Why no "Roxio MyDVD Premier 8" product?

[aprilia1k]

Seems that the Roxio products listed are mostly around "Easy Media Creator" or somesuch --- I've bought at least one... I most recently purchased "MyDVD Premier 8" since most of what I want to do involves taking TIVO files to DVD, with some editing preferably.

 

EVERY TIME I use the app, it hangs at some point in to the editing process - often on the VCGProxyFileManager.exe issues which are well-threaded here. I do not find any solutions though - does Roxio even monitor threads on these forums? I don't want to sound like a whiner/troublemaker, but I have spent hundreds of dollars on Roxio software -- I notice they never seem to create patches updates, or seldom, but instead release the next version which you can upgrade to - for more cash. The only reason for upgrading would be to hope for the bugfix to the problems that prevent your current purchase from doing what it is designed, marketed and paid-for to do. I don't need a new version - myDVD Premier 8 has the functionality I need - but, since it's the buggiest software i have EVER used (I am a software engineer by the way), the functionality is, well, barely functional. Example is the abovementioned VCGProxyFileManager issue - the product hangs and never comes back. You lose edits and have to start over or give up. I always save after every edit function, and always to a new name (this is after being burned by broken projects guys). Like I said - spent a lot of money and have nothing to show for it - I have managed to get just ONE tivo file edited to a dvd of my liking, in well over a year. The rest sit there as archival, hoping for a better product or patch to someday come along. I started at version 6... EMC 9 has myDVD in it, but it is apparently ver. 8, the one I already own.

 

Other frequent issues:

"Fit to DVD" - presumably adjusting quality settings as you add content. DOESN'T WORK. It takes a 1gb tivo file, and gladly makes a 4.5gb dvd... I add a second 1gb tivo file, and it does not "fit to disk" as it should, it tells me that the project size is 8 or more gb, despite my selecting fit-to-disk of 4.7gb or whatever.. very annoying. Manually sizing is a semi-workaround... but a poor one. WHY CANNOT A 1gb tivo file just come in to myDVD as a 1gb video? With a tivo that has a burner, I can put 4 of these on a dvd... with myDVD, I can fit ONE on a dvd (using fit-to-disk).

 

HANGS habitually --- if you edit, forget it. Ugghhh..

 

Sounds like whining and complaining --- but, like I said, I have spent hundreds on Roxio products and upgrades, hoping that they've worked these unforgiveable bugs out (QA? Roxio, ever hear of QA????).

I've read the forums - lots of people encounter these same issues - with great member support offering feedback -- but, no solutions - none that I have seen.

 

I need help getting myDVD to reliably (even SEMI-reliably) provide for edited tivo content in a dvd. I have used the products on about 5 different computers -- Intel/AMD, no matter -- all with 2-4gb of memory and tb+ diskspace... the problems are not particular to architecture of the hardware - they're clearly bugs. Does Roxio fix bugs? Where is the patch for the crash/hang myDVD scenarios? I know there are a ton of us who encounter the problems... at what point do we reach critical mass? Roxio just goes and releases a new version, with no mention ("known problems/issues") of whether these things are fixed, so you buy the next version, and -- nope, problem still there... and they got more of my money. Being the only tivo-player has made Roxio a bit lax it would seem. The folks at tivo don't seem concerned yet...

 

Sorry for the rant - I hope you allow my post - no swearing etc... after all, and I am a paying customer. Maybe somone will listen, or has a real solution that I somehow missed while swimming through all these posts. Also, I would happily contribute to helping out others here if I could just get things working for myself.

 

Cheers friends,

 

aprilia1k

aka Stephen

[bimicher]

Seems that the Roxio products listed are mostly around "Easy Media Creator" or somesuch --- I've bought at least one... I most recently purchased "MyDVD Premier 8" since most of what I want to do involves taking TIVO files to DVD, with some editing preferably.

