D's "trying to make a fucking DVD" diary

[The D]

I wanted to do something simple. I wanted to make a DVD with a movie on it, with a title menu and a chapter menu with thumbnails and that's it. And in today's day and age that should be simple, right?

So I get on a computer at school that has digital video editing capabilities and Pinnacle Studio 10 on it. The computer's a Dell with a Xeon processor, 1g of memory, 40gb drive.

First off, Pinnacle is a shitty program. While trying to create custom menus, I had all sorts of errors. Menu buttons disappeared, or changed their text. Menus duplicated themselves a few times. I'd have a button linked to one chapter or clip that may change.

So, after spending several hours fucking with the videos, I finally get it looking right (there was an extra blank chapter menu but fuck it). So I go to burn the DVD. The stupid program goes into this "Rendering" mode which looks like it will take a long time. I got there around 5pm. By 10pm when the lab closed, the render wasn't even half done.

I come in the next day at around 1pm, and start up the render again. Now, the render starts from the beginning every time you cancel it. I burn time by watching another guy in the lab play Gunz, read a book, get on another computer and fuck around. at 10pm the render was within a half hour of being done but I had to cancel it again, which means I have to start it again. before I cancelled it, I went into the system monitor and found the program only using 50% of the processor, so I put the program priority to max and all other processes to low priority, which uppped it to 70% but did little to speed up the glacial speed of rendering.

So far I have wasted almost 20 hours of my life doing what was supposed to be a simple task of putting some AVI video on a DVD. I swear, I should hunt down the creator of Pinnacle and sodomize him with a hot rusty 9 iron. Or the lab techs for using a shitty Dell instead of a Mac, maybe.

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

NeroVision Express is the program I use.  It works fine, and it's on a PC.  In fact, it works fine on my old AthlonXP 1700+ system with 128MB RAM, so system requirements aren't that critical.  If you can find any computer with a DVD drive and sufficient hard drive space for your files, try installing the shareware copy and giving it a shot.  It has an optional wizard interface that makes it easy to get into.

[The D]

Here's what happened since then.

I tried working with the Pinnacle program some more. I let it sit there for another 5 or so hours, this time with the program's priority set to max. The next time I checked it, it said that it was "finalizing file" so it seemed like it was almost finished. But when I let it sit there another hour or two, it was stuck on the same thing, and the progress bar hadn't moved, so I guess the program had frozen or something. All additional attempts to continue "rendering" the program caused it to start frozen at the same spot and not move.

I even tried a mac with iMovie, iDVD, and DVD pro (all apple programs) installed. They only worked with quicktime files and wouldn't take avi files, and to install the DIVX codec required an administrator's password.

Today's experiment.....failed.






But then, I gave the Nero program a try. I have Nero on my home computer and I think it's the best burning software ever. So I tried it. It was pretty easy to work with, but there's a reason it's called "express", you can't make a "title" menu unless you have more than one video file on your dvd, and menu editing is limited. But I said screw it and made the dvd.

Time to make one DVD using Pinnacle Studio 10: 2-3 hours making the menus + 25+ hours trying to "render" and burn the DVD = 25-30 hours. Fail.

Time to make one DVD using NeroVision: 1 hour on making the menus, 1.5 hours to encode and burn = 2.5 hours total.

My name is Dangerous D, and I'm a pr0n act...er student.


Squirrel, I'd reward you for that tip, but the only thing I could afford is a sexual favor.....which is how I'm paying my rent as well..... >_>

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

That's okay, I don't like sloppy seconds.

Didn't know it wouldn't let you do a title menu with only one video, as I've never made a disc that only had one video on it.  I'd think an easy way around that is to put a second meaningless vid on there and shrink the button to the point that it is invisible.

TDS's greatest DVD hits: putting Macross Zero on two DVDs, and five of the 2002 MOTU shows on one, and including themed backgrounds and music on the menus.  I did it just to see if I could, and I found that I can!

[The D]

I'm about to put all of Firefly on two dvds, Star Wreck on one, and you reminded me I wanted to download Macross Zero here too since it's not available in the US.





...Anyone know a good filesharing program? The one I once used went all gay and paid on me, and some music I can't get through places like napster or rhapsody, and I hate itunes.

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

I wouldn't put all of Firefly on two DVDs unless your files are really low resolution already.  As for downloading Macross Zero, I don't know.  Having been on dialup so long I don't keep up, but I'd find a site that lists torrents (like this) and use Opera or a BitTorrent client like Azureus for it.

