[Simon Ngan]

Friend of mine loan me the Star Wars series on LD and I just converted the 1st one to DVD succesfully.


I just got the HP DVD Writer and in order to burn DVD, I had to use DVDIt! PE 2.3 and Prassi PrimoDVD. DVDIt PE doesn't support DVD+RW so the only way to make it work is to export the information on the hard drive with the appropriate directories. Then I use PrimoDVD to burn a data DVD.


To fit a 125-min movie on a single 4.7GB disc, I had to use bit rate roughly at 4500kb/s. For audio, it's Dolby Digital 2.0 so it's compressd. I wish I could do 5.1 but it's pretty good now.


I bought the Matrox RT2500 for DVD capture, I had a nightmare before with Asus 6600 and it made me so mad so I took the plunge to get a Matrox. I just love the card and the result is stunning.


DVDIt! PE supports AVI files created from RT2500. Works amazingly.


The burner came with MyDVD 3.0 and I can't do anything with it. The AVI I created won't import, it likes MPEG1, RealVideo, MOV, etc.


If you have any questions about authoring DVD, let me know. I'm looking for a bit rate calcuator, so far I can only get VCD but nothing for DVD yet.

 

[Ayla]

Is this it ?

http://www.divx-digest.tv/software/b...calculator.zip

 

[chap]

I am curious as to where and how much you got your blanks from. The only place I could find any info on them was HP's website, and they were sold out selling them at $15 a piece.

 

[Simon Ngan]

I got the DVD+RW blank from Insight Canada for $14.50 Canadian plus shipping.


I bought 10 on Wednesday and they only charged $12.99 for shipping. These DVD+RW is even cheaper than DVD-R from Pioneer at Future Shop.

 

[X]

DVD-R media, preorder for early November delivery, $2.95 each:

http://store.yahoo.com/cd-recordable...47120mind.html


There are lots of deals for $8 DVD-R around too.

 

[chap]

At Apple's store you can get 5 DVD-R for $29.95. I am going to stay away from DVD+RW till the dust settles about what it is really compatable with and what it isn't. I think that in the future since a lot of big names are behind it, it can take off, but till then I think DVD-R and RW will be the reigning defacto standard.

 

[Figgie]

ROFL.. I am not sure how many times I am going to say this. But here we go AGAIN. Copying DVD is ILLEGAL. No matter what your opinion is on this matter. End of story.

 

[ChrisH]

Where in the above thread is there any mention of copying DVD???

 

[Tony Lai]

>ROFL.. I am not sure how many times I am going to say this. But here we go AGAIN. Copying DVD is ILLEGAL. No matter what your opinion is on this matter. End of story.


Hmm... well I have a copy of SWSE on laser and if there's a way to put them on DVD-R/RW with ac3 5.1 sound and in anamorphic 2.35:1, well why not?


It's not like I'm selling them or down own a legitimate copy.


T.

 

[Brett]

Figgie,


As the Sophist philosopher Protagoras said in 550 BC, values and laws stem from customs and conventions, and are not derived from God or nature.


For your info, this is an international forum on the "worldwide" web, and in some countries it is still legal to copy DVDs for whatever purpose (ie. China) and in many others it is perfectly legal to make backup copies of those you legally possess.


While we can all sympathize with the tailspin the US Home Theater crowd is being put in by the MPAA, some folks here happen to be honest law abiding citizens plain and simply exercising their right to dispose freely of their own personal property.


Until we live one day in the United States of the World, we'll just have to take a step back and stir our thoughts before making value judgments which can't be readily transposed to other societies.


Yeah, I know you meant well, just kindly warning others here that this being a public forum they could be opening themselves up to legal pursuits and even prosecution for what they thought was an innocent activity in the privacy of their own home.


Cheers,

 

[Phat Phreddy]

Well we can argue semantics or geography all we like but Simon clearly stated that 'a friend of his has Star wars on LD' that he made a copy of it and his profile lists him as being in Canada...


Now given those facts can anyone find wiggle room ??? not really IMO...


The topics of DVD replication and backup is a valid HTPC one and is possible to be posted to the forum if the wording is presented intelligently... A post boasting I just pirated Star Wars is not leaning in the right direction...


I don't want to be heavy handed on censoring or closing threads but members must realize that a flood of newer members will see these posts and then think it is ok to take it further... Just use your common sense about how to approach these type of posts is all I would say...

 

[ianken]

Well, I have a few LDs that will never see the proper DVD treatment. So I got the HP drive. I've tried a vareity of encoders (my RT2500 is DOA on WinXP).


