DVD and miniDVD Guide - Requires Reading

There are two parts to this guide.  The first part shows you how to encode a compliant DVD stream with TMPG and the second part shows you how to encode using CCE.  A miniDVD is the same as a DVD but burned on a regular CD-R instead but they will not play on standalone DVD players.  I'm also writing this guide assuming that you are already familiar with stuff such as creating DVD2AVI projects and using TMPG.  This guide also requires that you use SpruceUp to burn the DVD but unfortunately it isn't sold anymore.  But you can still download the demo and find a way to get the full version.

You can either encode a DVD stream using TMPG or CCE.  Using CCE will require that you use TMPG to set everything for DVD encoding and using CCE to do the video encoding.  If you use CCE you need to read the parts in italics but I would suggest reading the whole guide on TMPG since its not that long.   Its up to you on which encoder you want to use.  CCE is regarded as the best MPEG-2 encoder but some people have problems using CCE on their computer.  If you have problems with it, you'll have to use TMPG.  You can either use the free version of TMPG I have on this site or you can download the latest version which encodes faster but MPEG-2 funtions are limited to a 30 day trial period.

If you're wondering why we have to use TMPG when encoding with CCE, its because SpruceUp takes your 16:9 video and displays it as 4:3.  So by using TMPG we can set up the aspect ratio as 16:9 but the video will be encoded at 4:3 with the black bars on the top and bottom.  

Note: This guide has not been tested fully but I have created a miniDVD and it does work.  This was a pretty long guide to write so if you do find what you think is an error in this guide or the SpruceUp guide, please let me know  

You will need the following software for this guide:

Cinema Craft Encoder 2.50

TMPGEnc - MPEG-2 funtions only works for 30-days.

Bitrate Calculator

DVD2AVI

SpruceUp

Pulldown.exe

VFAPI

Encoding in TMPG.

First you have to create a DVD2AVI project, load the d2v file in TMPG and go to the settings.  You have to do this if you're using TMPG or CCE. 

You'll want to set everything up for DVD encoding.  The size has to be 720 x 480 for NTSC, 720 x 576 for PAL and the aspect ratio as 4:3.  Then you'll want to set the frame rate to 23.976 fps or 25 fps for PAL..  If you're using CCE, you'll also have to do this step or when you load your movie in SpruceUp, its not going to be at 16:9 aspect ratio.  .      

For rate control I would suggest using 2-pass VBR.  Then go to the settings and set the max, average and min bitrates according to the bitrate calculator.  If you're using CCE to encode, you don't need to worry about this part.

Encode mode should either be non-interlace (progressive) or interlace if you're using CCE to encode but I do not know if this has any effect when encoding in CCE..  If you're using TMPG to encode, set it to 3:2 pulldown when playback for NTSC movies.  This tells the player to play the movie back at 29.97 fps.  If you have a PAL movie it should either be interlace or non-interlace depending on what DVD2AVI told you.     

Next go to the Advanced tab. 

All you have to do here is make sure everything is setup right.  Set video source type according to what DVD2AVI told you, set the source aspect ratio and the field order.  If you still don't know how to do that, click here.  I do not know if these settings have any effect when encoding in CCE but I set them up anyway.  This is all we have to do here if you're using CCE so save your TMPG project and use the VFAPI converter to generate an AVI file that can be loaded in CCE.  

Next go the GOP tab.

Just set everything up like shown in the picture above. 

Now press ok to close everthing and press the "Start" button to begin encoding.  When its done, continue to the next part.   

Using VFAPI Converter.

Set the aspect ratio to 16:9 unless your source is 4:3.  Make sure you set the timecode to 00:00:00:00 or you'll have problems.  As for the other options, you'll need to use the Bitrate Viewer.  If you're familiar with encoding SVCD's using CCE this should be very easy for you.  But if you don't know how to do this, click here.

Next go the GOP settings.

Change the N/M setting to 4 and make sure that SEQ header is set to every 1 GOP.  Press Ok and go to the "Quality" settings.

Change the image quality priority to 5 and uncheck anti noise filter. 

Now all we have to do is encode so press the "Encode" button and wait for the first pass to finish.  When its done, select the file again, right click and select edit.

Now we want to select "Multipass VBR" with 3 passes.  Then go to the Advanced settings. 

The first thing you should do here is select Q scale at the upper right corner.  What you want to do here is to try and get the yellow, green lines as low as possible.  The lower it is, the better the quality.  The background also indicates image quality.  Green means good quality, grey means standard quality and red is really bad quality.  So your goal here is to try and get everything to be green. 

Before we begin, I should explain a few things to you.  You can use the slider bar to move around in the video stream.  On the left and right sides of the slider bar are the start and end timecodes.  You can also use the position buttons to move around by certain time intervals.  +-10m means plus and minus 10 minutes.  +-1m means plus and minus 1 minute.  +-10s means plus minus 10 seconds. 

When you move the slider bar around you'll see two vertical orange lines.  These lines indicate the point in the video stream your in.  You will also see the Current "GOP information" shown for that specific location in the video stream.

You should also look at the "Stream information" as this part is important.  It indicates the projected file size and the Q factor.  You want a Q factor below 8 or 9.  The lower it is, the better the overall quality.  One way to lower this value is to increase the Avg bitrate in the "Global bitrate settings". 

Now lets begin.  First you should set the Bias in the global settings to zero.  Now press the +-10s and go through the whole movie and keep watching the graph.  This will take a while so be patient.  You'll want to look out for any area's with a grey background like shown in the picture below.

To fix this you can use the "Local bitrate settings". 

All you have to do is move the vertical lines to the start of the grey area, then press the "Set" button to set the "In" position.  The move the vertiacl lines to the end of the grey area and press the "Set" button again to set the "Out" position.  Now increase the min bitrate and press the "Set" button on the bottom.  You should see that the background turned green.  If it didn't increase the bitrate again.  Sometimes its not possible to remove all the grey areas so you'll just have to leave it

Another way to remove the grey areas is to increase the Avg bitrate in the global settings but this also increases the overall size of the file.  So keep watching the size in the stream information.

Once you're done removing the grey area's press the "Close" button and encode your movie again.  When you're done you should have a mpv file.  If you need to perform a pulldown on your movie, read the instructions below, otherwise go on to the SpruceUp guide. 

Pulldown

You only need to do this for NTSC movies.  Remember the purpose of performing a pulldown is to tell the player to play a movie that is encoded at 23.97 fps to play back at 29.976 fps.  Go to your command prompt and type pulldown input.mpv output.mpv.  Now you don't type exactly what I said.  your input is the name of you file, and output is what you want the name of the output to be.  Also make sure that the pulldown.exe is in the same location where you have your mpv file saved.  And when you go to your command prompt make sure you change the directory to where you have your movie saved. 

Now we're done encoding so go on the next step on authoring your movie to DVD.