How To Avoid Re-rendering Mpeg2 Video In Mydvd?, My frustration over a feature from EMC7 that appears to have been drop Options

[ricksonntag]

I have a bunch of TV video files that I have captured in MPEG2, 352x480, 3MB/sec target bit rate. These settings provide quality that is indistinguishable from the (rather mediocre) NTSC analog source, but can nicely fit 3 hours of video on a single-layer DVD-R. I do this periodically to clear off my hard drive onto DVDs that I can later watch on my set-top DVD player.

I am a long-time user of EMC7's DVD Builder, which had the very nice feature that you could set the DVD burning to "Best" quality, but if the video source was more compressed than "Best," it would use the existing MPG files to create the DVD without re-rendering, re-encoding, or transcoding (whatever you want to call it) the video. As a result, it was FAST - I could do a 3 hour DVD in about 30 minutes. - and free of any artifacts that might come from re-rendering the video.

Now I have upgraded to EMC8, and I'm beginning to wonder, "Why did I do this?" When I try to do the same thing I used to do on EMC7's DVD Builder, the "capacity thermometer" shows that I cannot get anywhere near 3 hours of video on the DVD. True, I can click the "fit to disc" button, but it sure looks to me like it's re-rendering all the video, which means it is slow and, I fear, will lead to unnecessary artifacts.

So what's going on? Is there any way to get EMC8 to use the MPEG video without re-rendering? I'm about to uninstall this thing and go back to EMC7, but before I do that I'm hoping one of you can set me straight.

This post has been edited by ricksonntag: Feb 12 2006, 10:59 AM

[Kenn Kong]

I feel your pain. I have found that if I set the project settings to custom with the same parameters as the source files, the rendering goes much faster.

I do wish Roxio's product had a feature like Ulead Video Studio, which will ask if you want to set the production settings to the same as the first input file you add to the project.

[ricksonntag]

I tried setting the compression parameters to the same as the input files, with the intention of seeing how it affected the speed. Unfortunatly, MyDVD will not support any bitrate lower than 4.5MB/sec. (Even if it did 3.0 MB/sec, I'd have no way to be sure the variable bit rate is supported, since that does not appear to be an option.)

So it looks like there's no way to get 3 hours onto an authored DVD! 4.5 MB/sec gets you about 2 hours max on a single-layer DVD.

Looks like I'm back to version 7. It's a shame, the audio-DVD sounded like it would be a really nice feature.

[ricksonntag]

I decided to go ahead and add 3 hours worth of files to my Project to see if the "Auto Fit" feature would compress it down far enough to fit on a single layer DVD. But in the middle of adding 8 files (each one taking about 2 minutes while MyDVD cranked away), the program crashed.

So I went back in to try again. But I keep getting an error message saying "The task you are trying to initiate requires MyDVD, but it is already running." Hoping to avoid a total reboot, I tried killing some processes in the Task Manager, but that didn't work either.

I hate to say it, but this thing (even with the 8.05 update) looks to be even buggier than 7.0 was in its early days. I'm just not impressed at all with this version. I think it's time to downgrade again...

This post has been edited by ricksonntag: Feb 12 2006, 02:27 PM

[JC]

Did your try to create an ISO instead?

[ricksonntag]

Did your try to create an ISO instead?

That's what I was intending to do to test its speed, since it takes the burn rate out of the equation. After I rebooted and started adding more MPEGs, it choked at 2 hours of video, refusing to compress down to 4700MB. Every video I add gives me a red overflow line, so I know that the ISO will be too big for a single-side DVD. Nevertheless, I'm trying it right now just to see how slow it is. The preview is running at slower than real time, so I can tell this thing is going to take about 3 hours to re-render 2 hours of video, without even accounting for the additional time to burn the DVD.

I realize that I could probably take that ISO image and use a different program to compress it down to 4700 MB. (I think Disc Copier would do that on EMC7, but I've seen messages here suggesting the it does NOT do that on EMC8.)

I think it is absurd for me to sit for 3 hours for EMC to re-render my video files into BIGGER files than the were to begin with. You don't gain any quality by making the files bigger than they were to start. For my purposes, this is a significant DOWNGRADE of this program from EMC7. I'm gonna cancel the process, uninstall EMC8, and go back to EMC7.

I recall it only taking about 1/2 hour to burn a 3-hour DVD unde EMC7, but it's been a month since I did it. The short time is due to the fact that EMC7 uses the MPEG2 files as-is, without re-rendering the video. So all it does is generate the AC3 audio stream (and whatever other streams are needed) and combines the streams into the VOB files). Just out of curiosity, after I reinstall EMC7, I am going to measure the time it takes (to see if my memory is correct). I'll post it here if you guys are curious.

Last note: 10 minutes have passed and EMC8 has rendered 2% of the video. Looks like it would take 8 hours if I let it go to completion!!!!

[JC]

The speed of the rendering depends on a lot of factors such as, but not limited to: speed of your CPU, Type and size of file, video card and memory w/ the memory card.

[ricksonntag]

The speed of the rendering depends on a lot of factors such as, but not limited to: speed of your CPU, Type and size of file, video card and memory w/ the memory card.

Well I certainly understand that. But my comparisons are based on using the same computer, video card, and memory - the only thing that is different is the version of EMC that I use in the two cases. Since EMC7 would author a DVD without ANY re-rendering, it's hard to beat that speed no matter what the speed of the hardware.

This post has been edited by ricksonntag: Feb 12 2006, 06:04 PM

[grandpabruce]

Well I certainly understand that. But my comparisons are based on using the same computer, video card, and memory - the only thing that is different is the version of EMC that I use in the two cases. Since EMC7 would author a DVD without ANY re-rendering, it's hard to beat that speed no matter what the speed of the hardware.

