Burning a DVD

[Guest]

I'm a newbie. I've just finished my first movie (less than 10 minutes) and I
have some questions about saving it. What I want to do is put it on a DVD.
Should I save it to my PC first, or can I export the project to my DVD
software? I've saved the project quite a few times to see the quality, and I
find the best quality using a lower resolution, however, it appears that I
can only burn to a dvd using the dv-avi extension, which saves it in a higher
resolution. The quality poor at best and I wouldn't even waste the dvd if I
can't get the quality of the footage that I view in MM2. Any suggestions.
Again, I'm new - so be easy on me.

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

The movie can't go directly from Movie Maker to DVD without being converted
first to MPEG-2 files.... that'll be done by your DVD software.

Save it to your hard drive as a DV-AVI file... you can't export the project
file to your DVD software.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for you quick response. As I said, when I save it to a dv-avi file,
the quality is very poor. It's looks great on MM2. Right now I'm defraging
my hard drive and trying to free up some space to see if that's the problem.
Do you know of a way to save to a dv-avi file with a smaller resolution?

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

No, there's a fixed resolution to DV-AVI files... but don't worry if they
don't play smoothly... they are just a stepping stone to where you're
heading, not the final product.

 

[Guest]

So you're saying that once I burn the DVD, it should play smoothly?

 

[Wojo]

No I know that's how it sounded but if the DV-AVI file is choppy or
pixilated then the conversion process to DVD will not make it better.
Your headed in the right direction with defragging because you need to
smooth the rendering process so you get a good result. There are other
things to do as well but instead of listing them all I will direct you to
one of Graham's pages on the subject it lists all the different things to
look at and take care of to get the best possible output.

Graham's page:
http://www.myvideoproblems.com/Tutorials/OptimiseMyPcForVideo.htm

After following these suggestions I recommend disabling your screensaver and
then starting the rendering process. Once it begins creating your movie do
not touch the computer or try to do anything else with it. Multitasking
tends to take up resources that should be left to MM so it can render a
quality video.

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

Yes.... the rendering process isn't a real time one... Movie Maker will take
whatever time is needed to make the file a good one, using the info from the
source files... and your DVD software will also use whatever time it needs
to render the MPEG-2 files for the disc. So when the disc plays on the DVD
player/TV it'll look the same if the renderings took an hour or 10 hours.

Other activities on the computer will slow down the rendering but not effect
the quality of the end product.

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

the choppiness of the playback is due to the condition and capabilities of
the computer... it doesn't mean the file itself is less than perfect...

we're talking rendering and playback here, not video capture or exporting
which are real time processes that can lose info if not given enough
resources... any choppiness in a DV-AVI file rendered by Movie Maker isn't
due to poor rendering.

 

[Guest]

Yeah, PapaJohn is right. I always save an extra vid for my computer in
'high quality-ntsc'.....the DV-AVI won't play very well in media player, but
I know that it will be the best when burned to a dvd. I just delete the
whopping big file after I put it on DVD, and if i want to watch on my
computer, I have the 'high quality' file to look at until I tire of
it....hmmmm...I tire quite quickly....or is it that my movies suck? Nah!
Couldn't be. ha ha ha

 

[Wojo]

But it has been my experience that if resources are being used by other
programs or due to a different problem you do end up with a choppy or
pixilated video when rendering.

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

Hi Wojo,

I've never experienced that situation... I've rendered high definition
movies across a slower home network, using source files on one computer,
Movie Maker on another, and rendering the movie to a third one... and the
rendering being done by an old 266 Mhz laptop with 144 MB of RAM... it took
forever because of the low resources to start with and all the bottlenecks
to go through, but the rendered file was fine.

If a system is low on resources, and is used to check the rendered file, it
can look like it has problems... but the problems are usually in the
capability to do the playback, not in the file itself. You'd have to move
the file to a computer with the capabilities to play it smoothly, or you
might never know.

 

[Wojo]

hmmm, maybe the difference is in having the resources but running background
stuff that's eating them up (as I have done) or having absolutely the lowest
possible resources I have seen in a long time (as you are describing). I
know it wasn't a playback issue in my case since I do have the resources
available normally.
I'll have to run some simulations to see, maybe render across my network as
you said and see what happens then open a bunch of TSR's and try it again.

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

Hi Wojo,

I thought about this thread tonight as I sat in B&N tonight doing my normal
stuff, listening to WMP playing music, working on my newsletter, reading
emails, etc... and did a little test.

Without closing anything down, I opened MM1 and made a 2 minute movie
project using 3 video source files, and got it to the point of being ready
to start rendering a high quality movie on the next click.... I left it
sitting there for a minute to

..... open MM2, and open the same project file that MM1 had open, and got it
to the point of being ready to save a high quality movie on the next
click...

I clicked them each so the renderings started at just about the same
time.... 2 going on in parallel with my other normal stuff not closed....
both renderings using the same project and source files....

They each finished in the background and the rendered movies were perfect
(each as good as they would have been if I left it to render with nothing
else running)..

 

[Wojo]

I ran a test as well, actually similar as far as using resources goes, this
morning.
I set up Windows Media Encoder to re-encode a large AVI file to a WMV file
and at the same time used MM2 to render a DV-AVI across my network onto
another PC and it too rendered perfectly.
So apparently I was wrong about this one. The only thing I can think of,
because I do remember this being an issue before, is that I wasn't rendering
with MM when this came up but either encoding with one of my encoding or
converting apps or maybe burning to DVD.