DVD by remote - an updated discussion:
Link to Home Page. ------------------ Link to a Quality Discussion. ----------------- Disk Capacity Calculator.
Author your DVD’s with DVDMaestro - a working method described for this old program.
Visit my LSX Encoder page or my Cinema Craft Encoder page (CCE) for more encoding information.
Original DVD by Remote and SpruceUp web page Check out my widescreen pages from here.
This page last updated: 22 October 2002 with changes shown in this color.
INTRODUCTION
The first web page on the subject is available as an archive from the link at the head of this page. The information is just as applicable now as it was then. Few have seen this process as viable, instead they have rushed off to get one of those things at much higher prices than they are now, and indeed, with no experience in the art of authoring a DVD to support the costly outlay.
The “remote burn” process is well suited to those who do not have a DVD burner but have or want to develop the skills to author and achieve a home brewed DVD with the interactive menu features that we would all like, after all “that’s what a DVD is all about”.
I am one of these persons, I have no intention of buying a burner in the near future as I do not consider it a viable proposition for general usage. I do not rip DVD’s, I do not copy broadcasts that would require keeping, I simply these days shoot and edit home videos.
Recently there have been some developments in my process methods, my needs and my thinking and so this page is about getting the best use of the media now and in the future. The discussion applies to both DVD-R and DVD+RW after all the titleset is the common entrance point to either. I have authored both and played them on my Pioneer 535 DVD player.
CHANGING IDEAS AND THEREFORE CHANGING NEEDS
The DVD has an interactive menu structure, so has the SVCD, but it operates differently because the specification did not make them similar as perhaps it could have. Basically in SVCD you cannot use the left, right, up down keys as the basis of selection. The main interactive functions of the SVCD are achieved with the numeric keypad, the next, previous and return keys. You can program the play or select keys to play one of the items on a menu. Big difference and initially I actually authored menu pages for both, what a waste of time and effort.
The problem is made worse by the fact that most assets supplied with consumer level DVD authoring programs are “mickey mouse” SpruceUp was one provider way above the rest that gave us effective buttons and the facilities to make our own in Photoshop. With some thought then, it is possible to develop a menu that functions very well in both domains. The key to it is the invisible overlay that allows the use of identified keypad numbers for SVCD (which also work in the home brewed DVD) but also allows the play item selection overlay to be visible for the DVD process. It then does not matter that any DVD authoring program only supplies low level assets, provided one of them is the invisible key overlay patch – then make your own to suit both systems.
The big difference between SVCD and DVD is in the use of the “next” key. In most SVCD systems it is used to tell the DVD player or software where to go next – you program it to achieve whatever you want. In a DVD, the next key is used to jump between “chapters” those things with only one common ending. So if you’re a SVCD person of long experience in menus its automatic to use the next key for things that do not follow in DVD. Indeed, you can get something unexpected UNLESS you specifically author for similar functions and our consumer level DVD software allows that choice.
I have adopted putting a chapter point at the very end of the play item. This means if I hit “next” it will actually go through any chapters that might exist (non in my case) and as the very last key action go to the menu from which the item came. The reverse can be programmed for the “previous” key.
New Horizons:
At the conclusion of the New Zealand trip in April 2002 I purchase a Sony TRV 15 mini-DV handicam with a Zeiss lens to achieve a better quality in my widescreen productions. The reasons are discussed on the linked web page.
In short, widescreen needs DVD data rates to get the “quality” so as to enjoy the format. SVCD whilst providing almost identical visual image sharpness to DVD suffers generally from induced or added artifacts that are washed away at the higher DVD video data rates. There is nothing new in that!
Whether we like it or not 16:9 is going to be with us for a long time and soon we will all be trying to cope with what ever it brings. I just did not want to spend a lot of time authoring in the 4:3 format and then down the track, saying “why did I not forsee how wasteful it is to have a 16:9 TV and use it for 4:3?” The standard 4:3 format uses only ľ of the width of the 16:9 and that will be a frustrating un necessary waste. I have done something about it, NOW!
