Vista - How to maintain quality between Movie Maker and third party DVD authoring tool

maybe the next time... he said he already put a lot of time into his Movie
Maker project.... it would be the wrong time to start over.
--
website references are to www.papajohn.org

PapaJohn


"Adam Albright" <AA@ABC.net> wrote in message
news:lrgva3tvr4f1moaguhib4vohr8gu0jt42m@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 18:12:37 -0400, "PapaJohn"
> <papajohn@chartermi.net> wrote:
>
>>Movie Maker in Vista is the same as in XP... outputs are either DV-AVI or
>>WMV....
>>
>>Movie Maker in Vista passes the DVD making process, including making the
>>MPEG-2 files, over to DVD Maker.... the pass is via WMV files, or the
>>movie
>>project file without doing any encoding... letting DVD Maker produce the
>>MPEG-2 files directly from the movie project source files, whateve they
>>are.
>
> Why such a convoluted process?
>>
>>As Evan wants to go from Movie Maker to other DVD software, he'll have to
>>render the movie to a video file in either WMV or DV-AVI formats. Other
>>DVD
>>software can't use the project file.
>
> Well I just looked at the Vista Business version of movie maker and
> the only output choices for publish are 'this computer', 'recordable
> CD', 'email' or 'digital camera'. None offer any file type choice or
> bitrate choice. Why is Movie Maker so lame? It's almost comical. Are
> they different in Home Premium and Ultimate?
>
> He would be better off staring with Sony's software which does the
> whole process start to finish plus offering way more options.
>

Thank you both for your input. Just to chime in, you can add your own
entries to the "publish to" list through custom profiles (this is also
available in XP). PapaJohn alluded to this in his second response.

As for the "convoluted" process, this is one of the few things that
Microsoft got right. You can edit to your hearts content in Movie Maker,
and then, without doing any rendering at all, go into DVD Maker to author
the DVD. DVD Maker reads the project file and source files directly. You
can even combine multiple Movie Maker projects into a single DVD project.
On the other hand, DVD Maker is so lame that it has little reason to exist.


"PapaJohn" <papajohn@chartermi.net> wrote in message
news:eHCZfy80HHA.4816@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> maybe the next time... he said he already put a lot of time into his Movie
> Maker project.... it would be the wrong time to start over.
> --
> website references are to www.papajohn.org
>
> PapaJohn
>
>
> "Adam Albright" <AA@ABC.net> wrote in message
> news:lrgva3tvr4f1moaguhib4vohr8gu0jt42m@4ax.com...
>> On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 18:12:37 -0400, "PapaJohn"
>> <papajohn@chartermi.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Movie Maker in Vista is the same as in XP... outputs are either DV-AVI or
>>>WMV....
>>>
>>>Movie Maker in Vista passes the DVD making process, including making the
>>>MPEG-2 files, over to DVD Maker.... the pass is via WMV files, or the
>>>movie
>>>project file without doing any encoding... letting DVD Maker produce the
>>>MPEG-2 files directly from the movie project source files, whateve they
>>>are.
>>
>> Why such a convoluted process?
>>>
>>>As Evan wants to go from Movie Maker to other DVD software, he'll have to
>>>render the movie to a video file in either WMV or DV-AVI formats. Other
>>>DVD
>>>software can't use the project file.
>>
>> Well I just looked at the Vista Business version of movie maker and
>> the only output choices for publish are 'this computer', 'recordable
>> CD', 'email' or 'digital camera'. None offer any file type choice or
>> bitrate choice. Why is Movie Maker so lame? It's almost comical. Are
>> they different in Home Premium and Ultimate?
>>
>> He would be better off staring with Sony's software which does the
>> whole process start to finish plus offering way more options.
>>
>
>

Adam Albright wrote:
> Well I just looked at the Vista Business version of movie maker and
> the only output choices for publish are 'this computer', 'recordable
> CD', 'email' or 'digital camera'. None offer any file type choice or
> bitrate choice. Why is Movie Maker so lame? It's almost comical. Are
> they different in Home Premium and Ultimate?
==================================
Doesn't your version of Movie Maker 6 have
the following options?