I used EMC 7 and EMC 7.5 quite extensively for burning my home movies to DVD's. I don't remember one that did not involve encoding. I am not talking about just encoding the transitions, text, or anything else that I added to the production. All of the mpeg2's encoded, also.

[ricksonntag]

OK, so I finally re-installed EMC7, and then the Build 430 update, and ran my little experiment. I took a project with 8 21-minute TV shows @ ~485MB each (3986MB total), plus two menus and a 15MB intro video. I set it to create an ISO image without burning a DVD.

I set the quality to "Best" (9MB/s bit rate), but the dialog box EXPLICITLY states, "These settings apply to all titles in your project which will require rendering." Results:

Start time: 11:05:15
End time: 11:19:20
Total time: 14 minutes 5 seconds
Final ISO image size: 4045 MB

Note that at a rate of 9MB/s, there is NO WAY I would have fit 170 minutes of video onto a 4.3GB disc. So EMC7 did not re-render the video - it used the MPEG source files (which, at 352x480, complied with NTSC DVD specifications) without re-rendering them. That is how it was able to do it in 14 minutes.

As the ISO image creation progressed, the dialog did say it was "encoding." But I do not believe it was encoding the video stream. It did have to encode the audio into AC3 format.

Let me put it simply. If you, or someone you know, has been able to create an ISO image with 170+ minutes of video to fit on a single layer DVD using EMC8 in 14 minutes or less, please let me know what his settings were. Because I have not been able to get anywhere near that performance using EMC8.

The capability to author DVDs without re-rendering the video was rolled out in one of the early updates to EMC7, and there was quite a bit of discussion of it on this very message board a few years ago. It is a very useful feature due to its speed and greater control of the compression settings (via the original compression source). I find it extremely disappointing that EMC8 apparently does not include that capability.

[ricksonntag]

grandpabruce - One thing I failed to mention. In my experience with EMC7, if you do ANY editing using VideoWave or any of the other Roxio products, DVD Builder will want to re-render the entire video. That may be why it re-rendered everything for you.

I don't do many transitions or anything. I use a shareware editor to cut out TV commercials (this particular program does that without re-encoding the source), then run DVD Builder to construct the menus and author the DVD.

I think you'll agree that rendering 3 hours of video in 14 minutes would not be possible if it was re-rendering the MPEG video streams.

[grandpabruce]

grandpabruce - One thing I failed to mention. In my experience with EMC7, if you do ANY editing using VideoWave or any of the other Roxio products, DVD Builder will want to re-render the entire video. That may be why it re-rendered everything for you.

I don't do many transitions or anything. I use a shareware editor to cut out TV commercials (this particular program does that without re-encoding the source), then run DVD Builder to construct the menus and author the DVD.

I think you'll agree that rendering 3 hours of video in 14 minutes would not be possible if it was re-rendering the MPEG video streams.

I believe that you are correct. I did editing on all of my mpeg2's. If it was captured at 9MB/s, in 7.5, it should not re-encode. I think that EMC 8.0 has more options, but I think that 9.0 MB/sec is still the highest it will go, but it should not re-encode if the captured file is 9MB/s and you have not done any editing. If you cut out parts of that video in a program like VideoReDo, VideoReDo does not re-encode it, and if burned in MyDVD, it should not be re-encoded. However, if you make those same cuts in VideoWave, then take it into MyDVD, for burning, it will re-encode, I think.

You are also correct that if it was re-encoding the file, you would never get 3 hours completed in 14 minutes. lol

[JC]

Generally in my experiences when I encode it takes as long as the production itself( eg if the production is 2 hours it will take almost 2 hours to encode)

[grandpabruce]

Generally in my experiences when I encode it takes as long as the production itself( eg if the production is 2 hours it will take almost 2 hours to encode)

jm, if it is an mpeg2, which is the DVD compliant standard, then it is just basically copying the file to a DVD. That isn't totally accurate, but is close to what it is doing.

Avi files, on the other hand, are a far different story.

[JC]

That was a general rule of thumb that I had experienced. you are right AVI in my experiences generally take a little longer

[kansascrow]

I don't do many transitions or anything. I use a shareware editor to cut out TV commercials (this particular program does that without re-encoding the source), then run DVD Builder to construct the menus and author the DVD.

What shareware editor do you use?

[ggrussell]

I use a shareware editor to cut out TV commercials (this particular program does that without re-encoding the source),

What program are you using? I have a project to do and I could cut out a lot of time if I could edit without re-rendering.

[ricksonntag]

I use mpeg-vcr, available at http://www.womble.com/ In addition to editing mpeg files, it can also extract mpeg video from .VOB files.

This post has been edited by ricksonntag: Feb 15 2006, 03:16 AM

[ggrussell]

Ah... Thanks I looked at that last night on the net. I ended up buying TMPGenc MPEG editor. Works great and easy to use.

[ricksonntag]

Over a year has passed since I wrote my original comment, and I am still using EMC7 (DVD Builder), and have kept EMC8 gathering dust on the shelf, because EMC8 (MyDVD) insisted on re-encoding video when it really did not need to. You can re-read my original message for all the details.

Has Roxio done anything to enable EMC8/MyDVD to author a DVD without re-encoding the video (if the source file is DVD-compliant MPEG2)? Has there been a new patch or update to provide this?

How about version 9? Do they restore that capability with that version?

I am about to buy Nero if I cannot get this with EMC. I now need double-layer support, so I need to do something.

This post has been edited by ricksonntag: May 27 2007, 07:21 AM