Long burn times and long time to add chapters

[Russell Friesen]

Hi Jim, I thought I'd follow up on my last post. I did finally find where to change the recording quality. It is in the Vista Control Panel; click on "Hardware and Sound", then on "Sound", then select the "Recording" tab, then choose the USB 2861 device, and (finally) select the "Advanced" tab, and the settings can then be selected. And after all that, my settings were already set at what Mark recommended. I tried various things and couldn't get anything to correct the pitch-shifting problem. I finally gave up on the DV AVI and went to the DVD HQ setting. That got rid of the pitch-shifting, but I ran into other problems when adding chapters to the video (the more chapters I added, the slower the program ran until it was nearly impossible to use), and when burning to DVD (the video was about 1 hour 45 minutes long, and I had to use the Fit to Disc setting on the burn program because the file was so large with the HQ). This resulted in a 5 hour burn time for the disc, and the final video quality was not very good. So after all that, I gave up on the DVD HQ setting and tried the DVD SP for video capture. And this time, everything worked right. No pitch problems, adding chapters was quick and easy, the disc burned in SP mode in about 20 minutes, and the final video quality was very good. So whether that was the perfect solution or not, it worked for me and I'm happy with the final product.

 

 

I had a chance to test this out and it did respond as I expected it would.

 

It makes no difference.

 

Left pic capture is set as DV – Right pic as DVD HQ

Captured with Vista Setting of 2 Channel 44,100mhz:

 

 

Captured with Vista Setting of 2 Channel 48,000mhz:

 

 

I cannot test for the 16bit vs 24bit on my PC so I cannot discount that.

 

But I do not believe any setting outside of the Capture program will have any effect on what the program is going to do. Even if the Audio is set to a lower setting like for a CD, it is going to record at a fixed rate.

 

Now that is like taking the finest microphone known to man and recording a scratchy record with it on a sidewalk at noon!

 

That mic will record the music and every other noise it can here is excellent quality. But it cannot make it any better…

 

The size of the file recorded has absolutely nothing to do with making a DVD!

 

A 4.7GB DVD will hold about 1 hour of a DVD Movie at HQ.

 

By reducing the quality you can get about 2 hours on one.

 

The long render time indicates to me that your PC is a low end machine and that may be why you are having trouble with Audio.

 

Please list your specs in that new topic you are going to start.

 

 

Hi Jim, I agree about the audio quality settings. I had tried changing them and nothing seem to make any difference.

 

About the file size, all I can tell you that the MyDVD software wouldn't let me burn a 1 hour and 45 minute video file recorded in either DV AVI or DVD HQ onto a DVD in SP format; the file size indicator on the bottom of the screen was partially red when I selected SP, and would only burn the DVD in the Fit To Disk, LP or EP modes. When I removed the DV AVI or DVD HQ video from the project and added the same video captured in the DVD SP format to the same project, the file size indicator didn't show as overfull, and everything fit onto a DVD in SP mode, so I concluded that it had something to do with the original file size.

 

I tried to add about 18 chapters to the video captured in HQ mode, but with each added chapter, the software took longer and longer to respond, to the point where I had to wait several minutes by the time I was adding the final chapter. After deleting the HQ captured video and adding the SP captured video, the software responded almost instantaneously and I was able to add the 18 chapters very quickly and easily.

 

So far as the burn time goes, whatever I try to burn in Fit To Disc mode seems to take about 5 hours, and whatever I try to burn in SP mode takes just over 20 minutes. When replaying the DVD's in my DVD player, a Sony model attached to my TV, the SP mode gives a better quality than the Fit to Disc mode.

 

My system is a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop, 32 bit with a dual-core Pentium T4200 @ 2.0Ghz, 4.0 gigs of RAM, and a 280 gig hard drive with about 200 gigs open for use, running Vista SP1. I bought it about 4 months ago. It wasn't the cheapest one available, but it was also far from the most expensive. I do wish I had gone for 64 bit instead. Please let me know if you think that what I'm doing is too much for this machine. As I said in my previous post, I got everything to work to my satisfaction by capturing and editing video in SP mode, so I won't be too concerned if I can't use HQ or DV AVI.

