“Shrink and Fit” Doesn’t Seem to Work

[Marc L]

I’m using VideoStudio 9 within the trial period. I was very impressed with the product until I tried to burn a DVD.

I’ve compiled a number of NTSC AVI and MPEG clips. The run time is just over 1 hour and 30 minutes for a total of 5.6 gigs approx. I selected the Fit & Burn option and was told the bit rate would be 7500, which sounded good to me. After a couple of hours of rendering, I get a message saying my disk doesn’t have enough space, please insert another. What happened?
I’ve tried this a few times with the same results.

I even made an ISO file and let DVDShrink have a go at it, but it finished with an error message. (I can’t recall the message.)

The AVI’s came from my Canon SD300 digital camera. The MPEGs were shot with an analog camcorder and captured via VS9 using an ATI tuner card.

My project was set to NTSC DVD 4:3 (matching the source material).

Any help would be appreciated.

Marc

[2Dogs]

Hi Marc,

the fact that DVD Shrink is having trouble might indicate a problem with the ISO file.

For the project duration of 1 hour 30 minutes, a video bitrate of 7500 sounds too high - even if it's Variable bitrate rather than constant.

It's not possible to be exact about the actual bitrate you need, since it will vary according to your video content, but you might try setting your own value - say around 5500 VBR or maybe 5000 CBR if you prefer.

Rather than wait for VS9 to do all the encoding, you should be able to check the effect of this by going to the "Share" >> "Create Disk" step with your project on the timeline (in direct contravention of the recommended procedure!) Then when you set the output video properties VS9 should give you an indication of the required disk space. Once you've homed in on settings that you're happy with, either CBR or VBR, cancel the "Share" >> "Create Disk" step and just create your project MPEG-2 file in accordance with the recommended procedure with those settings.

If that doesn't work, you may have other issues!

[rguthrie]

Marc L.,

According to an online bitrate calculator that I've used often, your bitrate should be about 6580kbps, provided that you're using a 192kbps bitrate for audio. If you had the full version, I'd recommend using Dolby Digital for your audio output since its compression is better, but I think it doesn't come with the TBYB version.

Ron G.

[Marc L]

What a tease! It stopped at 95% while writing to the disk.
The CPU was at 100% but there didn't seem to be any activity. When I checked the task manager, it said the program was running. When I tried to end the task it said there program was waiting for a response from me. I couldn't find any open dialog boxes, hidden or otherwise.

The disk seems to play okay, but I can't give it full inspection right now. I'm sure something will be missing.

I used 5700ish VBR (got to remember to write these things down) and 256 for audio. At these settings I was staying under the limits in the bar graph.

I'll give it another shot later with audio at 192. I'm going to check my DVD recorder too. I suspect something might need attention there. I did a clean install a few days ago.

Thanks for the advice!
Marc

[rguthrie]

Marc L,

If you did a clean install a few ago I'd make that you've updated all of your drivers.

Ron G.

[2Dogs]

What a tease! It stopped at 95% while writing to the disk.

Hi Marc,

at least you're almost there!

Just to clarify things, though - did you first render your whole project to a single MPEG-2 video file, and follow the recommended procedure to burn your disk?

It may be doubly important to use the RP when you are using mixed source material, i.e. AVI and MPEG-2, as in your case.

I trust you aren't using Dolby, since you would otherwise immediately get an error message something to the effect "unable to open mpeg encoder" with the VS9 trial.

....and presumably you are burning to a DVD-RW disk, rather than creating a bunch of bird scarers! Might be an idea to burn to DVD folders instead. I usually burn my first draft to an RW disk, then after checking that for quality and errors, write to an ISO file for later burning to multiple copies as needed on +R disks.

[Marc L]

I did not make an MPEG 2 file first. I set it to render, burn and write an ISO all at once. Bad idea I guess? I also used 2nd pass encoding.

I believe Dolby was selected by default. I didn't see an error message. I'll check when I get home.

Yes, I'm using RW disks.

Is the mixing of AVI and MPEG files a problem? If I recall, my ATI card can do both. I choose MPEG-2 because I was heading to in that direction anyway (DVD). In the past when I played around with AVI recordings I risked running out of disk space, so I stayed with MPEG-2. I have lots of disk space now so I could switch back. Do AVIs make better DVDs?

Marc

[Ken Berry]

There could be a further complication in your case.

