CD-Rom Video -New User

[maxcel]

Hello all. I bought the progam two days ago to extend my businesses offerings. We produce informational videos in DVD and VHS, and we bought AutoPlay to create interactive CD-Roms.

My client is a non profit foundation, and my first effort is to create an interactive cd for computer viewing. The main focus of the project is a video presentation( a seminar) which ran 80 minutes, which I divided into 2 40 minute clips, which will be on seperate CDs.
The other focus of the CD is to provide pages giving information on the speaker, the non profit organization, and on my company and my other offerings.

The lecture was converted from AVI to MPEG1 via TMPGEnc, and a test CD was built successfully. My problem though is that on the computer that created it it looked great, both as a project, and burned to CD. On my older computer it was somewhat blurry, not quite acceptable. On my daughters computer, it was somewhere in between.

Am I missing a step somewhere, I'd like to think that a CD would play with similar quality on a fairly wide range of Windows based machines, with of course the quality of the monitor playing a role.

I also have Procoder Express, Premier 6.5, and Matrox's MPEG encoder.

Any tips that could help me with playback consistency are appreciated.

[eric_darling]

The problem here is not about AMS the very problem is the speed of the data transfer. It could be your Cd- drive or your Hard drive speed. Also a poor video card could be the problem.

I'm not too sure about that, actually. MPEG, unlike WMV or QuickTime formatted video clips, are not capable of floating quality based on bandwidth. If there was an issue with the speed of the data stream, the clip would not play smoothly - it would be jerky, or it would stutter randomly. What we have here is a clip that plays back with different visual quality on different computers - at least that's what the word "fuzzy" says to me. I guess I could be misinterpreting that...

In any case, the reason is strictly graphics card/monitor based. It has nothing to do with anything that was done incorrectly or any steps that may have been missed. It's a variable issue due to the quality of the components in each computer, which of course, we have no control over in many cases.

The best we can do when we author video projects is to start with the highest quality, transfer into our computer at the highest quality, and then compress with the best tools/settings available. After that, it's out of our hands.

[maxcel]

Thanks for the replies. It still puzzling because the computer that I experienced the blurry image on was my primary NLE from 2000 - 2002, its played back quality images quite crisply and clearly over the years. Its a PIII Dell with Trinitron Monitor, and playback was on a Pioneer A06.
The test project was burned to a CD-RW.

I'll try other encoding settings and see what happens.

[eric_darling]

It just means that your NLE system's video card has a pretty lame MPEG decoder, or if no hardware decoder chipset exists, then it has to rely on software-only decoding, which is still somewhat demanding even for a Pentium III. The fuzziness could very well be the result of the software compensating clarity for data stream on that machine.

Do you know the file's data rate? Have you played back other MPEG-1 files on this machine and viewed them critically? My guess is that you're either approaching the data rate limit for your processor/graphics card, or you're working with a nasty decoding circuit. If the data rate is too high, it could be forcing the decoder to choose to keep up with the stream, and therefore sacrifice some quality for real-time playback. If you have a bad MPEG-1 decoder, then oh well.

[maxcel]

Actually I re-burned the same project using a CD-R instead of an RW and the results were better.

I'm actually authoring the projects on a much more powerful machine, playback was tested on my older one because I was trying to simulate what the average viewer might experience. My fear is that if I mass distribute these CDs, a fair part of the audience may experience what I got. I was hoping to produce something that anyone with a CD-Rom drive and a Windows based PC that was made within the last 5 years could readily view.
Haven't looked into Mac capabilities yet.

As far as MPEG encoding, I used TMPGE at the MPEG1 defaults which I'll double check. I chose MPEG1 over WMV and Quictime because I felt its probably more universally compatible with the average user. With WMV you have to hope that the end user has the same version. Is my assumption that MPEG1 is more universally accepted an accurate one?

On the older machine , when on the video page, (I used the control panel)
the screen gets hung up if I try to directly get to the latter part of the video. As its a 40 minute clip, some viewers may wish to do this.
Maybe I'll play with the actions for automatic advance, lets say in 10 minute increments.

I appreciate your advice and comments. Although I've produced dozens of DVDs and hundreds of videos via Premiere, and Encore, in many way I feel like a beginner again.

Thank you.

[eric_darling]

Although I've produced dozens of DVDs and hundreds of videos via Premiere, and Encore, in many way I feel like a beginner again.

Computers and video, when mixed together, have a definite way of doing that. I know exactly how you feel.

In any case, I think you're following a path that I would be following given the same software/hardware. And as far as choosing MPEG-1 is concerned - definitely the most universal choice, so no qualms with that.