Anyone care to comment on 'DVD Lab'

[Laurie]

I've seen some positive comments on other forums but I trust you guys and your opinions.

DVD-Lab

I'm heading to Vancouver this weekend and will pick up the ADVC100 so barring any problems (yeah right) I should be authoring my first DVD in the next week (or two or three )

TIA.

[Dr Mordrid]

DVD-Lab looks promising and is priced right at $79 for the intro, but being a new product be aware of the problems endemic to new releases.

The AVDC-100 is a great choice for an I/O box.

Dr. Mordrid

[Laurie]

Well, I've used it (DvdLab) for the last couple of weeks and liked it so much I bought it.

I simply couldn't get MF to do what I wanted and DvdLab was like a breath of fresh air. So FWIW it gets a thumbs up from a complete noob novice.

I have authored my first VHS to DVD project, burned it to dvd-rw and it plays perfectly in my panasonic rv31.

[Dr Mordrid]

5.1 AC3 tip: IF you have a 5.1 mixing program (Cubase, Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro) etc.) to build a multichannel *avi use BeSweet (freeware) as the external AC3 encoder in DVD-Lab to get surround sound.

Dr. Mordrd

[Laurie]

Thanks, Doc.

Right now I'm frameserving only the video from MSP7 to Tmpgenc. Then exporting the audio out to a wav file and using BeSweet to encode it to ac3. I can compress the dynamic range with BeSweet to enhance the crappy audio from the tapes and using ac3 eliminated audio problems with my dvd player for some reason.

[Brian Ellis]

I'm a little worried about mediachance. Nothing to do with the products, which may be wonderful. Is the "company" here to stay? It is a one-man affair from a self-professed rolling stone without formal training in programming. Can he provide support if things start to go wrong? Worse, if he cannot sort out problems, will he just shrug his shoulders and move onto something else?

On the other side of the coin, he has recently started a family so he may feel the need to increase his stability. I'd feel happier if he collaborated with a few others.

BTW, as an ex-entrepreneur, I do not decry entrepreneurship, but I do know the dangers, as well. Been there, done that!

[Umfriend]

Laurie,

Could you tell me a bit more on how succesful you were in transferring your VHS tapes to DVD? I'd be much obliged for the hands-on experience from a novice.

Umf

[Laurie]

@ Brian: Thanks for the heads-up. If his posts on their forum are any indication he seems more than willing to listen, make changes and fix the bugs. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

@ Umfriend: The AVDC100 is all Doc and others have touted. I have a JVC s2911u SHVS vcr for the source. It was all I could afford at the time (it does not have TBC). I am using MSP7 to capture and that so far has worked flawlessly. Approx an 80 minute capture yielded a 16.6 Gb file. No capture problems at all.

I have not played the latest itteration of the first project dvd side by side with the original tape yet. I'll do that and post again. The original footage was done on an old (circa 1986) Hitachi fullsize cassette camcorder(about 11 pounds heavy). What a beast to haul around that was. It and its tripod fell over some years ago and I haven't been able to replace it yet. With MiniDV prices falling through the floor it wont be long.

I have tried both CBR and two-pass VBR with Tmpegenc a couple of times for this project and haven't decided yet if the time expense for the two-pass is worth it. I suppose if the frameserve is started in the evening then the length of processing time is irrelevant.

[Umfriend]

Oh darn, I don;t even know what you are talking about......

CBR, VBR, Tmpegenc? You can actually run the tape twice and sync the capturing? But the other info is reassuring: works easily for amateur purposes. Thx, and I'll be awaiting for more reports...

[Umfriend]

Constant Bit Rate vs Variable Bit Rate?? And why 2-pass with VBR?

[Laurie]

This page seems to give some very good advice for using Tmegenc. It may answer some of your questions Umf.

Encoding with Tmegenc

I did a side by side comparison of the tape and the latest dvd burn. There is not much difference.
In the indoor shots the dvd has a very slightly softer look and IMO is nicer to watch. In places where I was shooting indoors and the bright sunlight through a window upset the white balance (?I hope I stated that technically correct?) there is a bit more glare.
Outdoor shots which were all taken onboard a 60 foot cruiser (some glare off the water) the dvd is again slightly softer looking and again much more pleasant to watch. This tape was one of the last ones taken with that old camcorder and I think it shows in the quality on the tape.

I saw Doc's post about how he archives his projects. But considering the age of my vhs cassettes I am going to put everthing except the video_ts folder into one folder, rar it and burn the rars to some dvds. I can't take a chance that the tape will last much longer to do another capture.

[Dr Mordrid]

A short explanation of 2- pass VBR encoding;

Pass 1: the encoder analyzes each scene and creates an optimized set of instructions for coding that part. This gets recorded into a log file.

Pass2: the encoder uses the log file to actually encode the footage.

Result: higher quality.

Some encoders can actually do 20 passes to do even more highly optimized encoding.

Dr. Mordrid

[Umfriend]

But DV itself is not encoded, is it?

[Dr Mordrid]

Yes it is. It's encoded to the DV25 codec (25 referring to its 25 megabit/s data rate). DV25 is much like MJPeg in that it's a DCT codec, but it has other wrinkels.

One of the more annoying is that in the NTSC version the colorspace is reduced to just 4:1:1, meaning that each color sample is spread across 4 horizontal pixels vs 2 pixels in analog video.

This makes compositing, keying and other such special effects troublesome because of the aliasing it produces. One of the big selling points for devices like the RT.X100 is that its chromakeyer mitigates this problem significantly.

Pros who can afford it use DV50 cams, which use a 4:2:2 colorspace and a 50 mbit/s data rate, for these reasons.

Dr. Mordrid