New and a little confused :S

[Simbz]

hi there!

I'm new to using corel videostudio pro x3 and i am wondering if what i have done so far...is correct. I have a canon legria hf20 video camera and here's what i have done so far:
- imported all of the .mts files onto my external hdd from my videocamera
- imported all of the .mts files into videostudio pro x3
- done a bit of editing and have ended up with a video that is 5:02hrs long

i want to make sure that i retain the HD quality of the .mts files in the video that i do end up with, and i'm not sure what format to create the video file in to do this?? (i'm assuming that before i can take the video into moviefactory...i have to create a video file right??). The format i thought i would use is mp-4 hd. Is this right??? There was an option to select AVCHD...but i'm not sure if i am supposed to use that one?

And also, once the video file has been created, which program is the best to use to create a dvd with a menu etc...i have 2 options:
1) Corel DVD MovieFactory 7 SE
2) Corel DVD Factory Pro 2010

I did try render the video to mp4 and after 4hrs it had only completed 6%...and then corel was 'not responding'....so i just shutdown my laptop and thought i should double check with anyone who has any experience with this program before i try again!! (p.s: my laptop is not the fastest laptop in the world...but any ideas roughly how long this whole rendering process should take??....oh and how much HD footage normally fits onto one dvd?).

Any advice would be much appreciated!!!!!! Thanks in advance

[Ken Berry]

Welcome to the forums! However, I am afraid I have mostly bad news for you...

my laptop is not the fastest laptop in the world...

Your camera, as you perhaps do not realise, films using the AVCHD format, which is high definition mpeg-4 using the h.264 codec. So the option to select the AVCHD output was in fact correct, depending on what you intend to do.

The bad news is, however, that your computer is not up to the job of playing AVCHD smoothly, or even editing it. AVCHD is the most demanding of all formats currently on the market, and you require at least a decent Core 2 Duo processor (not just a dual core one such as yours), and preferably something like a Quad or higher.

There are a couple of options: you can use SmartRender which is built into Video Studio. This creates virtual 'proxy' files of your originals, in standard definition mpeg-2 format. You edit these, and when finished, the edits are applied to the high definition originals. But it takes some time for those proxy files to be created, so you have to be patient.

The other option, and in your case probably the preferable one, would be convert your AVCHD originals into some other format, and then edit them. Since you are hoping to produce a DVD, that would be standard definition mpeg-2.

Now a bit of further bad news... Your project is five hours long... Just think about it for a moment. Have you ever sat through a five hour movie? While one or two exist, in the main, films are made not much longer than two hours since producers know that audiences are unlikely to sit still for much longer than that. So first off, I would suggest your think about cutting your project down into two or three or even more pieces, and producing a separate DVD for each.

Apart from the boredom factor, there is a good technical reason for this as well. You ask how much footage normally fits onto one DVD... That is a bit like asking 'how long is a piece of string?' You can squeeze a lot on, but the downside is that you start losing an awful lot of quality if you put much beyond 2 hours onto a single layer DVD... Your get the best quality putting only around about an hour of video and using a high quality bitrate of 8000 kbps. Your will also get very good quality with around 90 minutes using 6000 kbps. Two hours will use a bitrate of 4000 kbps, and will give you quality something like VHS tape. But below that bitrate, the quality starts to deteriorate fast. Squeezing five hours on would, in my opinion, make the DVD virtually unwatchable in quality terms....

As a footnote, I see that you actually asked how much HD footage can be squeezed onto a DVD. This opens up a whole new can of worms, since there is a thing called a 'hybrid DVD' or 'AVCHD disc' which burns AVCHD footage to a standard DVD disc, but burns the original AVCHD (and not mpeg-2) using a file structure on the disc which is similar to that used on a high end Blu-Ray disc. Such a disc can only, however, be viewed using a Blu-Ray player rated to play hybrid discs. And to get best quality, you would need to use a bitrate of around 18,000 kbps, but that will only allow around 20 - 25 minutes of video to be burned to a single disc. By reducing the bitrate, you can squeeze more on, so that using a bitrate of 12,000 kbps will allow about 50 minutes on a single layer DVD. But beyond that, the quality falls to that of a standard DVD, and thus negates the value of a hybrid disc.

[Simbz]

Ken,

Thank you SO much for your help and advice! Really put things into perspective for me I have decided to go ahead and change the format of the footage I have to standard definition mpeg-2, and then pop it onto a DVD.