 

 

Other frequent issues:

"Fit to DVD" - presumably adjusting quality settings as you add content. DOESN'T WORK. It takes a 1gb tivo file, and gladly makes a 4.5gb dvd... I add a second 1gb tivo file, and it does not "fit to disk" as it should, it tells me that the project size is 8 or more gb, despite my selecting fit-to-disk of 4.7gb or whatever.. very annoying. Manually sizing is a semi-workaround... but a poor one. WHY CANNOT A 1gb tivo file just come in to myDVD as a 1gb video? With a tivo that has a burner, I can put 4 of these on a dvd... with myDVD, I can fit ONE on a dvd (using fit-to-disk).

 

 

Cheers friends,

 

aprilia1k

aka Stephen

 

A standard 4.7Gb DVD will hold 60 minutes of DVD compliant video at best quality. If your video is longer then 60 minutes it will have to be compressed to fit on the DVD. Using "Fit to Disk" does not create good quality and I don't think it works at all of the video is too long in time. I have never used it because of this. What I do (and is recommened often in this forum) is to "burn" to an iso (image) file and then use DiscCOpier to burn the iso file to DVD. DiscCopier seems to be much better in compressing the video and retaining the quality. Unfortunately I don't think DiscCopier is part is part of myDVD 8 Premier.

 

Also TiVo files are very highly compressed and are not standard DVD compliant format. Someone else may have more information on using TiVo. There is also a special forum for TiVo users under Other Applications I think.

 

 

 

Roxio does not monitor these forums directly but occasionally someone from them does respond unofficially.

[lynn98109]

The format called DVD Video is based on time, not the quantity of data like a data disc - just as an Audio CD is based on time, not quantity of data..

 

An example is a friend of mine took some songs from CD and made .mp3 files, then selected some of the .mp3 files and made a disc for me. It is an .mp3 disc, and has less than 72MB of data.

 

If I were to take that data and make a standard music CD from the files, it would take almost the entire 700MB - or possibly even not fit on the disc. It would also be a major degradation of quality compared to the original music CDs.

 

Lynn

[aprilia1k]

A standard 4.7Gb DVD will hold 60 minutes of DVD compliant video at best quality. If your video is longer then 60 minutes it will have to be compressed to fit on the DVD. Using "Fit to Disk" does not create good quality and I don't think it works at all of the video is too long in time. I have never used it because of this. What I do (and is recommened often in this forum) is to "burn" to an iso (image) file and then use DiscCOpier to burn the iso file to DVD. DiscCopier seems to be much better in compressing the video and retaining the quality. Unfortunately I don't think DiscCopier is part is part of myDVD 8 Premier.

 

Also TiVo files are very highly compressed and are not standard DVD compliant format. Someone else may have more information on using TiVo. There is also a special forum for TiVo users under Other Applications I think.

 

 

 

Roxio does not monitor these forums directly but occasionally someone from them does respond unofficially.

 

 

Thanks for the reply, first.

 