The problem I have is that I cannot find a reliable way to make properly flagged MPEG source streams so that software players can do pulldown removal.


Making a 29.97fps DVD is not a problem. Making one that plays well on flag reading progressive players is.


TMPEGENC has a 29.97fps with pulldown removal flag encode mode but its pulldown detection used for this encode mode sucks, it is NOT the same pulldown detection used in the filter selectable on the filter tab, which is too bad becuase that filter is pretty good, even on content where caadence changes a lot, like film sourced stuff that was edited on video.

 

[macdaddy_]

Go here . Find your way to the downloads section and find a program called pulldown.exe which will do exactly what you are looking for...


You might be interested in reading the guides, as well. While they mostly deal with DivX and SVCD, the latter format uses an mpeg2 stream, so the encoding process is virtually the same...

 

[ianken]

Are 23.976 FPS streams with pulldown flags legal for DVD? It would make sense, you could get more efficient use of space that way.


I thought DVD was 29.97 fps with flags to remove pulldown? That's why flag reading progressive players choke on poorly authored content.


Or are both supported? I will peruse the link you posted and hopefully find the answer there.

 

[hob]

I am wired, I have learned how to use contrast, sharpness etc. to show an almost DVD copy of Star Wars "The Empire Strikes Back" from a pre-recorded Vhs with THX on my F38310 HDTV. Now if I could only pickup the knowldge necessary for putting a HTPC on that same HDTV, I would be all set.



A AVS member reponded to my thread I did some checking and found a free call. I am now a subscriber for only $14.97 for a one year subscription to Stereophile Home Theatre magazine. Man am I going to 'burn' some pages reading for that knowledge to put one on. I might be disabled, but I am determined to get what I want no matter what it costs me! Sorry for the rant.

 

[Simon Ngan]

Okay guys, the reason I posted the thread was just I was so happy the HP DVD burner works with my Sony DVD Changer. Not really intended for copying copyrighted materials. Well, in my original post, I said I got the LD from my friend. I could easily say I had the LD and I'm just making copies for backup purpose, but I didn't.


At this point, my primary interest is to use the HP burner to transfer my home video. I have a lot of family tapes as well as with my dog. I really want them to be professionally transferred to DVD. I also bought a Matrox RT2500 for this purpose.


The reason I made a Star Wars DVD was that friend of mine have the whole set and I was going to borrow it to try it with my HT. I haven't used my LD player for few years and I was just going to try it out on a home-made DVD, that's all.


If I'm making copies of DVD movies, I don't think it's worth while. For a blank, I'm paying over $15 Canadian. Add up the price for a rental DVD, I might as well buy a legit copy. Don't forget the burner can only do single layer so some movies required 2 blank DVDs.


Once again, if I misled anyone, or posting something I shouldn't have, I aplogize for it. Probably the thread title was misleading, too.

 

[Phat Phreddy]

Simon, Thanks for stating good intentions and let me make myself a little clearer... I was not trying to get at you and I certainly don't want to go playing policeman (or MPAA advocate ) on the forums here but when threads like this one (borderline ones) pop up I think it helps to jump in early and steer the topic without having to wait and later close it or do something heavy handed....


As a OT side note I think many of us have noticed a minor dropping of tone in the forums and more discord than before. Whether this is due to more, newer members... or world events... or moon phase who knows.... The last thing I want to start is wars of words between mods and members, its just that as the forums get larger and more noticed I believe we will have better industry support and in turn better HTPC's if we can keep this place somewhere where industry members are keen to show their superiors or that the higher ups can hang out to glean what we are looking for in products. Thus intelligently asking questions will keep the peace and create the impression I think we would all hope for...

 

[MadMax]

Simon, drop me a note since I already got 5.1 sound to work with mini-dvd-like discs, fitting a movie on 2 CDRs with 5.1 intact is a pain in the ass but it can be done. I also fiddled around with TMPEnc a lot and might help you with the Mpeg2-issues you are still facing.

I did a LOT of research into these subjects because I wanted to get the most out of a raite-based player which, after a few firmware mods, was able to play vob-files directly from CD-Rs. It was one month of hard work and experimenting, but I finally got it right. Made a test-trailer for my htpc on one CD-R, full 5.1-DD-sound, full resolution, lousy bitrate ;-)

so leave me a note on the boards or mail me at [email protected]



btw, you wouldn´t have to convert the StarWars discs, they can be had pretty cheap from HongKong as standard or SE. Of course, these aren´t in any way licensed by Lucasfilm, but they even contain some extras, I believe that they were mastered from the Laserdiscs too, don´t own them myself.