Sorry if my questions are silly and basic...but I'm used to using 8mm video tapes . And the footage that I do have is of my 8mnth old son...so I want to make sure I'm doing the right thing.

I do however, have a few more questions that you may be able to answer:
1) I copied the .MTS files directly off my video camera (via 'open files...> stream > and then only selecting the .mts files and not the .cpi files) and have simply put them onto an external hard-drive without editing them or anything. If I do decide to get a new PC which does have the specs to handle AVCHD, will the .MTS files contain HD standard footage? (ie: do I need to do anything to these files in Corel to make sure they are of 'HD' standard? Do I need to 'capture' the footage/files via Corel?).
2) After creating the video file, which program should I then use to create the DVD (I have two options on my laptop) 'Corel DVD MovieFactory 7 SE' or 'Corel DVD Factory Pro 2010' (I want to have a nice menu at the beginning of the DVD)?
3) If the duration of my video still exceeds the capacity of one DVD, do I have to manually set the contents of each DVD? Or will the program I use to burn the DVD do this for me?
4) In your response you mentioned the bitrate - where do I specify this?? Or is that automatically set when I select mpeg-2?

The video footage that I have is simply a home video, and I have put in fancy (...or what I consider to be fancy..) time and date titles here and there. So I'm not looking to create the next hollywood blockbuster. But at the same time, I want to make sure that the end result of the DVD, is clear - and takes advantage of the 'clear-ness' we see when we watch playback of the footage on our videocamera. Do you think many people have HD home videos?? Or am I just trying to be too much of a perfectionist?

[Ken Berry]

1) .mts files are by their very nature high definition mpeg-4/AVCHD, regardless of how your transferred them to your computer or a storage drive. When you do eventually used them, all you need to do is open X3, right click in the timeline, and choose 'Insert Video'. Navigate to your storage drive and choose which files you want to insert in the timeline. There is no further need to 'capture' anything -- you have already done it. With these types of files, it is transfer and insert, rather than 'capture' and insert.

2) Both the programs you mention can create a DVD, but we recommend you use MF 7 SE which was made available simply because DVD Factory "Pro" 2010 is so awful...

3) Essentially, you will need to cut up the video and assign the properties of the smaller projects yourself. (There used to be a capacity for the programs to automatically reduce a project to fit on a DVD, but this was pretty awful, and only worked when there was a very small difference in the size of the project and what could fit on a DVD. Nero's Recode does a much better job and remains an option for you. But again, your project length is just way too long for any program to be able to squeeze it onto a DVD in any watchable form...)

Essentially, you do the properties in X3 and not during the burning process in MF7 or DVD Factory. In other words, you set the properties when you go to Share > Create Video File. But before you get to that point, you have to use some forethought, and decide what is more important to you: quality or quantity. If quality is the most important, then you would divide your current 5 hours roughly evenly into five new videos. That would mean one hour per single layer DVD, and thus enable you to use the highest quality bitrate. Doing so also takes some of the manual labour out of it since you could then simply choose Share > Create Video File > DVD. The default for this is to automatically use a bitrate of 8000 kbps which would give you very high quality output and come closest to emulating the quality of your original AVCHD (though of course you would be producing a standard definition mpeg-2 and losing a lot of the original quality...) With this choice, you don't need to do anything more than choose Share > Crate Video File > DVD. Everything else happens automatically.

If, however, you decide quality is less important than squeezing more onto a single disc, then you will manually need to change the properties yourself. For this, you would need to choose Share > Create Video File > Custom. When you do this, you get a dialogue box in which you assign a name to the new file, and there is a button 'Options' (not totally sure of its name as I don't have VS on this computer I am using) which you click on, and that lists all the properties you can change. Select the Compression tab, and you can change the bitrate, for example. If you have about 2 hours of video to squeeze onto a single DVD, then you would need to assign a bitrate of around 4000 kbps, as I said in my earlier response, or 6000 for about 90 minutes.

4) See previous paragraph. (I might add here that you do NOT choose Share > Create Video File > MPEG-2. A DVD uses mpeg-2 files, yes, but only mpeg-2 files which have been created with the properties which form part of the international DVD standard. Not all mpeg-2 files necessarily conform to that standard.)

Hope this helps.