(Mis)Adventures in DVD-Writing...

A ways back I posted a comparison of various

MPEG2 encoders we tried (including a couple

that crashed on our system), made a selection

of Sonic's MyDVD and Ulead's Video Studio

(ver. 6 SE-DVD) as the two that were both

easiest to use, and with the best encoding

quality of ones we successfully tried. The

Ulead software offered some advantages, so

that is what we were going to go with until

a fatal glitch made itself evident: with

Canopus Raptor files, the blacks were "killed"

by the double-raising of the NTSC black

pedestal from RGB 0-0-0 to 16-16-16, then to

32-32-32. UGH! No way around it! Fortunately,

we discovered that there is a Canopus MPEG2

encoder that is easy to use, works as a

Premiere 6 plug-in, and which solves the

(lack of) black problem. After running

successful tests with this, we burned a DVD

thinking we now had a successful, direct,

easy to use DVD-writing process available.

Unfortunately, in the difficult areas of the

video that had previously passed the tests,

the Canopus encoder failed when making a

whole DVD. Back to square 5 or so...;-)

On the Canopus web site is a lossless file

type conversion utility, so we converted the

part of the DVD that failed with the Canopus

encoder to MS-codec, and ran the Ulead on

it (time-consuming, and "not neat"). This at

least worked and maintained good blacks, so

now we are about (possibly....;-) to burn a

successful DVD with all six short videos on

it - but the amazing number of "hoops" we

jumped through to do this makes me think

this DVD-writing stuff is not yet ready for

"prime time", unless one just gives in and

uses the MS DV-codec in the first place.

Darn...! ;-)