Basic procedure from capture to DVD authoring

[pedro26]

Hi Ken, Steve,

I am just returning to Ulead after ~ a 6 year break (circa 2006). Back then, it took me about 4 months of heavy reading & research before I was able to transfer my niece's wedding video from a Sony miniDV handycam into Ulead and create the perfect wedding DVD. In the end it was very successful and got rave reviews from the family, thanks to this forum and others.

Now on my return, I can not remember exactly all the steps, but what I do remember is that just following the product's manual did not work. I can recall at each stage (Capture Phase etc) there was a set of steps, a recommended work flow. I think Steve (Sjj1805) might have pointed me to that work flow, and when followed exactly that was the key to getting the software to work properly (things like lower field first, capture in AVI format, select DV type 1 and so on)..

Now to my point, please can we have a link in the FAQs to that recommended workflow, or have things changed again ? (BTW I will still be using ULead Video Studio version 10)

Thanks in advance.

ps computer with Ulead on is 1.79 Ghz Duron, 1.5 Gb of ram and I use an external usb hard drive to store the large video files on, windows XP pro OS.
But I'm currently using a later computer with Vista, an i7 2.67 Ghz processor, 6 Gb ram and some bundled software called Power Director to get old VHS tapes transferred via a composite video - USB interface cable into computer video files. At moment I'm letting that chug on with its default settings, so from my 3 hour VHS tapes its creating an mpeg file which it has automatically chopped up into 3 separate mpg subfiles (I didn't ask it to, I can probably find out the 'flavour' of the file), each is about 3.8 Gb. The Power Director software has got its own editing and mastering and burning facilities, but I wish to use Ulead's. Perhaps I'm (it is encoding ?) at too high a resolution, but the only quick advice I saw was to encode at the highest possible quality. Any general advice on that aspect ?

If possible I would like each of the old tapes to be on a single DVD, I can not rememeber if Ulead can take care of that, or you have to use something like DVD shrink?

[BrianCee]

Welcome back - we haven't seen or heard from Steve for a long time - but Ken is still with us - though I would guess is sleeping soundly in New Zealand at this very moment.

The old tutorial which you remember by Steve is still here - and if you are still using V10 then it will still serve you well enough.

you will find it here :- http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php ... 4&p=107244&

And in addition you will find many many more tutorials on the forum here :- http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewforum.php?f=27

VideoStudio will have no problem putting your videos on as many DVDs as you wish - it's all down to how long they are and what quality you expect

Anyrate do some reading - the whole VideoStudio forum is a good learning resource - then perhaps you might like to ask some specific questions to which we can give specific answers.

[Ken Berry]

Perhaps I'm (it is encoding ?) at too high a resolution, but the only quick advice I saw was to encode at the highest possible quality. Any general advice on that aspect ?

If your original video is from an analogue source such as VHS, then it can never be of the same quality as original digital video, whether standard def let alone high def. That being said, while you definitely need to capture at as high a quality as possible, that "possible" relates to the reality of your source material.

I capture my old analogue 8mm tapes via a Sony Digital 8 camcorder which connects to the computer via Firewire. I capture in DV format, which gives me the best editing format for such material. But even if you capture in mpeg-2 DVD-compatible format, there is not much point in using a bitrate of any more than about 6000 kbps. Using less than this is probably even more realistic, though I tend to stick to that limit when I convert my DV to mpeg-2 to burn to DVD. A 6000 kbps bitrate and Dolby (or mpeg layer 2) audio will allow you to burn over 90 minutes of video to a single layer DVD, and probably not much more that 100 minutes). 4000 kbps will allow more than 2 hours. So it sounds as though Power Director might be capturing at a bitrate based on burning each segment to a single layer DVD -- a 3.8 GB chunk, plus menu, will obviously easily burn to a 4.3 GB DVD.

If possible I would like each of the old tapes to be on a single DVD, I can not rememeber if Ulead can take care of that, or you have to use something like DVD shrink?

Bearing in mind what I said about VHS quality above, it is still not really feasible to burn 3 hours of the original material to a single layer DVD. Even at 4000 kbps, the quality would be not particularly good -- though of course watchable -- but that will allow only 2 hours on a single layer disc.

VS can try to squeeze a bit more on. but my own experience has been that it will only really do so if the video you are wanting to burn to disc is not too much bigger than the disc capacity e.g. it might succeed in squeezing, say, a 5 GB down to 4.3 GB, but anything much more than that will produce poor (if any) result.

You could, I suppose, burn the whole lot to an 8.5 GB DVD *folder*, and then squeeze that down using Shrink, which IMHO would give you far better results than VS ever could, but as I say, don't expect too much by way of quality at the end.

Or, as you appear to be contemplating in a separate thread, you could always try burning 3 hours to a dual layer disc. That would indeed be possible and should ensure (relatively) good quality.