Videowave/mydvd With Captured Video

[nottenst]

I am unsure what the best approach is, so I wanted to ask here. I'm capturing some shows over the air using Windows Media Center. In some cases they appear to be widescreen in others the show is 4:3, but the display is widescreen with black bars on the side. When importing these into Videowave should they both be 16:9 projects or should the one with the 4:3 actual image be imported as 4:3? I think when I looked at the 4:3 one as a 4:3 project it just made a smaller image with bars on top and bottom in addition to left and right, but as 16:9 it just had left and right bars. One of the widescreen projects I had appeared as a smaller widescreen inside bars on all 4 sides. On either of these should I use some zoom option in videowave or MyDVD or just burn the DVD and have my TV do the zoom? (Or should I have had some other setting in Windows Media Center when I captured in the first place?)

 

Is there a primer for this type of things anywhere?

 

Thanks,

 

Neil

[nottenst]

If you are converting to MPEG2 for a standard video DVD, those black bars would be compressed more because it doesn't change from frame to frame. This has more to do with how MPEG 2 compression works. Don't think of it as 'bandwidth' which is more of an analog term.

I guess my next question is what happens to the pictures that I copy as they are compressed to be put onto a DVD. Two cases of things I have on my PC - an 8GB hour long full 16:9 show and a 2.5 GB half hour show that has a 4:3 picture with black bars to fit into the 16:9 that was captured. I would presume that I could get two of the half hour shows onto a DVD and they should still look quite nice.

 

Also, if I want to try to edit out commercials with Videowave, EMC10 converts the show into a mpg file first and then after editing I presume MyDVD uses MPEG2 compression (and perhaps more compression depending on the original file size) to get it onto the DVD. If I forgot about the commercials and just used Windows Media Center or imported straight into MyDVD, would essentially the same process occur?

 

Thanks,

 

Neil

 

[ggrussell]

Yes, same process will occur. Also I should point out that the video will NO LONGER be hidef. They will have to be converted to standard definition to be burned to a video DVD.

 

The conversion process only needs to happen once. Either in Videowave or in MyDVD. If you use Videowave to cut out the commercials, just save the production file (.dmsm). The add the .dmsm file to a MyDVD project. That way the final conversion is done by MyDVD.

 

You can also opt to 'Output to File' in Videowave and have Videowave convert to MPEG 2 for DVD. Then add that MPEG 2 file to a MyDVD project. In that case, MyDVD should NOT re-render the file.

[tlw]

You can ignore the 'skipping' when trying to preview HD files. The preview is a reduced quality image and it appears that Videowave/MyDVD takes too much CPU power to do that and most computers can't keep up. This was one of the reasons I got rid of my HD camcorder. Doesn't matter what brand of editor, they all do the same thing. Today's computers just aren't fast enough to edit HD yet.

 

 

Mr. GG,

 

 

I'm using EMC10 on my Vista machine and Toast 9.02 on my iMac. I'm mainly trying to understand TiVo files at this point. On EMC10, is MPEG2 the recommended or required codec to begin editing/trimming the commercials in TiVo files. It's my understanding that Videowave doesn't support TiVo's file format. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I know I cannot maintain the HiDef resolution when I ultimately burn then in DVD-Video format, but I certainly want to maintain the 16:9 aspect ratio.

 

Thanks,

 

Tim

[ggrussell]

When I was playing around with HDV camcorder, I had no problem capturing and editing that footage in Videowave 10 and burning to SD video DVD with MyDVD fully maintaining TRUE anamorphoric widescreen (black bars are not encoded into the video).

 

I do not recommend editing MPEG 2, but you don't have a choice with Tivo or some of the new camcorders. Editing MPEG is VERY slow because the file must be uncompressed on the fly.

 

Tivo is another matter. I know they transmit using MPEG2, but not full 720x480. I believe (I won't swwear to it) the video is Half D1 - 352x480 (NTSC) and 352x576 (PAL) plus they use a proprietary format that needs to be converted with THEIR software before it can be edited. YOu do need the latest Tivo software to transfer the files in the proper format to your PC. Be aware that some of the programs can also be copy protected and nothing can let you edit those.

[ggrussell]

Are you capturing HDTV? Those channels are always 16:9. When broadcasting 4:3 over HDTV channel, they add the black bars to the sides to make the 4:3 fit into 16:9. So in this case, yes, the Videowave production should be 16:9 and both files should play back exactly as they were broadcast.

[nottenst]

Are you capturing HDTV? Those channels are always 16:9. When broadcasting 4:3 over HDTV channel, they add the black bars to the sides to make the 4:3 fit into 16:9. So in this case, yes, the Videowave production should be 16:9 and both files should play back exactly as they were broadcast.

Yes, I am capturing HDTV.

 

Thanks,

 

Neil

 

[nottenst]

Yesterday, I tried to edit an hour long HD show in Videowave. Unfortunately, after it converted it from the Windows Media Center format to an mpeg file, while I was editing/playing it in Videowave it was skipping. It was rarely playing smoothly. (When I tried this a week ago it appeared to work okay.) The preview in MyDVD was also skipping, so I decided to just give up an burn it in Windows Media Center with the commercials. WMC took perhaps 3 hours, but the resulting DVD does look nice. I was wondering if anyone might have an idea as to what was going on in Videowave. Could it be that if I did finish the project and burned the DVD that it would have turned out okay?

 

Thanks,

 

Neil

 

[ggrussell]

Yesterday, I tried to edit an hour long HD show in Videowave. Unfortunately, after it converted it from the Windows Media Center format to an mpeg file, while I was editing/playing it in Videowave it was skipping. It was rarely playing smoothly. (When I tried this a week ago it appeared to work okay.) The preview in MyDVD was also skipping, so I decided to just give up an burn it in Windows Media Center with the commercials. WMC took perhaps 3 hours, but the resulting DVD does look nice. I was wondering if anyone might have an idea as to what was going on in Videowave. Could it be that if I did finish the project and burned the DVD that it would have turned out okay?

You can ignore the 'skipping' when trying to preview HD files. The preview is a reduced quality image and it appears that Videowave/MyDVD takes too much CPU power to do that and most computers can't keep up. This was one of the reasons I got rid of my HD camcorder. Doesn't matter what brand of editor, they all do the same thing. Today's computers just aren't fast enough to edit HD yet.

[nottenst]

I just thought of a related question. When you have such a 4:3 show broadcast on HDTV, do those bars take up much bandwidth? And whatever bandwidth they do take up, I presume that when the image is compressed onto a DVD that bandwidth is reduced more than the rest of the image. Right?

 

Neil

[ggrussell]

Transmitting HDTV is totally different from analog. Check out this site for some info. You can also use a search engine for more information.

 

If you are converting to MPEG2 for a standard video DVD, those black bars would be compressed more because it doesn't change from frame to frame. This has more to do with how MPEG 2 compression works. Don't think of it as 'bandwidth' which is more of an analog term.