I am putting together a DVD of some home movies. I edited each clip in Womble, and exported each one to an .mpg file.

When I assemble the .mpg files in the DVD maker, the "Stream Copy" display is very inconsistent. Sometimes, when I add a clip as Chapter 1, it shows that it will be stream copied, but if it is Chapter 2 it will have to be re-encoded. I tried putting three clips in different orders, and at one point inserting the third clip changed the setting for the second clip! Sometimes it shows the audio only will be re-encoded, sometimes the video only. There doesn't seem to be any consistency.

Can anyone explain what the "rules" are for stream copying?

How can I make sure that as much of my DVD as possible is stream copied?

I've looked at the manual and the online FAQ without success.

Any and all replies appreciated.

Thanks

Dave_t

I emailed the same question to Womble’s support and got back this reply very quickly:

“First, please note that the DVD editor currently will only export
all content with the same video and audio encoders. If the input
clips are different MPEG encoding, some of which will need to be
re-encoded. The selection of the DVD encoder settings is based
on the criterion of minimum video re-encoding. And thus, it will
change dependent on the relative lengths of the various MPEG clips.

In the future update, we will add a multiple VTS support for the
DVD editor, so that clips of different video encoders will be
exported to the same DVD export without the need of video re-encoding.

For now, the best practice is to record (or capture) the movies
with the same MPEG video encoder settings.

Hope this helps.”

So the answer is I have check the encoding settings for each of my clips more carefully – it’s the fact that they are different settings, and not the settings themselves, that causes this.

FYI, in case anyone else has this issue.

Dave_t