Video Out: MPEG-2s for Me and You

In the last year, DVDs have really taken off in popularity. Consumers are embracing them at a pace faster than they ever embraced VHS or any other video format. As a videographer, you'll soon want to burn your videos into DVDs, lest you get left behind as the one guy who still uses videotape. Not only that, but there is so much more you can do with a DVD than you can with videotape. It opens new levels of creativity for the video artist.

DVD Basics

Most of you are probably familiar with DVDs by now, but just for the record, let's run down some of the advantages and disadvantages of the format.
First, DVDs are digital. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. For the most part, the picture on a DVD will blow the doors off of VHS. It is much sharper (400-500 lines of resolution for DVD versus 200ish for VHS) and it has brighter colors. If there is a disadvantage to DVD, it is that an improperly compressed DVD can have visible artifacts. Many of the early Hollywood-released DVDs were not compressed properly, and you can see their artifacts in scene after scene. However, when done right, the format's picture is sharp and clean.
Second, DVD offers more sound. Instead of the hi-fi stereo of VHS, you get Dolby Digital AC-3 audio. This allows you to output five separate channels of audio, just like a professional filmmaker. Unlike the mono "surround" channels of "Dolby surround," the rear "surround" speakers of AC-3 are themselves stereo.
Third, and here's where you get into features of DVD that you may not have known about: you can make your own interactive menu systems and provide several different versions of the same basic movie on the same disc. You can make a director's cut of your video without having to record the whole second version on the disc. You can just have the different scenes and have the DVD piece it together seamlessly as it plays by, skipping certain chapters and including others. This makes the DVD disc an option for non-linear video entertainment because you don't have to store your video on the disc in the order in which it will play. With these options, DVDs are a whole new world for video creat…