Hi, I'm new here so this is obviously my first post. I posted this message on another site but I haven't gotten any hits yet. Anyhow, I'm interested in starting a small DVD authoring business and I just wanted to get some suggestions for what I might need to get started. I know that generally, I'll need: 1.) Mpeg Hardware Encoder Card 2.) Dual Layer DVD Burner 3.) DVD Authoring Software (I already have Sonic DVDit) 4.) Video Editing Software 5.) SVHS VCR 6.) DV input card??? Anyhow, if anyone could give me any recommendations on hardware encoders etc, I would really appreciate it. I look forward to your responses.
I forgot to add that all I'll be doing for the most part is just transfering home video footages from VHS or 8mm tapes to DVD.
Hm. Very interesting. Nice Idea though. Is it going to be a internet based buissness? If it is I would reccomend: Http://www.bravenet.com if you want a nice .com site or a free one!
Not sure if there's a reason you specifically need a hardware encoder, but for your price range I'd seriously consider buying a software encoder instead. I believe Canopus ProCoder is $500. If you need to go with hardware instead I'd also recommend checking out the Canopus website to look at their cards (starting at around $500 IIRC): http://www.canopus.com/Index.asp For authoring software I recommend DVD-Lab Pro for $200. It's probably the most powerful authoring software in your price range. For DVD burners it's really more a question of personal taste. Pioneer, Plextor, Lite-On, and NEC all make good burners. The Plextors will be the most expensive, and the Lite-On and NEC burners will probably be cheaper than the Pioneers (but not by much). I personally use a Pioneer, but would probably be very happy with any of the others (especially a Plextor).
Thanks for your replies. My reason for assuming I needed a hardware encoder was because I was under the impression that software encoding can take a LONG time to render files for MPEG. My understanding was that buying a capture card that could encode in real time would be a much faster solution. I also reckon that the quality of the transfers would be much smoother compared to a "department store-bought" analog capture card. I also read a thread from some other forum (it could be this one) in which a software-encoder-based user complained that his renders were taking 5 hours or more (for a 1hr or so video) on a Pentium 4 2.5Ghz PC. I'm not sure if this is a typical time frame or not, but I certainly don't want to spend that type of time rendering files for MPEG. My over-all goal is to provide a cost effective solution for clients who wish to convert their home video library into a professional quality DVD. Of course I don't expect it to look as good as a hollywood DVD movie, but I would like to offer services that include personalizing their DVDs to reflect more of the hollywood style DVD movies (you know, with menus and the such). Anyhow, a lot of people have old VHS tapes so of course the quality of these tapes are probably a little grainy. I'd like to be able to clean up the source feed a little bit if at all possible. Considering the fact that I plan to run this as a side business... do you think $2000 is too much (or not enough) for the services I'd like to offer?
Well, back about my Website hosting. Bravenet offers for only $7.00 a month for 100gb bandwidth, 5,000mb disk space, 2,000 email accounts, etc. Um, depending if your going to run this as they send in their VHS's into you and you do this stuff, I would think $2000 would be about right, for quick, fast, solutions. Also, I would reccomend spending quite a bit on video editing software. It is almost the most important part of your buissness if what i'm thinking of is correct.
Consider before making an investment: What do you plan to charge PER completed project? How long do you anticipate it taking to recoup this money? How many prospective customers do you have lined up waiting?