I love MacZero on DVD, though.  It's so pretty, despite the handicapped technical and political stuff that was needlessly sacrificed to advance a silly ecological vibe.

[The D]

No, I meant filesharing for music and stuff. I already have the Animesuki MZ torrent downloading... and now at 90% it's all slow n shit.

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

All torrents tend to slow down in the home stretch...it's just a limitation of the technology.  Have you tried eDonkey?

[The D]

I just burned the entire Macross Zero series onto one dvd, by decreasing the bitrate of the files. But to try to keep the picture quality up I doubled the encoding quality which took about 7 hours to encode all 5 files because it was doing such a thorough job of encoding. That's probably why Pinnacle takes so long too.

I actually have a TV rip of firefly and it's not entirely good, it's kinda clear but a little blurry. I found a torrent of it online of the DVD rip that says you can squeeze 3 videos onto one cd, but I can only seem to squeeze two so far, so I'm not sure what they're talking about. 3 on one DVD maybe? Maybe I'll just save time and money since I have plenty of CDs and burn it to cd instead.

Thanks to the gunz addicts around here, I was playing that on another computer while my DVD encoded. Once I got a hang of it by the second game I played, I was ranked #2 in the round and had advanced 4 levels. I got bored after a while and removed my pants from my inventory menu, and then eventually removed my shirt as well so I was just running around in boxers, gloves, and pink shoes all naked like. The game's decient when it comes to guns, but trying to use the sword is hard as shit unless you use this thing called "kstyle" which is basically button combos like "jump-dash-slash-reload" to do special moves and the people who use it probably use key macros like a bunch of cheaters. When they do the kstyle it makes them extremely fast and hard to hit.

Oh, and according to gunz, gay and fag are blocked swear words.

.... how gay.

We're the only ones posting in this thread...






....



I would if I had a donkey fetish.

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

What?  You're putting this stuff on CD?  Good grief...and here I thought VCD was a format nobody used anymore. 

If those Firefly eps are DVD rips, you may still have to recode them to fit onto a standard DVD if they aren't already.  But seven hours?  My old computer doesn't take anywhere near that long...I'm talking well less than an hour.


.... Gah, wrong post! How the fuck did I edit this one? - Doug

[The D]

Nonono, I put everything so far on DVDs, I've just been thinking of putting the Firefly on CD because the torrent description said 3 could fit on one CD (maybe they meant DVD?) and I have a billion cd-rs.

[The D]

But seven hours? 

The NeroVision has a pull down menu for encoding quality... and I put everything on max for only the macross DVD because I wanted to make sure it was all nice and smooth and hd and there was no blur or aliasing. thus the 7 hours.

Your profile says you're 7.. how much is that in squirrel years?
I'd watch out, some around here claim I like getting friendly with youngin's....

[B E C K]

Holy crap, how the fuck DID you edit his post?  Conan Edogawa's on the case.

[B E C K]

"Modify replies to own topics".  Oh, okay.  Kiss that bye-bye.

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

What, you don't want us editting ourselves?  Heh.

Your profile says you're 7.. how much is that in squirrel years?

February 8, 2000, was the day I, TDS, was born.  We squirrels usually only live up to five years, but I'm not looking or feeling a shade over 1.  I credit my longevity to my affinity for booze.  So don't cast those short eyes in my direction...besides, we reach adulthood just a few months after birth.  Girl squirrels are real sluts, too, but they're only in the mood two days a year, which prompted my discovery and abuse of alcohol and the Internet.

[B E C K]

More like I don't want anyone editing anyone else unless they're a mod or something.

So you kept track of when TDS was born?  Wish I did that with at least one of my alts.  BAPM and Bitey have no birthdays.  Tragic.  Oh wait, duh.  Whenever I made the sLeazy board account, I guess.

Bitey: February 15, 2001
BAPM: February 17, 2000
Evil Queen Merla: April 22, 2000
Alien Gonzales: April 22, 2000
Posticon God: June 15, 2000
Xena the Warrior Princess: February 15, 2000
Sha the Wonder Dog: February 9, 2001  Teh fuck?  Sha the Wonder Dog?  Bleh, I have a whole page of these, who cares about the rest.

[The D]

I almost thought she had modded me on mistake or something. Not like I would have used my powers anyway, I have no reason to.

[B E C K]

That's just because school's out for summer.

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

Silly me, I didn't even notice that it was my post he'd editted. 

TDS was a lot of fun, so I hated to let him fall to the wayside.  Besides, he came to be the same day I first went to That Board, so it's easy for me to remember.