Text Problems With DVD

[JBreits]

I have a 1.5 hr movie which is a compilation of several home movies. At the beginning of each section, I have some text that fades in, displays for a few seconds, and then fades out. I'm trying to use TMPGEnc so I can better control the resulting file size and thus fit teh entire movie on one DVD.

First, I encoded everything with a contant bit rate of 4965. Everything seemed ok. It encoded well, it worked well with the authoring software, it burned fine. I was able to play the DVD perfectly on my PC. However, when I put it in to my standalone DVD player (memorex), the text fade sections did not work. To be exact, the screen just stayed blank and the text never appeared.

I then tried several smaller files with just the text fade in/out with several of the different options in TMPGEnc. It turns out that using the Constant Bit Rate, the text never showed up. Even at 8000 bit rate. I did a test using 2-pass VBR Min:0 Max:8000 Avg:4000 and the text fade worked perfectly.

So I re-encoded my entire movie using the following settings:
2-Pass VBR
Min: 1000
Avg: 4900
Max: 7500
P Spoilage: 0
B Spoilage: 20

GOP: IBBPBBPBBPBBPBBP
Closed GOP: Y
Detect Scene Change: Y

What I got was a movie, that would fade the text in correctly, but while the text was static, it would appear to be "jumpy" or have fuzzy edges, then the fade out would look fine as well.

This is my first DVD and I think I have everything figured out except the correct settings for encoding the MPG file. The text fade looks great if I use some simpleton software like Sonic MyDVD. But that won't let you change the bit rate (therefore, the size can't change) and the menus suck.

Can some one help me out?

Thanks,
Josh Breitbach
josh@breittechnologies.com

[setarip]

" I'm trying to use TMPGEnc so I can better control the resulting file size and thus fit teh entire movie on one DVD."

Use DVD Shrink instead, to simply compress your ENTIRE DVD as needed...

[JBreits]

How would that help my problem? I have a DV AVI file that needs to be converted to DVD format. I am using TMPGEnc to do so. However, my text looks bad even when I encoded it with a high bit rate (8000).

It has to be a setting in my TMPGEnc project because other software (MyDVD) will encode the film perfectly.

Thanks,
Josh Breitbach
josh@breittechnologies.com

[setarip]

My apologies, I misinterpreted the described sequence of events - but, in essence, the solution may still be the same.

1) Instead of trying to reduce filesize, in any way, under TMPGEnc, use TMPGEnc's DVD wizard/template to create a DVD-compliant set of MPEG-2 files. Presumably, you won't have any problem with your "text".

2) Use "TMPGEnc DVD Author" (DIFFERENT than "TMPGEnc") to create you full DVD "package" - including menu and chapters, if you like - once again, WITHOUT regard to final soze

3) Use DVD Shrink v.2.3 to compress your full DVD "package" to less than 4.37Gb

[JBreits]

Well I could do that, but even when I used TMPGEnc to encode a test clip at a higher bit rate (CBR 8000), the text did not show up at all on the TV. So it doesn't seem like a higher bit rate is the issue. Maybe I am wrong.

Thanks,
Josh