Detail explation of Dialog Box parameters

[PatBarr]

Once complaint I've always had about VS is that the User Guide doesn't document the Preference, Project Settings, and Disk creation settings in enough detail.

For example what does "Two-pass Encode" really do? What about Two-pass Conversion and NTSC/PAL Safe Color?

Without details I don't know if I should or want to use them.

Thanks, Pat

[rguthrie]

For one explanation for two-pass encoding, see http://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/terms/multipass.cfm. I haven't used it before, but I do know from past reading that two-pass will increase your encoding time. You may want to Google for more information if you're interested. There is a lot of good information out there.


For an explanation of safe colors see http://erikdemaine.org/SoCG2003_multime ... phics.html. One thing to consider is the use of colors in titles. For exampe if you try to put in red (255, 0, 0 ) VS will automatically adjust the color to an NTSC safe color for you.

Hope this helps,

[sjj1805]

In a nutshell.......
When you render a video you can either have a constant bit rate or a variable bit rate. The easiest is a constant bit rate - no matter what the content of your video happens to be at any given time all the settings remain the same.
If you have a lot of movement in a video such as a racing car whizzing past you then lots of things change from frame to frame.
Compare this to a Television News reader sitting at his desk reading the news. The only thing moving is his mouth and perhaps the occasional blink of the eye. So very little changes from frame to frame.

This is all well and good if you are using a constant bit rate. Dependant upon the power of your computer let us say your video takes a hour and a half to render and it fits nicely onto your blank 4.3 GB DVD disc.

However, you find that the video is a bit too big to fit onto that blank DVD disc. Now you have two options.
Option 1. Use a lower constant bit rate (and lost quality throughout the entire video)
Option 2. Use a variable bit rate.
Now the computer will use a smaller bit rate where there is less movement - such as the news reader, but it will use a higher bit rate where there is a lot of movement - such as the sports car whizzing past. The theory is that overall your video will become a bit smaller and so now it will fit onto that blank DVD disc.
However it is trying to work out where this "lots of movement -v- little movement" is 'on the fly' and so it cannot do that good a job of it. It does a better job by firstly reading through the video making notes as it goes along to see where it can decrease the bit rate and where it needs to increase it (first pass). Having done so it then goes through the video for a second time (second pass) applying these bit rate changes.
Using a one pass variable bit rate it will probably still take the same hour and half that a constant bit rate took. Using a two pass variable bit rate it could take 2 or 3 hours - it has much more work to to do - the trade off though is that the video will be better because more emphasis has been placed on those parts that required it.

Commercially produced DVD's (The stuff from Hollywood etc.) will use expensive software that will make several passes through the video before making the final render. Just one of the reasons why you can get more onto a commercial DVD than you can on a home produced video.

[PatBarr]

Thanks for links and explanations. It appears VideoStudio gives the options but for the explanations you have to search the internet which I fine now that I know that.

Pat