I used the MainConcept MPEG Encoder to convert an .avi to a DVD MPEG, but when I try to add those MPEGS to my DVD-Video, using Nero Express, it doesnt allow me because its not an .ifo .vob or .bup. I thought the MPEG was the only thing I needed, how am I supposed to turn it into one of those 3? And why did did MainConcept turn it into an MPEG if it cant be burned unless its one of those 3? Thanks
You aren"t doing it correctly...You can not Burn Mpeg2 Files to a DVD and expect them play in your DVD Player.. The Mpeg2 Files have to be Authored to DVD useing a DVD authoring program which allows you to add Menu"s and add Chapters and then the Program formats it all into a Video_TS folder that Contains Vob,Bup & IFO Files, and then it Burns the Video_TS folder to DVD For you or you can use something else to Burn the Video_TS folder to DVD like Nero.... If you want to Use a Very Simple and easy to use DVD authoring Program then you should try "Tmpgenc DVD Author" but if you want something that makes Nicer munu"s and more Interactive DVD"s then you should Check out "MediaChance DVDLab" ... Both of these Programs have a Fully working 30 day demo version available for download on the Net.... Cheers
Minon, maybe you can help me with a sort of related question. I'm still a newbie when it comes to DVD capturing and burning, video formats and file types. Here's my question. I capture video from my DV camera using software that came bundled with my PC - it's called neoDVDstandard. When I click on Properties on the file that is created, it shows up as "NeroMediaPlayer Media File", which confuses the hell out of me. Is this a MPEG-2 file? What's up with the file type? I realize I then need to author the file, which always works fine as it creates the various VOB files in order to play on a DVD. What I'm headed towards with is to eventually buy some kind of personal digital media player, and the ones that I see accept MPEG-1/4 files. So I assume I would use the original captured video file (whatever it is) for such a player, and the VOB files for burning to DVDs? I'm so confused!
The "NeroMediaPlayer Media File" isn"t the File type but what is used to Play the File... The File should have an Extention ,Either .mpg or avi or there is a remote chance it could have .mp4 or .wmv... If you can not see an extention then it is because you have that feature disabled in Windows... Either way I am sure it is a Mpeg2 file because that is the Format that NeoDVD Captures to.... If you are Captureing DVD Compliant Mpeg2 files with NeoDVD then the Files are allready in the Correct Format for DVD and the Only way to get this File to Play on Any DVD Player without re-encodeing it would be to Author to DVD.... If you have one of those Players that played Mpeg4/DivX files then you would have to capture to That format or encode your Captured Mpeg2 files to Mpeg4 and Burn them to CD-R.... Those Players that Play everything will Only play Mpeg 1 and Mpeg2 files as VCD/SVCD or as DVD"s...They Also Play Mpeg4/DivX files burned to CD-R and some can Play Highmat which is the WMV format authored to DVD useing Highmat authoring Software but there aren"t many of those.... I hope this answers some of your questions...Cheers
Hope this doesn't multiple post; all of a sudden this screen disappeared. Thanks for the great info. You were right; I had the file extension hidden in Windows. The files in question have the .mpg extension; can I assume they are MPEG-2? Also, you mention that in order for these files to burn/play on a DVD, they would either have to be re-encoded or authoring. I know enough about authoring to have burned a couple successful DVDs, but nothing about re-encoding. Does this mean if the MPEG-2 file were re-encoded (to what kind of file?) it could be burned to a DVD? If so, is either method preferable? Appreciate your wisdom. Curious, how long did it take you to learn all of this? I consider myself a pretty intelligent person and fairly computer literate, but when it comes to this particular subject area, I'm pretty retarded I guess.
Well, i jump in... best is to encode your avi (when capturing) straight into "author" files like .mpv and .mpa, when you are going to "author" you don't have to "remux" like you have to do, when you have a MPEG2 file, mpv and mpa are mpeg video and audio files, Even better is to encode the audio into the .wav format, (for quality reasons) and convert the .wav into AC3, with Besweet, that's the way i'm doing it, (i use CCE basic, for encoding)
So what you're saying is if I encode directly to .mpv and .mpa files when capturing, I can burn these directly to a DVD without authoring? What would you recommend as a good video capture/encoding software? I'm still trying to find a fairly user-friendly one.