I know everything you've said here. One thing you've got wrong - DiscCopier does not do any compression - the software which creates the ISO file is responsible for that. The ISO file (Industry Standard...) is already compressed to be dvd-compliant. DiskCopier has the simple task of putting the ISO on to a DVD medium. If DiskCopier can take 8+ gb ISO files and burn to 4.7gb disks, then it is, as you say, re-rendering the content to a different compression ratio... but, one would be best off to create the ISO at 4.7gb to begin with. DVDShrink is a share/free? ware product that takes unencrypted 8.xgb DVDs (or daemon-mounted ISO files) and creates great quality 4.7gb ISO files for later burning (or will burn via plugins like dvddecrypter or even NERO). Anyway - it would be best to create the 4.7gb ISO to begin with, render once, then burn. Anyway, as you say - Standard dvd-compliant is quite high quality. The point of taking tivo videos, say recorded at tivo's "medium" quality, which looks quite good (standard broadcast television is nowhere near dvd-compliant, after all....) --- taking tivo files and putting them on a dvd, one would hope to at least preserve the quality that they have -- they are fairly standard, in terms of compressed video, except for the copyright/license info - my point was that, as many people who buy Roxio, I too want to put tivo vids on to DVD. Roxio will "up-convert" the compressed vid (1gb) to 4.7gb, and do a horrific job of it - the result looks far worse than the original tivo video. You'll find this sentiment repeated all over these forums. Believe it or not, Roxio sold A LOT of product to tivo users --- directly as a result of Tivo giving them exclusivity (hackers not included) to their format and encoding, and marketing them as an add-on for tivo at-home/to-go functionality. So, many (I'd wager a majority, but can't support that opinion with facts) Roxio users are looking for tivo support. Dragging 4 1gb tivo files in to myDVD, with "fit-to-disk" turned on results in going way over the 4.7gb size limit. YET, with my Tivo that includes a DVD-burner, I can create a compliant DVD, with these same 4 tivo files, and have near original-broadcast quality (looks good to me). Trouble is, commercials - we buy Roxio to remove commercials and have DVD copies of our tivo-recorded content. Again, a 1gb tivo file, with 1 hour of vid, looks near as good as the original broadcast, and takes 1gb on a compliant-dvd burned via my tivo dvd hardware. Roxio should be able to do this, 1) without hanging contiually, and 2) without pixelizing and de-sync'ing audio, etc... --- it's still beta quality s/w at best - a mediocre renderer and terrible working-file ("proxy" files) management... ugh..

 

I do appreciate the reply, and stand by my assertion that Roxio should at least maintain the quality of tivo compressed vidoes. We're all friends, hey.

 

Stephen

[aprilia1k]

The format called DVD Video is based on time, not the quantity of data like a data disc - just as an Audio CD is based on time, not quantity of data..

 

An example is a friend of mine took some songs from CD and made .mp3 files, then selected some of the .mp3 files and made a disc for me. It is an .mp3 disc, and has less than 72MB of data.

 

If I were to take that data and make a standard music CD from the files, it would take almost the entire 700MB - or possibly even not fit on the disc. It would also be a major degradation of quality compared to the original music CDs.

 

Lynn

 

Hi Lynn -

 

You're right - but you're mostly wrong here. An ISO compliant DVD, one which can play on virtually any player - can contain alot more video TIME than the 2.x hours that "DVD quality" compression offers. Television, even digital, is usually "broadcast quality" and is far lower than DVD quality. One can burn DVDs, that maintain that broadcast quality, that have 4+ hours of video on them. TIVO, at medium quality, is near-broadcast quality. One can burn a DVD with 4 hours on it. At lesser quality, a 4.7gb DVD can hold 6 hours of video. It is still a DVD, and can be played on any DVD player made in the last several years. Like I said, television broadcasts (not incl. HD) are way lower than DVD quality, but most folks enjoy them almost daily. The point is, to closely maintain that broadcast quality, and have a viewable DVD, one can get 4+ hours in the same space as a "DVD quality" disk that contains 2 hours of vid.

 

Also, aside from mp3 having many different bit-rate and sample-rate options, making a quality mp3 that most would find indistinquishable from the original CD, at roughly 20% of the space, is easy. Newer still, MP3 PRO (MP3 + SBR (spectral band replication) has proven indistinquishable from "CD quality" 44.1 khz, 16-bit audio in blind tests. Don't be fooled by the ancient "CD-quality" format - newer audio formats and codecs, (MPC on the edge) are at least EQUAL to CD-quality (16-bit, 44.1 khz sample rate, like typical .wav format) and they use substantially less space. CD-format is quite wasteful of space, and it's about 20 years old now, remember.

 

Thanks again Lynn,

 

Stephen

[bimicher]

One thing you've got wrong - DiscCopier does not do any compression - the software which creates the ISO file is responsible for that.