For what you want to do I'd consider the following possibilities: 1. Canopus ADVC 110 for capturing. This will give you an AVI file using DV compression which can be read by any standard video editor or encoder. One of the advantages of the Canopus ADVC line is that they're excellent at keeping the audio and video in sync with each other so you don't have to waste a bunch of time later trying to fix it. 2. Adobe Premier Pro for editing. If you're just making simple DVDs and don't need to do any editing you can skip this part but realistically you probably want an editor. Premier Pro has the advantage of being able to easily output directly to all the high end MPEG encoders without having to render to an intermediate file. 3. Canopus ProCoder for encoding. You can download a trial version to see how it performs on your computer, but it doubt it will take anywhere near 5 hours to encode an hour of video unless you have a slow PC. 4. DVD-Lab Pro to author DVDs. DVD-Lab makes it very easy to make simple DVDs and nearly as easy to author much more complex ones. 5. A Plextor DVD burner. While I love my Pioneer it's missing one feature I'd want if I were distributing DVDs for standalone compatibility - bitsetting. Bitsetting a DVD+R as a DVD-ROM should give you a disc with maximum compatibility on standalones (although with newer players it shouldn't make any difference). With a Plextor drive you not only get an excellent drive, but also excellent tools for determining the quality of a burn. Here are some example prices from online stores: Canopus ADVC 300 - $300 Adobe Premier Pro - $700 Canopus ProCoder 2 - $450 DVD-Lab Pro - $200 Plextor PX-716A - $130 Now if you get all of these items it would only leave you around $200 (probably less when you consider shipping) to get an S-VHS unit to capture from and still stick to a $2000 budget. For simple DVDs (ie just capture and encode without editing) you could eliminate Premiere Pro and put $700 back into your budget. For simple source cleanup and basic editing you could see if AviSynth (free) is something you're comfortable using. It's completely different than standard editing software because it uses scripting instead of a standard visual editing interface, but with a little practice and some determination it's a very powerful tool that's regarded very highly by many professionals. You should also think about getting a printer for inkjet printable media for a more professional final product. That largely depends on your editing software. If you're comfortable using AviSynth you should be able to do what you want pretty efficiently with the software and hardware listed above. If you want to use more standard editing software I'd reccomend adding at least another $500 to your budget.
Vurbal: Thanks for your recommendations. I actually already had my eye on the Canopus ADVC capture card (although I was considering the 300 model). Adobe Premier Pro is definitely on my list as this seems to be a pretty popular choice among video editors. I am going to research some of your other recommendations as well to how they integrate with my needs. On another matter, I want to add that I'm really curious about the Canopus ACEDVio editing card. Judging from some early feedback, I can see clients wanting me to add some digital effects to their videos if possible. I understand that a dedicated processing card would allow more realtime effects editing and faster renders. If I stretch my budget, do you think it'd be worth it to add a card such as the ACEDVio?
Looks like you've made some headway in your research. The ADVC 300 is supposed to be well worth the money. As far as the ACEDVio I would think Premiere Pro should handle any effects you need, but I'm no expert with using the software or familiar enough with the card to be able to give you a good answer. Hopefully one of our members who's more experienced in this area will stop by to help out.
If you want to get a Hardware Mpeg-2 encoder Card that will produce Professinal Quality Captures then there are a Few Very Good ones but they are Quite expensive ,About as expensive as a ADVC-300... Like the "Canopus MpegPro EMR/MVR" which is a High Quality external/Internal USB 2.0/PCI Mpeg-1/2 hardware Encoder(The "MVR" version of the device is a PCI card and the "EMR" version is USB 2.0).... From what I have heard about these devices they Capture extremely High Quality Mpeg-2 Video and have an audio Lock Feature simular to the ADVC-100/300 that Keeps the audio and Video In Perfect sync all the Time....They also have Hardware Noise Filters and 3D/2D Comb filters to remove Noise in Old Grainy Video Footage and remove Interlace artifacts.... You can check out these devices here: Mpeg Pro MVR http://www.canopus.us/US/products/MPEGPRO_MVR/pt_MPEGPRO_MVR.asp Mpeg Pro EMR http://www.canopus.us/US/products/MPEGPRO_EMR/pt_MPEGPRO_EMR.asp The Drawback to useing a Hardware Mpeg Encoder Is when it comes to editing the Video because Most Editors will tend to re-encode the Video when you edit it which will Degrade the quality and sort of defeats the Purpose of haveing a Hardware Encoder, So the way to overcome this is to use an editing program that does native Mpeg editing which edits without re-encodeing.... There are very Few Native Mpeg Editors that will edit Mpeg-1/2 on a Frame Accurate Basis and also has features