BUT I DO NOT OWN A 16:9 TV - Why bother NOW?
The SpruceUp authoring software does not flag a production to be 16:9 and there is no automatic selection of full screen 16:9 available with it. Therefore when using a SpruceUp authored DVD, one must manually select the TV into 16:9 mode. That maybe a bonus depending on the functions provided in the TV.
However SpruceUp and other authoring software can be made to comply with the 16:9 process. The process is simply to make sure your output is a titleset to the hard drive and not directly to your DVD-R media. This will then allow you to tweek the ifo files in the titleset which give instructions to the DVD player. My good friend Gareth Horne developed this process whilst I was away in New Zealand during March and April 2002 – it made my New Zealand shoot easier to get onto DVD-R for the future.
The process is described in detail on his 16:9 web site page and involves the use of a freeware program called IfoEdit. One simply changes the information in the ifo file of the titleset to be 16:9 and auto letterbox and the resulting DVD will then play full screen on a 16:9 and will auto letterbox on a 4:3 TV. When using this process it is no longer necessary to specifically edit a letterboxed version of your project. Edit it as a full screen 16:9 and let the ifoEdit changes create an automatically letterboxed production on the 4:3 TV as an interim in the inevitable change over to 16:9 television.
Even if your authoring software indicates it is 16:9 compliant I would recommend you check what is actually in the ifo instruction to the DVD player to make sure. You can also read a commercial DVD and find out exactly how they achieve what they do.
What this process also means for those shooting 2.35:1 cinemascope by using the Century Optics Converter with the camera set to 16:9, as described on my poorman’s widescreen page, need only author a full screen 16:9 version. By changing the titleset ifo files you will achieve correct playing on a 16:9 TV. Like anything else in this business you will need to experiment using RW media.
It is also possible to achieve, as is often done in the commercial DVD, a mix of 16:9 play items and 4:3 play items on the same DVD. The problem with this in our world seems to be the menus. We certainly cannot seem to have the best of both worlds.
My New Zealand shoot DVD’s were authored with 16:9 menus and coded as such so on a 4:3 TV they were letterboxed. This process causes a problem with the overlay patch which was not letterboxed and always over laid the asset or even worse was totally out of position. Fortunately I discovered this problem before the NZ DVD's and the get-around was to design a menu with the DVD selections on the center of the screen so the patch problem went almost un noticed.
I finally saw my efforts on a 16:9 TV and decided I still had it wrong with the menus, the fonts in particular seemed to detract from the quality so I again looked at the problem for future use.
In what ever we do with menu images, for a PAL 16:9 menu we look at the equivalent of a 1024 wide image squeezed out of a 720 wide frame. In NTSC this width is approximately 854 developed from a 720 wide frame. When I thought about that, I decided that I should be making ALL of my images 16:9 in size and indeed, by starting at nearly twice the frame size the fonts on the image looked far better.
It has been said in the past make the menus 4:3 and let them stretch to 16:9. NO! It should be make them 16:9 and let the system compress them for 4:3 use. Do not code them in the authoring process to be 16:9, code them as 4:3 and the result will be clearer fonts and a better impression from the opening of any DVD presentation, the menu.
Below is a sample all purpose menu that I have used for a week or so now! When you are doing a lot of testing it’s a god sent answer and saves making menus, just add the text to the master. Its not fancy, its only partly filled in as I build to my next DVD by remote but my word it has quality all over it when you see it on a 4:3 or 16:9 TV, the idea just needs a bit of a tweak! Item 3 is a 2:35 Cinemascope play item. The menu was developed at 1820 x 1024 as the master and it is the master each time that is modified so as to maintain quality, it is not possible to use a 720 x 576 final DVD menu and do modification/additions to it and retain the font quality.
Burn it to DVD media but will it play?