Stephen

 

Obviously you don't know what DiscCopier all does. It doesn't matter if you call it compression, rendering or transcoding, DiscCopier does indeed take iso files greater then 4.7Gb and compresses them to burn to a 4.7Gb DVD. I have over 100 DVDs that I have created from iso files that are > 6Gb.

[aprilia1k]

Obviously you don't know what DiscCopier all does. It doesn't matter if you call it compression, rendering or transcoding, DiscCopier does indeed take iso files greater then 4.7Gb and compresses them to burn to a 4.7Gb DVD. I have over 100 DVDs that I have created from iso files that are > 6Gb.

 

Hi - thanks for the correction. I did mention "If DiskCopier can take 8+ gb ISO files and burn to 4.7gb disks, then it is, as you say, re-rendering the content to a different compression ratio... but, one would be best off to create the ISO at 4.7gb to begin with" -- realizing that it may re-size as well. Sounds like, in your experience, it does a nice job of this - so that's great. My problems are really associated with using myDVD and, through it, VideoWave. When using tivo formatted files, it is really bad. When I was talking about the "fit-to-disk" option, I was concerned with fitting these broadcast-quality (way more compressed) on to a 4.7gb disk. By default, it wants to take a 1gb, 1 hour, video (of surprisingly good quality for that level of compression), and it wants to expand it to DVD-quality (which of course makes no sense). Anyway - I am just wishing that they had done a better job designing, and more thorough job testing, the Tivo compatibility - which was the single reason I purchased (now three) versions of EMC and/or myDVD. I'm just bummed by this. I appreciate your response, and I'm glad that the s/w works so well for your needs.

Take care,

 

Stephen

[grandpabruce]

Hi - thanks for the correction. I did mention "If DiskCopier can take 8+ gb ISO files and burn to 4.7gb disks, then it is, as you say, re-rendering the content to a different compression ratio... but, one would be best off to create the ISO at 4.7gb to begin with" -- realizing that it may re-size as well. Sounds like, in your experience, it does a nice job of this - so that's great. My problems are really associated with using myDVD and, through it, VideoWave. When using tivo formatted files, it is really bad. When I was talking about the "fit-to-disk" option, I was concerned with fitting these broadcast-quality (way more compressed) on to a 4.7gb disk. By default, it wants to take a 1gb, 1 hour, video (of surprisingly good quality for that level of compression), and it wants to expand it to DVD-quality (which of course makes no sense). Anyway - I am just wishing that they had done a better job designing, and more thorough job testing, the Tivo compatibility - which was the single reason I purchased (now three) versions of EMC and/or myDVD. I'm just bummed by this. I appreciate your response, and I'm glad that the s/w works so well for your needs.

Take care,

 

Stephen

 

Steve, it looks like the software isn't going to do for you, what you need it to do, nor will any version of EMC 9. There may be something out there that will meet your needs, but I doubt that anything less than what the movie industry uses, will meet your standards. That equipment and software could cost you something in the 6 or 7 figure category, though.

 

And, it probably doesn't even support the low quality of Tivo.

[d_deweywright]

My problems are really associated with using myDVD and, through it, VideoWave. When using tivo formatted files, it is really bad. When I was talking about the "fit-to-disk" option, I was concerned with fitting these broadcast-quality (way more compressed) on to a 4.7gb disk. By default, it wants to take a 1gb, 1 hour, video (of surprisingly good quality for that level of compression), and it wants to expand it to DVD-quality (which of course makes no sense). Anyway - I am just wishing that they had done a better job designing, and more thorough job testing, the Tivo compatibility - which was the single reason I purchased (now three) versions of EMC and/or myDVD. I'm just bummed by this. I appreciate your response, and I'm glad that the s/w works so well for your needs.

