitrate, say 8000 kbps which is the standard def equivalent in a sense of the high def camera's higher frame rate and thus higher resolution.

The once you have converted everything to mpeg-2, you go to File > New Project. Don't worry about giving your new project a name. The objective is just to clear the timeline of your current project.

Once that is done, you select Share > Create Disc > DVD. The burning module will open. Use the Add Media button at the top to insert your new mpeg-2 in the burning timeline. Then go to the middle of the three icons in the bottom left of the burning screen. There is a little box beside the words 'Do not convert compliant mpeg files'. Make sure that box is ticked (it usually is by default). That way, your already compliant mpeg file will not be re-encoded. Then build your menus and burn.

[louielp53]

Hi Ken
Thanks for your advice, it worked, converted all my footage to MPEG-2, edited it, which is easy, then burnt it to DVD, took a long while to do tho!
I will have to a bit of research to finda program that will do the conversion quicker! In future I will shoot at a lower resolution than 1080p.
Thanks again for your help and advice
Ian

[Ken Berry]

What do you call 'a long time' in the case of the successful conversion? These things really take time! I download and edit my native HDV format, which is far easier to deal with than yours. Yet re-rendering it to a new, edit file in exactly the same format takes over 2.5 times real time...

[louielp53]

I did as you suggested and saved my project (41 mins run time) as a MPEG-2 file and it took 2 attempts, as windows downloaded an update over night, and restarted the computer, but the second section 30 min max, took over 24 hours to complete! And the second section had dropped out my titles and music I had edited in, so I had to redo these.
I now realise I was not fully patched to 11.5+ so that may have been why it was so slow. I can't believe it's my computers fault, as it rips thru, other task like Photoshop re-rendering with no problem.
What do you think?

Thanks again

Ian

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Ian

Just as a comparison,

If I convert Dv-Avi to Mpeg 2, little editing then I expect 2.25 time the run time.

Converting a highly edited project Avi in top track Images in overlay , titles, smart sound and voice all full, it takes 4 times.
So the amount you edit relates to the render times.

The options to convert from one format to another also increases render times.
My pc is probably as old as I, but never has it taken 24hrs to do a 30 minute video. That relates to 48 times, incredible.

One question, when you edit do you use transitions, if so do you use the album transitions?????? Just a thought, my pc practically freezes when rendering albums.

Do you have any other video formats, Dv-Avi or Mpeg 2 that you can run a test render.
Use the sample videos from the library, add a few transitions and audio. How long does it take. I would expect very quick.

If so I would think the problem is the type of files you are rendering from and to.
What are the exact properties of the original files.?

[Trevor Andrew]

One more thought, when you used VS to convert to Mpeg 2 what properties did you select.
You cannot use the default templates as these apply the wrong field order.
You are best to use the Custom option.
OR
I prefer to create my own template using Tools-Make Movie Manager¡XUse the Add option and select your HD file, Give it a name, now edit the template changing ¡VGeneral tab ¡V Frame size to 720 x 576
Then change ¡VCompression tab- Video data rate to 8000
Everything else stays ¡¥as is¡¦
Now Share Create Video File -- your template shows at the bottom of the list.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Other than that there is a program called ¡¥Super¡¦, many on the forum use to convert video files.

You need a little knowledge of video formats and properties to use the program.

See the free stuff section¡K¡K

http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=12931

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

May be worth a look.

Good luck