Need a kickstart with Ulead's DVD plug-in! I don't know where to start?

[Hulk]

I feel kind of stupid. I installed it but have no idea where to start. I know the application should be "in" MS Pro 6.0 but I've never used a plug-in before. Could someone please get me going with this?

[Hulk]

Never mind, I downloaded the manual. Couldn't find it at first!

[Dr Mordrid]

Manual? Whazzat??

Oh yeah...I remember...those are what Erik sits on so he can reach the keyboard ;-)

Dr. Mordrid

[EVA2000]

How is the VCD/SVCD/quality. How you get the Ulead's DVD plug-in!

[Dr Mordrid]

EVA2000;

The DVD Plugin sells for $39USD on Uleads site.

The quality of the MPEG's produced in MSPro6 goes up rather dramatically as the DVD Plugin also installs the new Ligos MPEG kernel, which fixes a lot of longstanding problems with their encoders.

It's quality is not quite as good as TMPGEnc when doing MPEG-1, but it has field rendering, VBR that works and much higher quality in MPEG-2 than MSPro's MPEG engine can deliver.

In fact, if you look at the Q values for the MPEG-2 files the DVD Plugins engine produces the compression is lower than with TMPGEnc 12f and they look pretty darned good on my APEX AD660 when cut to SVCD's.

Filling in the details;

It also has VCD, SVCD and DVD presets, menus with thumbnails, definable menu backgrounds (both built-in and the ability to import your own bitmaps) etc.

The rubs:

1. limited to 2000 kbps in MPEG-1 (may be changed)

2. can only import one MPEG file (you can join several together and select separate play points though)

3. can't do xVCD or xSVCD (yet)

4. can't accept TMPGEnc 12f files. 12a works. More of a TMPGEnc 12f problem from what I can tell.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 19 June 2001).]

[AndrewDV]

Let me put an emphasis on Doc's #2 point.

When you go to encode your MPEG files, keep in mind the Ulead Plug-in only accepts 1 MPEG file for the video and 1 MPEG file for an intro video. If you have created several files with the thought each one is a separate scene or movie (ala a compilation), you need to join them into 1 file.

After importing the single MPEG file, then you can setup scenes. It is an annoying "feature" that I hope goes away in newer versions. The last thing I want to do is more in/out pointing after creating MPEG files

I also wouldn't mind more menu features. Adding interactive functions would open up the product to a bit more fun.

Just a FYI, but Ulead's PhotoImpact works great with this product as well.

[Dr Mordrid]

Andrew,

Have you been using PI6 to make menu's too? As *.ufo's or as imported bitmaps?

Dr. Mordrid

[AndrewDV]

I've been using UFO. I figured its Ulead's special format.

PhotoImpact is a good program. Does a lot for $99.

[Dr Mordrid]

Got it a bit cheaper by upgrading. I've been using it since 4.0 with excellent results.

Have you used its webpage generation capabilities yet? Great idea. Draw your pages using those all to cool drawing & automatic alignment functions, define the links and then export the code. Saves a lot of time.

Dr. Mordrid