No that isn"t what he means...He is Just saying that if you capture to AVI and then encode to Mpeg2 in seperate audio and video files that you don"t have to Mux the audio and Video together before authoring... You still have to author Mpeg2 files to DVD to have them play on your DVD Player.... If your DVD Player Played the Mpeg-4/DivX formats you could encode to that Format and just Burn them to CD-r and Play them on your DVD Player but Mpeg1 and Mpeg2 files need to be either authored to DVD or as VCD"s or SVCD"s.... Mpeg-4/DivX is the Only Format that you can Just Burn to a CD-R and have them play if you had a Mpeg-4/DivX enabled DVD Player....
But on that BeSweet note. I have the WAV files really blowing the limits on my DVD-5 creation. I'd love to compress them, even explore a little with surround sound. But when I use the BeSweet and it's various front ends, the only thing it will NOT let me do is convert the WAV to AC3. It will AC3-AC3, (why) but that's it. Any idea what's missing? So, I use Premiere to convert to MPA, but there are no compression options and the results, though very efficient, sound awful.
The wav file you shouldn't use "straight away",. If you have a "mpa" option , (mpeg) you should use that one, joint stereo "type" setting is the one that is best to use, in other choices, it will degrade quality more tru the compression i believe. btw the "all in one" software packages, are maybe easy to use, but settings wise, you don't have much freedom. WinDV, CCE basic, Besweet+GUI, DVDLab work all fine for me, and use IfoEdit for previewing the authored project. using it's playing function. other players did not give good playblack for me. If you have standalone that plays also dvd-rw's, then this is also an option.
btw. strange, Besweet doesnt work for you, check your settings. It's a while i downloaded Besweet, i haven't updated it since, because it works fine. i use it with the AC3Machine 0.41, with www.videohelp.com you should be able to find a good guide to use these progs.
There is also a very Fast Dolby AC3 encodeing Plugin you can buy that works with Tmpgenc Xpress and Tmpgenc DVD author that encodes Sterio AC3 Files... I use the Dolby Encoder in Vegas Video 5 as it is very high quality and fairly fast and has a great 6 channel mixer .....Cheers
I mentioned Besweet, because it's free, i think using TMPGEnc DVD Author, one soon find it limited, and Besweet in combo with AC3Machine, you can use in more combinations, and is easy in use. TMPGEnc DVD Author, has the advantage, you can import VOB files and re-author this way, and is also handy for removing commercials. btw. my "learn process" was: checking www.videohelp.com, also using Google, and choose the guides that uses the cheapest or free software, and not to complex ones, i like to see fast result, this encourages me to try more after that.. also using short captures to encode helps to check if "things" work, also: sometimes, too many links in a menu, won't work with DVDlab, so that's not your fault.. make more menu's in that case. Maybe try (or study) some of the examples of the DVDLab website. Your encoding settings you won't need to change often, only when it won't fit on a single layer disc. I've put a shortcut/icon of CCE basic on my desktop, and drag a avi file onto it, to start.