for adding Transitions and effects and Titles.... One of the Best ones is "Womble Mpeg Video Wizard 2003" or another Option is if you have "Adobe Premier Pro" then you can get a Native Mpeg editing Plugin for Premier Pro called the "MainConcept Mpeg Pro HD" Plugin which add Native Mpeg editing Features to Premier pro and you get to use all of the Features and Effects and Transitions in premier in your Mpeg editing Project and when you render with the Plugin it will only re-encode the Frames that have effects or Transitions and will leave the Rest alone so there is No Quality Loss and rendering Only takes Minutes as opposed to Hours.... The other Option i would Suggest is to get a Capture Device Like the "Canopus ADVC-100/110 or 300" or maybe a "Canopus ACEDVio" which is also a Good Device especially if you want an Internal Analogue Digital converter which is also a Little cheaper than the other devices but produces simular quality and has Simular Features.... The Advantages to useing a Hardware DV AVI Capture device Like the Canopus ADVC and ACEDVio Devices is that the Devices are Compatible with Most all DV Editing programs... Also the Captured Files can Potentailly have Better quality than with a Hardware Mpeg encoder device because the Format Is Much Less Compressed so there is less Quality Loss through Compression..... Another Advantage is that the Captured Files can be edited Many times over again with Little or no quality Loss and the DV AVI format is Compatible with Most all Editing Programs Pluss with DV AVI files you Can adjust the Color and Brightness and Contrast while editing were with Mpeg files the Files would need to be re-encoded to adjust the color and Brightness which means a Loss in Quality were DV AVI files can be rendered with Filters and such without any Visible Quality Loss.... The Drawbacks to the DV AVI format Compared to the Mpeg-1/2 format are that they Take up a Lot of Disk space, about 15gb per Hour Compared to High Quality Mpeg-2/DVD at about 2gb per Hour.... Also if you are makeing DVD"s then the DV AVI files will have to be Encoded to Mpeg-2/DVD before authoring to DVD but there are some Fairly Fast High Quality standalone Mpeg-2 encoders..... Actually when it Comes to Mpeg encoders there are only a Small handfull of them that Produce Quality that I consider acceptable and I try Pretty much every new encoder that comes out and Most are Crap..... The only encoders I would Recomend to Achieve Professinal Results are: Encoder ......................Quality....Features.....Speed..... Tmpgenc Pluss/Express...... 8 / 10 ... 9 / 10 .... 5 / 10 ... Canopus Procoder .......... 9 / 10 ... 7 / 10 .... 6 / 10 ... MainConcept Encoder ....... 8 / 10 ... 6 / 10 .... 8 / 10 ... CinemaCraft Encoder SP..... 10 /10 ... 6 / 10 .... 9 / 10 ... As For a Good DVD authoring Program to Put your Mpeg-2 files on to DVD I suggest "MediaChance DVDLab Pro" which has all of the Features of the High End Professinal DVD authoring Programs But it is also very easy to use..... The Video editing Program you use would sort of Depend on the Capture device you are going to get...If you were to get one of the Canopus ADVC-100/300 devices then i would suggest a editing Program Like "Adobe Premier Pro 1.5" or "Sony Vegas Video 6" which are both very good Video editing programs that can Capture Video from either of the Canopus Devices... Premier is Harder to use than Vegas Video but it also has some More Features But Vegas Video also has Features that premier doesn"t like Dolby Digital Surround Sound 5.1 Mixing and encodeing and it also has very good audio editing tools But Premier has Many Different Plugins and add on Packages that can be used with it that greatly expand the Functionality of Premier Pro..... If there is anything I can help you with Just let me Know....Cheers
Minion: Thanks for taking the time to offer your opinion to this thread. You offered some really great information for people such as myself who are just jumping into this field. The way things are going, it appears that I'm pretty much set on the Canopus AVDC 300 and Adobe Premier Pro as my capture card and video editor. These two products seem to come up quite a bit in my research for items to buy. I've also noticed that not many people seem to mention Sonic DVDit as a viable software solution for DVD Authoring! Is this program not up to the standards of the others such DVDlabs or is it that not many people know much about Sonic DVDit (by the way, I have the P.E. version of Sonic DVDit). As I learn more about video editing and DVD creation, I realize that I don't even need a hardware encoder card so I'm not really concerned about that anymore. I think that as I was first learning about DVD and video editing, I was under the impression that a hardware encoder was a luxury that could really aid in the editing process. However, I think what I was really looking for is perhaps something thats akin to a dedicated editing processing card. I come from an audio engineering field, and we have dedicated processor cards for our audio processing which frees up the computer's CPU for other tasks. Not only that, but in most cases, the DSP card plug-ins actually sound better than using native plug ins. I would assume that this would true in the video editing world as well. Can anyone offer any information or thoughts on this?
