Problems burning DVDs

Sully

Hey,

Iv been experincing some annoying problems when burning DVDs and I was hoping someone could help me and put forward some suggestions on what I can do to fix it.

1) I normaly burn/backup DVDs using DVDShrink but the process of "Encoding" takes ages. Does DVDShrink have to encode every time I want to backup or burn a new DVD (using video files .VOB)?

2) Is there anyway of renaming the video files I add? It appears as "Track 1" etc. when adding using Re-Author (which is a pain, and sometimes causes DVDShrink to crash!) but I would rather give it a more interesting name such as "Xmas Day, 2001" - depending on what the video files im adding are related to.

3) Im aware that DVDShrink doesnt have the ability to add menus (a pitty really) and that TMPGEnc does. However, when I add video files using TMPGEnc it complains that the "Aspect Ratio" of the video files are not the same, and cant do its job. Anyway of fixing the Aspect Ratio to get it to work? Id love menus on my home-made DVDs. Such as "Christmas - 2001" which would hold tracks such as "Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Stephens Day" etc.

Hope someone can answer the three questions, and save me from the pain of DVDBurning :P

Cheers!

Khannie

Sully04 wrote:

1) I normaly burn/backup DVDs using DVDShrink but the process of "Encoding" takes ages. Does DVDShrink have to encode every time I want to backup or burn a new DVD (using video files .VOB)?

Yes. It's removing the encryption and resizing the mpeg file to fit your smaller dvd. It's a compute intensive process.

Not sure on the rest.

Sully

But not everything I burn has encryption on it..

As for resizing, I guess thats required so it can fit. Pitty it hogs my PC when it does it ><

Hope someone can answer the others.

Cheers Khannie

Standard Toaster

Sully04 wrote:

3) Im aware that DVDShrink doesnt have the ability to add menus (a pitty really) and that TMPGEnc does. However, when I add video files using TMPGEnc it complains that the "Aspect Ratio" of the video files are not the same, and cant do its job. Anyway of fixing the Aspect Ratio to get it to work? Id love menus on my home-made DVDs. Such as "Christmas - 2001" which would hold tracks such as "Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Stephens Day" etc.

Is this TMPGEnc the encoder or TMPGEnc DVD Author?

If it's the latter, use the "Add Track" option for video files with different aspects, framerates or resolutions.



If it's TMPGEnc Encoder, when do you get that message?

the_jocky

run a program called region free + css in the back round will sort you out .
shrink is great it will kee in the video_ts folder . then just rename the file and if you want to burn it drop and drag it in to nero create dvd video option
if any problems give me a shout

greglo23

for dvd shrink to work properly you need nero installed which it uses as the burning engine.

Sully

The_Edge: Im not 100% sure what one I used, im going to test the DVD Author and hopefuly it will work!

Jocky: Region Free + CSS does which?

Greglo: Ya I know, it doesnt run without it. But its still a resource hog

Sully

I must have been using the encoder, as the DVD Author seems new to me!

I set up menus for the video files, but its taking nearly 2hrs to get em converted! DVDShrinks faster then this ><

Explosive_Cornflake

greglo23 wrote:

for dvd shrink to work properly you need nero installed which it uses as the burning engine.

Or dvd decrypter, and it's free.

Video recoding (effectively what your doing) is very memory/processor intensive, and it'll be slow on laptops. Not much really you can do about it.

Sully

It took just under 3hours to prepare the DVD Disk with menus, and not to long to burn the disk. Its a bitch to even work the menus ><, guess it will take some time to get used to it - but if it takes 3hours to prepare a disk with menus - erm im not doing it ^_^ Have I done something wrong?!

Im not on a laptop

Standard Toaster

Within the "Create Menu" section of TMPGEnc DVD Author click on "Menu Display Settings"
Goto the "Motion Menu" tab and at the bottom you'll see an option to set the lenth of the motion menu. Set it lower to reduce the lenth of time it takes for the menus to be encoded.



Disable it if you want still menus.
Reducing this will also sligthly reduce the size of the final output.
BTW, what version of DVD Author are you using?

Sully

Whats that feature all about?

Using V1.6

Standard Toaster

Basically, as the menu is being display on the screen, a motion thumbnail will represent each chapter. The more chapters you have the more encoding that needs to be done. Disabling it will show just a single frame for the chapter which you can change by clicking on the thumbnail.
Any other questions fire away.

Sully

Ah ok ill disable that in the next round and see how it goes!

For some reason, when I played the finished product, it never opened the menu? Just went straight into the movie! Some setting I need to change? Thought I had it set right, but seems not..

Finaly; anyway to get background music on?

Standard Toaster

Sully04 wrote:

For some reason, when I played the finished product, it never opened the menu? Just went straight into the movie! Some setting I need to change? Thought I had it set right, but seems not..

That option there should sort that.

Sully04 wrote:

Finaly; anyway to get background music on?

If you click the background picture, you can select an video file to be played as a background during the menus.
I don't think you can select just an audio file.
What you could do is using tmpeg encoder, create a still menu with sound from an image and a audio file you've already created. I've done this before creating SVCDs with TSCV.
So essentially you'd have a MPG at DVD resolution (720x576) (768x575 to be exact) containing one sigle frame (your backround) and music of your choice playing.

Sully

I could of sworn thats what I set it as.. Ill give it a go next time

For my background I used a JPEG, but I wanted to add music to it for the background, I thought the motion menu would take it of the film :P

I might give that a go tho.

Cheers!

Standard Toaster

I find that if I resize the image to 768x576 (4/3) and save it as a bitmap or png it's alot more clearer in the final output.
Nero has the same problem.
If your dealing with NTSC source stuff and not PAL, resize to 768x480 instead.

Sully04 wrote:

I thought the motion menu would take it of the film

Yeah, it does but only for the individual thumbnails for chapter points.
If you click on these thumbnails you can move the slider to specify a point in the main movie for the motion menu but WON'T affect the actual chapter timing.
The beauty of creating a still menu with music for the background is that only one frame is used, so saving space on the dvd.

Sully

Where exactly is the offical download for TMPGEnc Encoder?

Standard Toaster

TMPGEnc Version 2.524 (1,438KB)

Sully

Is PegaSys Inc the offical site? Thats where I got confused lol

Cheers Edge, ill let ya know how I get on!

Sully

P.S. Dont want to create a new topic on this.. Its on topic pretty much so..

Any suggestions for a DVD Writer that will let me burn Audio onto DVD's? Was using CDBurnerXP Pro but in order to write audio to DVD it had to be in "Data" mode, which resulted in me not being able to have proper file names for the songs (some reason it wouldnt let me), couldnt have songs in the order I wanted to etc. Was a disastor. So I seek another program that will do this for me.

Any suggestions? (sorry to keep asking questions - one of those weeks where I try to get issues sorted!)

Standard Toaster

I use Audio DVD Creator for this as you can play the dvd on any dvd player when your done. Have it here if you want to check it out.

Sully

Edge: You have been very helpful. Cheers m8

Gonna give em a try now. Sounds like a good program to have Cheers and Merry Christmas!