All I want is to be able to

1) Add mulit-demuliplexed mpg data as titles
2) Chapter said titles
3) Possibly have non-motion menus

That's it. What the hell am I missing?

You can do that with SpruceUp.

Ronny

SpruceUp - definitely!

vidcap: 2-6hrs
cut demux: .5 hrs
load into spruceup: .3hrs
make menus sim create tile set: 1 hr
burn: 1hr

Whatever your recording - it better be worth your time.

Hmmm - I guess if you are working with 6 hours of footage it is gonna take you a few hours.

But if someone was wanting to make, for example, a DVD with 3 high-bitrate 10min home-movie clips with a single menu and some chapter points then my estimates would be:

vidcap: 3 * 10 = 30min
cut demux: 3 min
load into spruceup: 6 min
make menus and create tile set: 1 min and 3 min
burn: 20 min on 2X media

(I left out simulating - for me SpruceUp always does what it's told so I never bother...)

And if you're not capturing directly to DVD compliant MPEG in real time then you also need to add the encoding time before the authoring.

The fastest way would be using a standalone DVD-recorder but I'm not sure if they create DVD's according to the standards (that plays in normal DVD players) and if they can create menus and chapters.

Ronny

Yep, a standalone recorder is the way to go if you just want to move video to DVD without a lot of fancy menus.

1 hour of digital 8 video takes me:

1 hour to record on DVD, 1 min to do simple menu, 3 min to finalize. Total time for stand-alone DVD player compatible DVD: 1 hr 4 mins.

Which is why I bought my stand-alone Panasonic E30 recorder.

jb

Hold on a second...

I'm not including time to create mpeg-2 complaint files, just authoring and burning.

SpruceUp worked, but trying to place chapter points was a PITA. It refused to burn, I ended up burning in DVD Workshop and it came out ok.

eric at snowmoon dotcom

Funny how everyone's systems react to the different software. For me it's the exact opposite in that SpuceUp can add chapter points in nanoseconds, where DVD Workshop takes forever just to scrub through to do the same. For all the software authors out there... AUTO-CHAPTER-GENERATION!!!! I know DVDComplete will do this, but it won't take 352x480 files. Humph.....Someone will get it all together soon.

Tim

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but the scrubber is tiny in spruce up. In DVD workshop I can type in my timecodes and create a new chaper fairly qualicky, but it just seemed to take forever trying to compile the files.

SpruceUp works faster if you feed it with elementary streams (m2p, m2a) instead of program streams (mpg).

One tip to make it easier to find the chapter points is to use the right and left arrow keys on the keyboard to scroll through the video when fine tuning, instead of using the slider in the chapter creation window.

I alsways export the title set and burn with another program. I use PrassiPrimo DVD to burn, it works perfectly for me.

Ronny