Well the ADVC-300 is a Hardware Encoder...It uses Hardware DV AVI compression which is the same format used by Digital Camcorders and they even Shoot Hollywood Films in DV format these days.... Useing the Hardware DV encoder Frees up your CPU to do other Tasks but with Hardware DV Compression there is still a Lot of Data being written to the Hard drive while Captureing so you Shouldn"t do anything that uses your hard Drive a Lot when captureing From the ADVC-300..... As for useing "Sonic DVDit PE" I don"t see any reason why you can"t use it accept Something Like DVDLab pro Has Much better Menu Features and it supports Multiple audio Tracks and Subtitles and you can even add Transitions Between menu"s and DVDLab will Let you author 16:9 and 4:3 Files all on the same DVD....DVDLab also doesn"t Have a Built in Encoder so there is never a Chance that it will re-encode your Files which ruins the quality..... I just Figured that since you are doing this For a Business that you might want to use a Professinal Level DVD authoring program in case you have a Customer that wants features on his DVD that DVDit Can not create....The Newest version of DVDit which is "Sonic DVDit v5.0" has a few new Menu features Over DVDit 2.54 but isn"t nearly as good as DVDLab pro..... Cheers
jlacck do you have experience with HTML, JAVA, PHP, or any other web programming language because you may want the the help of a professional web designer to attract more people to a good looking site.
Chuckrox8: No I don't have any experience with HTML, Java or any type of web programming. But I definitely know the importances of marketing and setting up an attractive website so I have a seperate budget set aside for those type of things.
jlacck, First of all you are getting off to a good start by asking questions on this site. There is a plethora of knowledge in these forums. Now back to the questions at hand. I capture all my video with an ADVC300, it has built in TBC (time base correction).TBC will come in handy when capturing damaged / degraded footage and the ADVC syncs audio and video perfectly. Learn AVISynth, it's a powerful frameserver. It can do a lot of editing and cleanup. If you need to add effects, then get Premiere Pro 1.5 --- Regardless, learn AVISynth. Once you learn how to use it, you will use it a lot. Some software won't accept AVISynth scipts, but there are tools that make it possible to feed them into anything that will accept AVI. As far as hardware encoders, save your money. Hardware encoders that can compare in quality to software encoders are expensive. Also, they limit your editing and cleanup. Software encoders do take some time. The best way around that limitation is to get all your source ready for encoding (usually via scripts ready to be frameserved) , then set your encoder for batch processing all your jobs. Your customers will be happy with the quality of your product and they will most likely return or send others your way. Use the money you've saved up from this to buy a good hardware encoder or a seperate computer for editing and encoding. Finally, Authoring software. Sonic makes the best authoring packages, but DVDit is not one of them. The main thing is the authoring engine, some authoring packages don't adhere or check for compatability as well as others. The best authoring package you can get in your price range is Sonic's RealDVD. It uses the same authoring engine as it's high priced brother "Scenarist". It just doesn't give you the authoring control that scenarist does. Hope that helped.
WOW, the information I am learning from here is absolutely amazing! You guys have been extremely helpful with your thoughts and suggestions. I definitely appreciate the comments and advice from everyone involved in this thread. The fact that there are so many different options to choose from in regards to software, hardware etc, I've decided to at least test out some of the trial versions of the video editing and authoring applications that are available. Thus far, I'm very impressed with Imaginate from Canopus for building photo slide shows. (Definitely a must buy). I've also downloaded Adobe Premiere Pro and I have to say, this program definitely has a major learning curve. So to that extend, I've got 30 days to figure it out and decide if it worth buying. I'll be checking out some other software as well. Please feel free to drop by and offer any additional thoughts or comments that you may have.
HI, Just thought I would let you ponder some things. First off, I own jpimaging.com I started it in oct of 2004 and i have to say it is rather succesful but not without some headaches. First off whatever you do do not use adobe premeire pro ...I bought it and it was a waste of money..very long to do everything on it. I find that you can import to nero as a mpeg2 with amazing results for converting a VHS. You must have a very high quality VHS player. I recomend using monster cables and at least s-video (I use BNC conectors) For the price you cant do better than the ADVC 300. I also recommend a external preview monitor and program monitor. (it just helps the eyes) DVD burners are pretty much up to you. I happen to have 3 sony 710s. Also make sure you have one hell of a computer...otherwise its just going to take a ton of time. And if you plan to be high volume get at least 3 comps like that. finally make sure you save money for advertising. otherwise you will screw yourself without even knowing it...trust me I know! if you have any questions feel free to PM me ...
Josp03, Thanks for your comments. I've already given thought to expenses for marketing and promotional purposes. The $2k budget that I have listed is just for equipment and software purchases.
