I recently burnt a DVD with Windows DVD Maker (the one on Vista) and it works really well. I really like how it handles the menus and the encoding is spot on. I did run into some problems though. When I play it on my 480i TV with my PS3 through composite cables, in fast scenes it looks like it is interlaced, but with much taller lines, like the first picture here.
It only happens to the fast moving things though, e.g. if someone is running the person will be like that but the background will be fine. I looked at it more carefully and watched it in slow motion and it looks more like waves that interlacing. It does not do this on my computer. This is the number one priority to fix as I will watch it 99% of the time on my TV. I should also note that the videos were captured from VHS with "WinAVI Video Capture" as .mpgs.
I've also run into some issues when playing it through VLC. When it starts up, while the aspect ratio of the picture is fine the DVD still has black bars on the side. A minor inconvenience but would like it to be fixed. It also does this on Media Player Classic. It looks fine on my TV though.
Also, when I select a video to play, the video becomes unwatchable because it scrunches the video together like this, and will only look correct if I change the aspect ratio to 4:3 in VLC's menu. Media Player Classic does not do this though (it plays at the correct 4:3) so I guess this might be a problem with VLC (I do have the latest version).
So I guess my question is is there anyway to fix this as I really like how Windows DVD maker makes it, or is there a free DVD burner that will let me make my own menu, or that makes one similar to Windows DVD Maker? I have tired DVD Flick but making custom menus correctly is too difficult and it will not go to certain times for the icon. DVD Forger crashes when I try to add the files. Finally, Sothink Movie DVD Maker fails to make menus for some reason during the encoding process.
Windows does have a very good DVD maker but the buffering ratio in the Windows DVD maker does causes the problem sometime and the problem described by you seem to be a problem caused due to the irregular uniformity in the buffering levels. There are plenty of the DVD makers available in the market but the one that you require with the option to edit your own menu is difficult to find.
Hm, thanks for the info. Recently, I tried DVD forger again and looked at how the video it interlaced and it's definitely top field first. But, the top field isn't smooth when played, it plays back in waves like described earlier (again, only to the main object in frame). I did deinterlace one of the videos using DVDforger, and it seemed to work, but I unfortunately did not do the video with the most problems (I left it on progressive). I'll try again today and report back with the results.