Minion, or anyone else that can help... I believe my problem is very similar to the one originally posed by Cobruh2K... and I too am very PC literate, but apparently "retarded" on this issue. Can somebody PLEASE help, and try to keep it all simple and basic for me. OK, here's where I'm at. It all started because I got a ReplayTV and want to burn certain episodes of shows to DVDs to watch on my 2 DVD players in the house, and maybe to let friends see them at home occasionally. I have learned that the 'medium' recording quality on the Replay TV is MPEG-2 which I believe is where I need to start. So for all intents and purposes, I am only concerned with how to put MPEG-2 files on to DVDs to watch on a television. I have also done a lot of experimenting with the sample MPG that came with my Dell PC... Experience.mpg - it is nice because it's only a couple min. long and quick to test burn. OK, how I've been doing it and what isn't working. I open the ReplayTV files with Womble to clean them up and extract commercials, then save as an MPEG-2; non ReplayTV files I just leave alone. With my burner came Nero 6 which includes NeroVision Express 2 (NVE2). And yes, I have learned that NeroVision Express 2 **SE** will not burn MPGs to DVD correctly. Mine is NOT the SE version. So I open Nero and choose DVD, then choose 'Make your own DVD-Video' which opens NVE2. It allows me to edit the video, mark chapters, choose a layout for the menus, animate menus if desired, caption menus, test all buttons and then burn. It gives a couple choices; burn directly to DVD or burn to HD. Regardless of which I do, it makes the TS_Video folder as it should. It NEVER gives me an error, burns 100% cleanly, but then when I take that DVD and put it into a DVD player, it says "Loading" for some time then says "Please check disc" If I put it into a PC with DVD software on it, it does not play as it should, but if I 'Explore' to the CD and double click the files, they play fine. Side note: I have also tried ULead Movie Factory Disc Creator with the EXACT same results. I have tested the software with a different DVD burner (at a friends house, so in a different PC) and now have two different media types... generic CompUseless DVD-Rs and Memorex DVD+Rs - what the he!! am I missing? I was given the impression via another forum that Nero 6 and NVE2 (non SE) are supposed to just do this. They claim to AUTHOR and BURN any MPEG-2 file to DVD, and the software option when you choose it even says "Make a high quality DVD-Video that can be played back in most DVD players" Do I need some special codec? Is there a piece missing in this puzzle? Or am I doing something wrong? By the way, it's an 800MHz PC with over 700MB RAM running Windows 98. And yes I've treid this all in my 2.6 GHz PC with 1GB RAM and Windows XP... same results. And the Windows 98 machine runs this very smoothly... no choking, no errors, no apparent issues... except that it doesn't play back when finished. Sorry this got so long, just don't want to leave anything important out.
Well, if you have already Mpeg2 files, you should "author" and then burn, then not many things can go wrong, to have everything under control, You should, (if needed) convert avi to mpeg2, preferable video and audio apart from each other, these files you use in a good author prog. which will result in two maps, VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS these maps you can burn with any dvd burn util. in the standard ISO-UDF v1.02 This way you know what you're doing, working with "packages" you loose control, and things go wrong.
btw. did some capturing with a Skystar2 satellite pci card, the mpeg2 produced, needed first some "cleaning up" too, gop headers, and frames are not good, DVDLab can clean this up, and a perfect DVD is produced this way, simple utils. will not do a good job, doing "your thing" step by step will help you good. With DVDLab, you get clear error messages, so you know, where you did go wrong, if DVDLab gives no errors, your dvd-burn will be most likely accepted by standalones.
Well I"d say the problem is either with Nero Vision Express which I think is a Piece of Crap program anyways or your DVD players do not support DVD-/+R"s or at least the Brand you are useing.... I suggest you try authoring the Files to DVD useing something else like DVDLab, I have never had a DVD Authored By DVDLab not play properly and that includes over 400 SVCD mpeg2 files authored to DVD as Non-Standard DVD"s.....
When I get home tonight I'll download and test the DVDLab trial. I assume the trial version will do all functions of the paid, except that it's timed, correct? Also, thanks for the very fast replies. I've been on the AVSForums and the threads there in some cases are very disorganized for at least this topic. I like the experience and people so far on AfterDawn. And by the way, I have heard some negative things about Nero, but I've never seen ANYTHING bad printed about ULead's app... my concern at the moment is that I've used BOTH, and BOTH with two diff. drives, PCs and media types. Any ideas why these results?
Just use the normal version: Nero Burning Rom, and if possible, the latest version, nice is, when your burner comes with the OEM version of your brand burner, you never have to type the serial number... For encoding to Mpeg2, CCE Basic is the great util. for authoring, DVDLab, it's unnbeaten in it's price class, TmpgEnc-DVD-Author works also good, but has less options compaired with DVDLab.
Yeah, I got the OEM version of Nero 6 with SmartStart, and it seems like an all-in-one, very sleek/smooth little package... no serial number typing like you said... menus w/motion, 100% customizable layout, manual chaptering, etc... but it doesn't ever play back on DVD players... I am about to start playing with DVDLab now... is it possible that Nero 6 doesn't AUTHOR and just BURNS so I would need to use DVDLab FIRST and THEN burn with NERO ?? I was under the impression you just open any MPEG file in NeroVision Express 2, make your presentation of layout, menus and chapters and say BURN and it authors as well. Maybe not. Let's try DVDLab. But if anyone can help with the why...
