Making Good use of those MPEG2 Files

[fidget]

Originally posted by JafCo
I forgot to mention. One good little brief overview of ULEAD is found at:

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/userguides/139093.php

Make sure you pay attention to the "do not convert compliant MPEG files" checkbox! Saves tons of time!

--J

But that only works on a PC and he is looking for a Mac solution. Ulead, AFIAK, make a Mac equivalent to Movie Studio. The only thing they have will make slideshows.

[nicktripp]

Actually, I would prefer a totally Mac-based solution, but like I said, I have access to more computers than I know what to do with. I wouldn't have a problem making a PC do the work and leaving the burning to my Powerbook.

My only problem is that I wanted this to be a simple process, and it's definitely not going to be. I guess DVD authoring still has some progress that could be made...

[Sailn]

nick, sorry but you are correct. Toast won't author the dvd, you still need dvd studio pro to make the ts folder.

[padre]

Originally posted by nicktripp
Actually, I would prefer a totally Mac-based solution, but like I said, I have access to more computers than I know what to do with. I wouldn't have a problem making a PC do the work and leaving the burning to my Powerbook.

My only problem is that I wanted this to be a simple process, and it's definitely not going to be. I guess DVD authoring still has some progress that could be made...

If you want to use your PC to create the DVD image (ISO), than it can be a really simple process. I use Ulead Movie Factory 2 ($44 through Buy.com) and just drag and drop the files and create an Image output. It's considered authoring, but it takes a very small amount of time, since no encoding is needed. Then I copy the file via network to my PC with the burner. Done.

As long as you can burn from an ISO file, you should be able to use the Mac to create the DVD.

Kevin

[jriskin]

I can verify that the Ulead that comes with the PVR-250 works for making DVD's on the mac.

Although, I wish I could do it directly with Toast 6, its a pretty simple process.

1. Load Ulead DVD MovieFactory SE
2. Use the templates and build a DVD
3. Save an ISO image instead of the DVD folders.
4. Copy the ISO to the mac and drop it on Toast.

It took roughly 10mins to author the DVD (2gigs worth) on the PC. Compare this to the 8hrs it took when I dropped the file directly on Toast 6. This should work fine on 5.x as well by going to disk image and again dropping it on Toast.

[JelloMold]

I burned my first dvd a few days ago using Nero Vision. 1.8G/hr is an acceptable quality for me when viewing recorded TV from the hard drive, but after burning it and watching the DVD it looks more like mpeg1! Tons of macroblocking and general nastiness - completely unwatchable. What's up with that? I'll try Sonic's MYDVD in the meantime...

[fidget]

Originally posted by JelloMold
I burned my first dvd a few days ago using Nero Vision. 1.8G/hr is an acceptable quality for me when viewing recorded TV from the hard drive, but after burning it and watching the DVD it looks more like mpeg1! Tons of macroblocking and general nastiness - completely unwatchable. What's up with that? I'll try Sonic's MYDVD in the meantime...

That's odd. I record JunkYard Wars (Scrapheap Challenge for you in the UK) and it looks almost perfect. No pixelization or blurring. What kind of program are you recording? I know that my TiVo had problems with basketball games (the fast pan of the audience really had problems at the lower quality settings), but most shows are hard to differentiate from the higher quality settings.

I watch my DVDs on a regular DVD player (not the PC) and use Ulead DVD Movie Factory to author them.