MSPro 7 discounts available, but...

[Nick Piercey]

Hi Everyone,


I'm still using MSPro 6.51 and I have a couple of questions... as ever.

At the moment the editing facilities in MSPro6.51 are fine for my needs.

I also have DVDWS 1.3, but read that the newer mpeg engines that Ulead use are far superior.

If I were to stick with MSPro 6.51 would upgrading DVDWS 1.3 to DVDWS Express enhance the mpeg encoding in MSPro6.51? Or are they separate entities?

Alternatively, I see there are discounts around for Version 7, is this seen as good value, or the possibility the V 8 will be coming out soon?




Thank you again.


Best wishes,



Nick.

[Dr Mordrid]

MSPro 8, or whatever they call it, will not be out "soon". It's in the works, but not immenent.

I don't believe that upgrading to DVDWS Express would enhance your MSP 6.51 encoding, but that shouldn't stop you from upgrading. You can always export from MSPro 6.51 in DV (or your native capture format) then just let DVDWSE do the encoding with its enhanced MPEG.now engine.

Have you checked out my review of MSP7 on ABCDV.com? If you haven't you might want to check it out to see some of the major differences;

http://www.abcdv.com/article/view/50

MSPro7's MPEG engine is indeed better than that for earlier products and each of its patches has upped the ante.

MSPro7 additions include Summary Timeline, WMV capture, improvements to the Storyboard (1 frame overlap control, default transistions etc.), Global video filters, 4:3 and 16:9 support (even on the same timeline!), non-square pixel rendering, a much enhanced realtime engine, enhanced previews to dual-head displays, improvements to the speed and freeze frame controls, titler enhancements (though this slows down title rendering), AC3 (Dolby Digital) audio export for DVD etc. etc.

One biggie in this feature list is the AC3 (Dolby Digital) audio support for DVD's. This improves player compatability with older decks and matches the default audio standard for NTSC DVD's.

There is also a service pack coming in the short term that will further improve its feature set, but as noted above I can't gop into details

Personally I'd bite since there are many features in MSP7 that are more than handy and the cost now is a steal, esp. at the upgrade price of $149.

Dr. Mordrid

[Nick Piercey]

I appreciated your time, Doc!

I realise that one or two here are working under NDA's, but thanks for the hints!


I'll go and check out ABCDV.COM!


Best wishes,


Nick.

[Brian Ellis]

I'll second DocM. MSP7 with the current and future upgrade patches is the way to go. However, it still uses MF2 for DVD authoring and this does have some rather poor limitations. You could use the DVDWS1.3 for authoring but WSExpress would be a very useful upgrade, as well, if you don't need the full 2.2 version.

I concur that you are very unlikely to see MSP8 in the near future but there will be functional enhancements coming shortly for MSP7.

[DarrenD]

Dr Mordrid

I have MSP 7 VE DVD and DVDWS 1.3 SE (part of ADS Pyro ProDVD package bought under your excellent advice). I am looking at upgrading to DVDWS 2 Express.

I appreciate that you are under an NDA and "soon" can be interpreted as days, weeks or months. I was interested in your statement about exporting from MSP as DV .AVI and loading that into DVDWS 2 Express to get the best encoding (until "soon" becomes "now available"!!!). I am not too knowledgable on output to DV but have noticed on forums that there are many DV codecs and MainConcept DV codec is a good one. I only have whatever was installed by DirectX 9.0c and the ADS Pyro ProDVD installation CD.

Will MSP only recode my video material with transitions and filters using the system DV codec? Is the standard DirectX one good enough? Is this still better than using the standard MSP MPEG2 encoder? I don't want to have to buy another one just to fill in the time waiting for the new MSP 7 patch.

Thanks very much

[Brian Ellis]

Well, "soon" turned out to be hours! The MSP7 Service Pack 2 offers the 2-pass encoding and many other new features and bug fixes. See DrM's announcement in a new thread.

As for DV codecs, I now use only the MS one, as being more convenient. I used to use the MC one, when the MS one wasn't as good. Nowadays, the MS offering is just as good - and I hate having to praise anything from MS In any case, "capturing", being only copying the DV stream to disc with an AVI header, works irrespective of the codec, so MSP uses the codec only for re-rendering, whether it be MS, MC or whatever.

[Nick Piercey]

Thanks, Brian!

I'll check out the other thread.

[DarrenD]

Thanks Brian,

My questions seem to be a bit out of date now that MSP 7.2 is out but thanks for answering anyway. I ran into the 1000 character length limitation and had to cut out some important text to fit it in.

I appreciate "capturing" from Mini-DV camcorder is simply lossless copying. I was also expecting SmartRender to losslessly (???) copy unaltered video when Create->Video File and only encode transition and filter areas with my installed DV codec.

Thanks for mentioning that the standard MS DV codec is good enough.