Well it may just be possible to play DVD's of the home brewed type in these non playing DVD players if you burn your DVD-R with the Gear Pro Professional version of their products.
I have had my Philips 725 from 1999, a friends Sony and a Toshiba only play burns with this program - try it by downloading the demo. You also may find you cannot put a label on the disk. My Philips no longer plays one of the Gear Pro burns because I put a label on the disk, so be aware!
To those who dislike the letterboxed format let me say this! You should keep in mind that the inevitable switch to a 16:9 TV will result in a screen that is smaller in height, particularly if you have a width restriction due to furniture shape. The gain from the change will provide a larger in height AND wider than the letterboxed 4:3 that you dislike now. That is worth thinking about as one of the positive outcomes of purchasing a 16:9 TV.
DATA RATES and ALL THAT
I currently author with averages of 8100kb/s as I believe widescreen needs a higher data rate at the consumer level. My 4 DVD’s from the New Zealand shoot were all authored at that data rate.
A discussion page on the differences in VBR and CBR encoding and the effects on quality can be reached from here.
A word of advice – if you wrar your files for the future then make sure you test them for extraction back to the hard drive. Be kind to your “remote burner” and do it for him/her as well, it should be a matter of course anyway! Murphy’s law says a miss read will happen when you least expect or want it to do so.
Now to the original DVD by Remote web page archive.
First written 20 February 2002
I first posted the idea of authoring a DVD and then sending the titleset to someone else to burn way back in December 2000 being the result of some forum discussions in mid 1999. The process was initially tried and tested with SpruceUp DVD authoring software and the TMPGEnc encoder but unfortunately Spruce Industries no longer exists, funny how the good get swallowed up, never to be seen again. The process is unaffected by that demise and these days I use the CCE encoder as it provides a far better end product.
Because I am only a relatively infrequent user of the DVD process and because it holds a lot more track time than an SVCD (at least twice if not more) means that one needs to accumulate worthwhile projects and when sufficient subject matter is available, author a DVD and then throw out the SVCD’s that have been used whilst getting the source material together. This means one authors in both SVCD and the DVD formats and in many respects there are major differences that need to be efficiently overcome in the process.
These came with my decision to shoot in 16:9 widescreen. The format is something I have wanted to shoot in since 1969, it’s a challenge, different and the format of the future. To achieve 16:9 and use all of the lines that form the height of the television rather than just stretching 3/4 of them (poorman's widescreen) to full height, I purchased the addon 16:9 converter lens from Century Optics. I was fully aware that because it is an addon there were going to be hurdles to jump over in the quality stakes. This web page link describes how I achieved quality from the combination and how I needed to change my technique at the shooting stage to achieve it.
Currently I have a switchable 4:3 TV in the lounge that can be used to force a “full screen” 16:9 presentation into the letterboxed mode. The image is slightly over squashed in height and with a full screen home brewed DVD which is forced into a 16:9 letterbox view, some dotted lines often appear just above the frame. That is very annoying and never occurred with the SVCD presentation. Read on as there is a solution.
Strange heading but this is a real problem that now has an answer. DVD players are certainly not all born equal and this can be a problem if your exchanging DVD's with others - play on yours but not on theirs. We all know a lot of DVD players are said not to play DVD-R media, my 1999 Philips 725 will not, other Philips models may play DVD-R's if you pad out to ensure your DVD is over 4000M. Some Sony set tops will not and at least some Toshiba's will not either, those I have tried but there will be others.
A DVD data rate encode which achieves an average of 7000kb/s (x1000=bits) will give you the necessary capacity to achieve 2 SVCD’s on one DVD, about 80 minutes playing time. You will have the choice of either single or multi-pass encoding, hopefully based on viewing the results from testing the same source material and comparing the very small differences that might be achieved at the expense of the time taken. Ah yes, you might see a difference now when you can compare two files, but what about in 12 months time, what will you compare it with then?