When going to Share > Create Video File and choosing mpeg-2 rather than DVD -- if that is indeed what you did -- just remember that you are choosing a format which may not play properly in the end disc, and may even complicate the rendering process if you skip the Create Video File stage and go straight to Create Disc. If you look at the properties of the mpeg-2 template in Make Movie Manager, you will see that the Field Order is Frame Based. This is mainly used with slideshows and, with mpeg-1, is part of the VCD standard. If you look at 'DVD', you will find it is of course mpeg-2, but depending on your settings and the source of your captured video, will be either Lower Field First (Field Order A in VS7 and earlier versions) or Upper Field First (Field Order B). Indeed, there used to be a time when simply mixing clips with different Field Orders would cause Video Studio to collapse in a heap, even when following what is now the recommended procedure. At that time, you had to use Video Workshop to be able to use clips from different sources with different Field Orders.

That has in theory been fixed in VS9 but it is still asking a lot of a computer to do all this conversion AND the multiplexing etc in one step instead of two, particularly if your computer is not particularly powerful to start with. In your case, you have DV/AVI shot on a Canon, so I would hazard the guess it is Lower Field First (with one or two exceptions, mainly certain Sony cameras). Your mpegs are from an analogue source, which would normally make them Upper Field First (though this varies with the capture device). Yet if you chose MPEG-2 when you first captured them instead of DVD, potentially you could have captured them as Frame Based. But then in the end, when going to Share > Create Disc > DVD, you revert to (presumably again) Lower Field First for everything (unless you have varied the DVD template for this project). It's all a bit complicated in your case, I am afraid, and might benefit from a bit of the simplification of the step by step approach involved in the recommended procedures.

[Marc L]

Thank you all for your assistance. Once I stopped using Shrink and Fit and got my head around the bit rates and audio coding I was able to successfully burn a DVD. The final product looks good except for some interlace issues on some specific material a friend shot. (I'm going to reread Ken's comments about field order.)

Does VideoStudio ever go on sale online? It doesn't seem to be readily available in Canadian retail stores.

[rguthrie]

Give http://www.academicsuperstore.com a look. It's $69.95 US.

Ron G.

[Ken Berry]

Ron -- by the name of the store, one might have to check whether that special price is in fact for the 'educational version' of the program. As you might recall from a post from Singapore a week or so ago, the educational version may not be the full version, and is certainly not regarded by Ulead as qualifying for the free downloads of the mpeg-4 etc plug-ins.

[rguthrie]

Ken,

Good point, that poor kid in Singapore got duped, but the software offered here is the full version. They also offer a upgrade price at a considerable savings as well.

Ron G.

[bstansbury]

Marc L,... Here are a couple of recommendations that might help you in the future.

1. Don't every "Burn a Disk" with VS9... Create VIDEO_TS folders and burn with Nero. You can find all kinds of people that have had bad results burning with VS.
2. Go read the recommended Process Sticky at the top.,.. then read it again, until you can say you really understand it. Take any one of your video avi files and look very close at the properties. Do they match what you will need to make a DVD? Save your project as an "MPEG Video File" and make sure the compression settings you use are what you want for you're final DVD, be very specific about everything, quality, bit rate, upper/lower, Audio, LPCM, 16 bit, 48000 Hz, etc. then save it.
3. Load the project into a "New Clean Project" and go straight to "Share", load the MPEG file, select Create disk, check the Custom Compression settintgs and make sure they match your orginal MPEG file, Select "Create Video Folders" and de-select "Burn Disk"
4. ONce the VOB files are created use DVD2ONE or DVDShrink to resize the video to fit on your disk.
5. ONce the new VOB's files are created, use PowerDVD to play them and prove the video is good,.. this includes menu's and chapters if you created them.
6. Finally, the final check step,.. Burn the results on a DVD R/W disk and test it in several DVD players,... not the one on your PC,.. as it will most always work there.

This may seem like a lot of work, but it is a guaranteed process to get a good DVD.

[Ken Berry]

Sorry, bstansbury, but can I make a minor, but important, clarification to your otherwise excellent outline of procedure. You say "Save your project as an 'MPEG Video File'" -- that is correct in a general sense. Of course you need a DVD-compliant mpeg-2 to burn a successful DVD. But to make sure you actually 'save' your project as a DVD-compliant mpeg, you should choose Share > Create Video File, and then select 'DVD' rather than 'mpeg-2', because the default properties of the latter are usually different from those in 'DVD' and may not be fully DVD-compliant.

[bstansbury]

Ken,

You are absolutely right. That is the process I used. You have to go to "Share", Create Video File, and at that point I now go straight to "Custom" because the present values in DVD don't aways match what my final DVD needs to be. This way I need to make sure about each setting and I don't leave anything for chance. In my house some of my systems won't take Dolby Digital Audio which is the default in DVD settings.

thanks for the correction.