File / Publish Movie / This Computer / Next /
Next / More Settings / open the drop window
for several more save options including DV-AVI.
Also...if you use custom profiles they will be
accessed in this same menu.

--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:15:06 -0400, "John Inzer" <oobie@doobie.xyz>
wrote:

>Adam Albright wrote:
>> Well I just looked at the Vista Business version of movie maker and
>> the only output choices for publish are 'this computer', 'recordable
>> CD', 'email' or 'digital camera'. None offer any file type choice or
>> bitrate choice. Why is Movie Maker so lame? It's almost comical. Are
>> they different in Home Premium and Ultimate?
>==================================
>Doesn't your version of Movie Maker 6 have
>the following options?

>
>File / Publish Movie / This Computer / Next /
>Next / More Settings / open the drop window
>for several more save options including DV-AVI.
>Also...if you use custom profiles they will be
>accessed in this same menu.

In the Business version anyway if you follow that path your given
limited choices. Typical Microsoft heavy handed we know best BS.
Microsoft assumes you only want to make a vid to be played off your
computer, or just burn a CD, you can't make a DVD because I guess the
boys of Redmond decided if you buy the business version you will never
need the ability to do that from within Vista and to prepare one with
any third party application unless you use AVI or WMV rather than the
default MPEG-2 standard nearly every third party application expects
your encoding choices are both limited and under powered.

I'll take your word you can use a custom profile, where or how to do
that I don't see anywhere on the menu or tool bar so by the time you
see all the limitations nobody that knows anything about videos would
EVER use Movie Maker. Sorry, It is just a toy and not even a well
designed toy.

Adam Albright wrote:
> In the Business version anyway if you follow that path your given
> limited choices. Typical Microsoft heavy handed we know best BS.
> Microsoft assumes you only want to make a vid to be played off your
> computer, or just burn a CD, you can't make a DVD because I guess the
> boys of Redmond decided if you buy the business version you will never
> need the ability to do that from within Vista and to prepare one with
> any third party application unless you use AVI or WMV rather than the
> default MPEG-2 standard nearly every third party application expects
> your encoding choices are both limited and under powered.
>
> I'll take your word you can use a custom profile, where or how to do
> that I don't see anywhere on the menu or tool bar so by the time you
> see all the limitations nobody that knows anything about videos would
> EVER use Movie Maker. Sorry, It is just a toy and not even a well
> designed toy.
=============================
Ok...apparently your Business version
is somewhat limited.

There is no menu that directs a user
to install a custom profile. You just drop
the profile in the correct folder and it
shows up in the list.

--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

Thank you PapaJohn and Adam Albright for getting me the info I needed to
solve this.

The solution is to output to MPEG-2. All other formats, Including DV-AVI
require encoding to create the final DVD. Every conversion, no matter how
high the quality, has the potential to degrade the final result. Many
products, including the ones from Sony (thank you Adam Albright for that
source), will work with MPEG-2 directly without doing any encoding (assuming
you are not changing the format of the output). Since you have to do
encoding of some sort in WMM, it makes sense to choose a format that will
not require further conversion.

So, how do you get MPEG-2 from WMM? From PapaJohn: Output to DVD which
produces VOB files. Copy the VOBs back to your hard drive and change the
extension to mpg. Too bad you have to waste a DVD to do this (I will post a
question about this).



"EvanBarr" <X@Y.com> wrote in message
news:OyE6$t60HHA.4236@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>I have already spent a lot of time editing my clips using Movie Maker but I
>want to use a program other than DVD Maker to create my DVDs. What format
>should I use when I publish from MM to eliminate any possible loss of
>quality?
>
> The source material for one set of DVDs is DV-AVI and for a different set,
> it will all be mpeg. I have not yet selected the DVD authoring product
> that I will be using.
> --
> Evan Barr
> www.ProjectInVision.com
>
>