[bimicher]

Hi Jim, I agree about the audio quality settings. I had tried changing them and nothing seem to make any difference.

 

About the file size, all I can tell you that the MyDVD software wouldn't let me burn a 1 hour and 45 minute video file recorded in either DV AVI or DVD HQ onto a DVD in SP format; the file size indicator on the bottom of the screen was partially red when I selected SP, and would only burn the DVD in the Fit To Disk, LP or EP modes. When I removed the DV AVI or DVD HQ video from the project and added the same video captured in the DVD SP format to the same project, the file size indicator didn't show as overfull, and everything fit onto a DVD in SP mode, so I concluded that it had something to do with the original file size.

 

I tried to add about 18 chapters to the video captured in HQ mode, but with each added chapter, the software took longer and longer to respond, to the point where I had to wait several minutes by the time I was adding the final chapter. After deleting the HQ captured video and adding the SP captured video, the software responded almost instantaneously and I was able to add the 18 chapters very quickly and easily.

 

So far as the burn time goes, whatever I try to burn in Fit To Disc mode seems to take about 5 hours, and whatever I try to burn in SP mode takes just over 20 minutes. When replaying the DVD's in my DVD player, a Sony model attached to my TV, the SP mode gives a better quality than the Fit to Disc mode.

 

My system is a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop, 32 bit with a dual-core Pentium T4200 @ 2.0Ghz, 4.0 gigs of RAM, and a 280 gig hard drive with about 200 gigs open for use, running Vista SP1. I bought it about 4 months ago. It wasn't the cheapest one available, but it was also far from the most expensive. I do wish I had gone for 64 bit instead. Please let me know if you think that what I'm doing is too much for this machine. As I said in my previous post, I got everything to work to my satisfaction by capturing and editing video in SP mode, so I won't be too concerned if I can't use HQ or DV AVI.

 

Vista 64 has nothing to do with - it won't speed up anything since the program is meant to run in the 32bit environment.

 

File size means nothing when working with video. It is the time length of the project that is the most relevant parameter. A standard 4.7GB DVD will hold 60 minutes at best (HQ) quality. Any longer and the video has to be compressed and you lose quality. Fit to Disc does a very poor job of "squeezing" 1:45 hour video onto a DVD. Most of us here avoid it like the plague. A much better way is to create an iso image file or Folder set of the video at HQ quality and then use Video Copy & Convert to transcode the result to fit on the DVD. This process should give even better quality then the SP mode. Of course the best quality would be to split the project into 45 minute DVDs.

 

I don't understand some of the statements about DV avi or HQ you made. DV avi is the easiest and fastest to work with when editing.

[Jim_Hardin]

Laptops do not make good video machines!

 

For the most part they do not have a Video Card but rely on a chip. And the same applies to their Audio!

 

It may help to keep plenty of HDD space open and to defrag frequently and often!

 

Time is the only thing of interest in a movie. Your 1:45 video was pushing! It took longer to render because each and every frame, 30 frames for each second, had to be pulled in and re-rendered to fit the lower settings.

 

I don’t trust Fit to Disc!

 

Just looking at MyDVD I find the times are:

 

HQ = 1:06

SP = 1:37

LP = 2:22

ELP = 3:04

 

So your 1:45 probably defaulted to LP under Fit to Disc and the output was 352 X 480 @ 4mbps.

 

HQ would have been 720 X 480 @ 9mbps or as good as a DVD Movie can be! I would have made 2 discs at that setting…

 

Oh, animated menus – lots of chapter menus etc are not free fluff. They cost you disc space so the time you can get to fit drops the more you use them.

 

In MyDVD, check under Tools – Options – Render and set it to Software. With many video cards/chips performance is decreased when Hardware is used.