This article deals with burning straight-play DVDs – in other words, DVDs that only contain the video and audio, with no menus. This is useful for when you want to put footage onto a DVD for submission to a film festival, distributor, agent, etc. Straight-play DVDs combine the convenience and simplicity of VHS cassettes with the image quality of DVDs.
Burning DVDs at home involves the following steps:
1. Encoding the original footage as an MPEG-2 file;
2. importing the MPEG-2 file and corresponding audio file in a DVD authoring program such as Pinnacle Impression;
3. making the DVD authoring program create an image file of the DVD;
4. burning the DVD using a DVD burner such as the Pioneer DVD burner. ___________________________________________________
1. Encoding the original footage as an MPEG-2 file
MPEG-2 is the standard DVD video format. To encode your video as an MPEG-2 file you will need an MPEG-2 encoder. Software encoders such as the Tsunami encoder (TMPGEnc) and the Cinemacraft encoder (CCE) can be purchased on the Internet, and most of them offer trial versions that will encode your video in exactly the same way as the full version, but with a watermark on it. This allows you to assess the encoder’s quality before buying it. Regardless of which MPEG-2 encoder you choose, the process is simple: assuming you have already exported your footage from your editing software as an AVI file or something similar, you tell the encoder which video file you want to encode, optimize the settings (a substantial topic in itself) and start the encoder.
The output file will be an MPEG-2 file of your video. As with any compressed video, its quality will depend on the data rate, and the data rate will, in turn, affect the file size. You will be burning the MPEG-2 file onto blank media (DVD-R or DVD+R) and there is therefore a practical upper limit to your video’s data rate. This is because the surface of blank DVD-R and DVD+R media is not as reflective as that of DVDs stamped using an injection molding process, so not all set top DVD players are able to cope with a high data rate on home-made DVDs. If a DVD player is unable to cope with the data on a DVD, playback will stutter.
If you want to ensure that your homemade DVDs will be compatible with as many set top players as possible, the data rate of your MPEG-2 video should not exceed 7 Mbps – something to remember when tweaking your MPEG-2 encoder’s settings.
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This article deals with burning straight-play DVDs – in other words, DVDs that only contain the video and audio, with no menus. This is useful for when you want to put footage onto a DVD for submission to a film festival, distributor, agent, etc. Straight-play DVDs combine the convenience and simplicity of VHS cassettes with the image quality of DVDs.
Burning DVDs at home involves the following steps:
1. Encoding the original footage as an MPEG-2 file;
2. importing the MPEG-2 file and corresponding audio file in a DVD authoring program such as Pinnacle Impression;
3. making the DVD authoring program create an image file of the DVD;
4. burning the DVD using a DVD burner such as the Pioneer DVD burner. ___________________________________________________
1. Encoding the original footage as an MPEG-2 file
MPEG-2 is the standard DVD video format. To encode your video as an MPEG-2 file you will need an MPEG-2 encoder. Software encoders such as the Tsunami encoder (TMPGEnc) and the Cinemacraft encoder (CCE) can be purchased on the Internet, and most of them offer trial versions that will encode your video in exactly the same way as the full version, but with a watermark on it. This allows you to assess the encoder’s quality before buying it. Regardless of which MPEG-2 encoder you choose, the process is simple: assuming you have already exported your footage from your editing software as an AVI file or something similar, you tell the encoder which video file you want to encode, optimize the settings (a substantial topic in itself) and start the encoder.
The output file will be an MPEG-2 file of your video. As with any compressed video, its quality will depend on the data rate, and the data rate will, in turn, affect the file size. You will be burning the MPEG-2 file onto blank media (DVD-R or DVD+R) and there is therefore a practical upper limit to your video’s data rate. This is because the surface of blank DVD-R and DVD+R media is not as reflective as that of DVDs stamped using an injection molding process, so not all set top DVD players are able to cope with a high data rate on home-made DVDs. If a DVD player is unable to cope with the data on a DVD, playback will stutter.
If you want to ensure that your homemade DVDs will be compatible with as many set top players as possible, the data rate of your MPEG-2 video should not exceed 7 Mbps – something to remember when tweaking your MPEG-2 encoder’s settings.
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