Take care,

 

Stephen

Might I suggest an explanation for this? DVD players, and EMC 9, have a particular codec, or set of codecs, of which none may support the more highly compressed Tivo formatted file. The only possibility of retaining that quality of image then, would indeed be to expand it to the DVD-quality format, from which the DVD player can then achieve a similar quality. If we consider that Tivo is a more recent format player/recorder than the DVD player, it's entirely likely that Tivo supports more highly compressed files than DVD players.

 

It's only a guess on my part, but I think that just because Tivo supports a particular compression scheme, thinking that any and all DVD players should also support it is not necessarily a good leap of logic.

[aprilia1k]

Steve, it looks like the software isn't going to do for you, what you need it to do, nor will any version of EMC 9. There may be something out there that will meet your needs, but I doubt that anything less than what the movie industry uses, will meet your standards. That equipment and software could cost you something in the 6 or 7 figure category, though.

 

And, it probably doesn't even support the low quality of Tivo.

 

 

Guys -- I really only want it to do what it is advertised to do, without crashing constantly. Don't need movie industry s/w. Roxio advertises this functionality --- and their s/w crashes when trying to use it, habitually - blaming the h/w and s/w on the PC, which all runs fine - is lame, just finger-pointing. I run, as I've said, literally dozens of diverse apps using all sorts of h/w and peripherals, and they all play fine. Roxio, with regards it's advertised Tivo functionality - is a house-of-cards in the wind. That's it. My "standards" are simply to have a reasonaly Q.A.'d product. I can't debate further - it's pointless and silly - you "guru's" are just too smart for me. replies won't be read now. thanks for the ex-spurt advice, eh?

 

Sheesh.

[cdanteek]

I can't debate further - it's pointless and silly - you "guru's" are just too smart for me. thanks for the ex-spurt advice, eh?

 

Sheesh.

 

 

cd

[aprilia1k]

Might I suggest an explanation for this? DVD players, and EMC 9, have a particular codec, or set of codecs, of which none may support the more highly compressed Tivo formatted file. The only possibility of retaining that quality of image then, would indeed be to expand it to the DVD-quality format, from which the DVD player can then achieve a similar quality. If we consider that Tivo is a more recent format player/recorder than the DVD player, it's entirely likely that Tivo supports more highly compressed files than DVD players.

 

It's only a guess on my part, but I think that just because Tivo supports a particular compression scheme, thinking that any and all DVD players should also support it is not necessarily a good leap of logic.

 

Ok - uh... not the same page here, friend - what you said, well - it is well-intentioned; I refrain from dissecting it, but um, thinking I'm not in agreement with the explanation, though I really do appreciate it, really ... ISO is the primary standard org, governing a "compliant" DVD, and the headers, data composition, etc.. which it contains. and... I don't want to get flames going here - and don't want the moderator to i.d. me as a troublemaker. Thanks for the comments, really. I burn tivo-content DVDs direct from my tivo box, play 'em on all my friend's DVD players (except that 8-yr old one up at the cabin --- compression level, or quality setting, doesn't matter one bit. If it's ISO-compliant, it can have 8 hours of vid (if you don't mind fuzzy garbage, generally... , and play fine on your dvd player. Trouble is: those dang commercials! but, wait, Roxio to the rescue!!! You can edit them right out.... or, wait --- only when the moon is a quarter-waning and you've sacrificed ..... I know that's not very funny, and I apologize. You get my point perhaps. It's not just me and my bad luck - other apps and drivers and so forth - poor excuses, when all the other s/w runs fine. And the runaway VCGProxyFileManager binary can't really be blamed on what other apps you have on your machine (I always shut EVERYTHING else down when I run Roxio - I know how unstable it is, after all Friends here, just different views or understandings I think.

