[Raemur]

All I want to do is take my home movies and turn them into dvds. I am only wanting to add some dissolves where I turned the camera off and on and add some basic chapter menus to navigate the dvd.

After reading the many wonderful things here, I did the dissolves in Videowave, output to a videofile as mpeg-2 best for dvd. Then I went to mydvd and added my menus and burned to an iso file. Next I used Creator Classic to burn that to a dvd. The video quality is great. The only thing I don't quite understand is the widescreen menu I build seems to lose room around the margins when it is played on the dvd player as opposed to the preview option in mydvd. That's easy enough to work around, just doesn't seem to make sense since all my settings are widescreen (both movie and menus) and my tv is set correctly.

It seems like lot of workarounds but when I did it using the defaults in videowave or mydvd, my video quality was unacceptable. Is the above workflow what you guys would recommend? I have at best a marginal grasp for the technical side of what I am saying, I got all the above from reading this board. There is so much to learn, I would be throwing my computer out the window if it weren't for the help you guys have provided.

Thanks!

If you need it, here is what I can find as far as my hardware:
Dell Dimension DXP061
Intel ® Core ™ 2 Quad CPU
Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz
2.39 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
XP Home Version 2002, Service Pack 3
NVIDIA GdForice 8600 GT

[REDWAGON]

Not sure when you made your production id you used the "TV Safe Zone Icon to check to see if all of your photos, text slides, videos, menus etc. where with the TV screen area. (See attached for this Icon)

Frank...

[Raemur]

I didn't. I thought by checking the "preview" I would see it as it would show on the tv. Do you know why it crops so much out? Or is it stretching it or something?

Also, does anyone have any thoughts on the workflow portion of this? It seems like a lot of steps for something that would appear to be so basic.

[sknis]

I didn't. I thought by checking the "preview" I would see it as it would show on the tv. Do you know why it crops so much out? Or is it stretching it or something?

Also, does anyone have any thoughts on the workflow portion of this? It seems like a lot of steps for something that would appear to be so basic.

Video Editing is NOT a simple and basic project. I didn't read all your work flow but compare it with this one. (the images are from Creator 2009) or this one
To read all about TV safe zone and how to work with it, read this. Modern TV have a smaller TV safe zone but you would have to play with how much for the worst possible case. I'm sure someone out there you know has an old tube style TV.

This post has been edited by sknis: 14 May 2009 - 01:03 PM

[Larry]

I didn't. I thought by checking the "preview" I would see it as it would show on the tv. Do you know why it crops so much out? Or is it stretching it or something?

Also, does anyone have any thoughts on the workflow portion of this? It seems like a lot of steps for something that would appear to be so basic.

Re Workflow - What you are using is giving you the quality you want now and since that's what counts, then it is a good approach. The only part that most of us do different is to just add the Videowave project to MyDVD rather than output it to an mpeg file then use the mpeg in MyDVD. But since that wasn't giving you the quality results you wanted, but the method you are using does, stick with your method.

You can burn directly to a disc if you want rather than an .ISO image file. Most of us use the Image file (or Video Folders) method the same as you listed. It separates the encoding and burning processes so if something goes wrong with one or the other, you aren't starting over from scratch.

Re "Preview" - What you are seeing is TV Overscan which happens on all TV's. It's more noticeable on older regular TV's. It's still there on the newer flat panel types, but the overscan area is much smaller. The "TV Safe Zone" indicator in the apps is to give you a very general area that may be cut off because of TV overscan. If you do a search on here for "overscan", you'll find a lot of posts that discuss it and explain it further. Just keep your menu test away from the edges a bit.

Have you played the DVD on your pc btw? You shouldn't see any of the edges cutoff there.

[sknis]

Great minds !

[Larry]

Great minds !

Yup

[Raemur]

Thanks for all your thoughts! Glad to know I'm on the right track trying to follow what you guys do (who obviously know much more than I). One question, I just tried one where I had 1:17 of video and I would like to do it all on one disc. With doing it through the above workflow, it put it on two discs since it was over the size. Did I miss something about fitting to disc? I had it checked everywhere on my options but I'm guessing that by doing the iso, I bypass that. Is there a fit to disc option going that method since that gave me the good quality I was after?

Also, you're right, on the pc nothing is cut off, it's only when I play it on my widescreen tv with dvd player.

Again, thanks for the feedback. I would be lost without it!

[sknis]

If you make the image file (ISO),Creator Classic will make it fit on a single disc and it won't take much time.

This post has been edited by sknis: 14 May 2009 - 03:31 PM