 

Just some info - all in friendly, cooperative fashion - Tivo unit's often come with DVD burners attached, which create DVDs that can be played on virtually all players built in the last 5 years. The format of a tivo file is not that different from MPG - just some license/copyright headers and such that differ from MPG. Pretty sure this is correct. This is why there are hacked utilities out there that can convert tivo to mpg in seconds, on a fast machine. Audio sync can be an issue - in fact it's more problematic than video, generally, for such conversions and hardware like portable players and such. I am a software engineer, I write embedded systems code most recently, but do mobile/cellular network (protocols, etc..) s/w, and n/w in general - I'm not an expert in digital vid or audio s/w, but I know most fundamentals. An ISO-compliant DVD can contain video content with many different levels of compression, aspect ratio, audio bitrates and sampling rates -- and can be played on any modern player. I'm not pullin' your leg, really! I have successfully created single-sided, single-layer dvds (4.7gb) with 4+ hours _using_ MyDVD. And, my DVD drive is not a factor anyway --- I could just as easily be creating an ISO image instead of writing direct to a disk.

 

Most importantly - my issue with myDVD's reluctance to auto-calc the quality parameters (i.e. fit-to-dvd) for multiple tivo files is not a major one. I can manually set the quality and MyDVD handles the rendering just fine (meaning, it _could_ have figured out quality settings needed to fit those four files, or whatever) - again, not pullin your leg or spouting nonsense. This is truth. MyDVD works fine with Tivo, burning DVDs with several hours of content, if ya don't mind the quality reduction that fewer samples and lower bit-rates naturally dictate. MyDVD does this quite nicely (large scale changes from original quality, up _or_ down, usually mean more artifacts and pixelation, etc... - but that's ok, that's understandable. This is if ya leave the commercials in the content. But ... my tivo can write me that DVD already. I want the commercials out. That's functionality the Roxio promises in their advertised support for tivo format files.

 

My only real issue is, while it works intermittently, editing - that is snipping commercials, from tivo-based content (again, no drive here --- just a vid file and roxio jogging across the bus to mem and disk) usually results in hanging Roxio software - mostly with the very inefficient VCGProxyFileManager.exe binary running the cpu at or near tight-loop, writing temp files, deleting them, rewriting them, in an apparent frenzy, while MyDVD, or rather VideoWave, sits in a coma. It's just buggy stuff here. Tivo is not the only reason for Roxio s/w, of course - in fact, it's only a recently supported format (read "functionality"), one that Tivo co. licensed to Roxio exclusively, and one that Roxio proudly advertises. It even works pretty good, as long as you don't want to edit the content.

 

Thank you sir -

 

Stephen

[d_deweywright]

Ok - uh... not the same page here, friend - what you said, well - it is well-intentioned; I refrain from dissecting it, but um, thinking I'm not in agreement with the explanation, though I really do appreciate it, really ... ISO is the primary standard org, governing a "compliant" DVD, and the headers, data composition, etc.. which it contains. and... I don't want to get flames going here - and don't want the moderator to i.d. me as a troublemaker. Thanks for the comments, really. I burn tivo-content DVDs direct from my tivo box, play 'em on all my friend's DVD players (except that 8-yr old one up at the cabin --- compression level, or quality setting, doesn't matter one bit. If it's ISO-compliant, it can have 8 hours of vid (if you don't mind fuzzy garbage, generally... , and play fine on your dvd player. Trouble is: those dang commercials! but, wait, Roxio to the rescue!!! You can edit them right out.... or, wait --- only when the moon is a quarter-waning and you've sacrificed ..... I know that's not very funny, and I apologize. You get my point perhaps. It's not just me and my bad luck - other apps and drivers and so forth - poor excuses, when all the other s/w runs fine. And the runaway VCGProxyFileManager binary can't really be blamed on what other apps you have on your machine (I always shut EVERYTHING else down when I run Roxio - I know how unstable it is, after all Friends here, just different views or understandings I think.

 

Thank you sir -

 

Stephen

Point taken. I know nothing about Tivo, don't have cable, don't have satellite, just 4 broadcast channels, and have only done primarily slideshows, and a little video transfer work for DVDs. So, I was just tossing my 2 cents opinion about a possible "reason". Obviously, it was incorrect.

 

I withdraw my suggestion.