New from EditGroove -- DVD Bit Budget Assistant for the iPhone!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What are the System Requirements?

The DVD Bit Budget Assistant will run on an iPhone or iPod Touch under OS 2.0 or later.

How do you work this thing?

You’ll find complete instructions in the Help tab, and a layman’s description of what it’s doing in the Theory tab.
We’ve also got a tutorial video coming soon. Or just dive in and get an intuitive feel for it by playing around — it’s far easier than doing this stuff the traditional way — more comprehensible ... and more fun!

So then I just plug this (video Mbps) result into my compression utility, right?

In theory ... but in practice, you’ll want to leave some wiggle room so the disc isn’t entirely maxed out.

So, simply deduct 2 or 3 ‘points’ off the result, and use that amount for your encoding:
For example, if the result is “3.8 Mbps” total bandwidth remaining, try 3.6 for the video. If it says “8.0 Mbps” remaining, try 7.7 or thereabouts.

(And also, as stated below, it’s common practice not to exceed 8.0 Mbps maximum, in any event, for compatibility with older players.)

We’ll add Preference setting(s) to let you do all this automatically in a future version of the app.

Just how accurate are these calculations, anyway?

The DVD Bit Budget Assistant is deliberately designed to be a more “qualitative” (i.e., right-brained) approach to bit budgeting than conventional methods.

Thus, the average video bitrate displayed is rounded to the nearest +/- 0.1 Mbps.

However, for actual production situations, it’s prudent to be a little on the conservative side, and not “max out” the DVD player’s ability to stream data off a disc. Otherwise, compatibility and performance issues (especially with older players) may result. Thus, a typical maximum bitrate used in practice is 8 Mbps.

Regardless, we do encourage you to corroborate your findings using more traditional means, prior to committing to a particular scenario. (And if by chance you do happen onto a combination of parameters in our app that doesn’t yield the stated degree of accuracy, please send us the details directly via the Contact page [see below], so we can check it out.)

Hey, I pressed a button/tab, and the app crashed on me!

The DVD Bit Budget Assistant is not particularly demanding of memory — though memory issues are often to blame for such behavior.

And while it’s possible that there’s a bug which has caused this in the app, the more likely reason is the style of memory management innate to the iPhone, which relies on periodic manual “vacuuming” out of memory to free up needed space from other uses.

Thus, we recommend downloading an iPhone utility such as “Free Memory,” and periodically firing it up and using it to perform this essential housekeeping chore. You can begin to see first-hand the degree of difference this makes in the reliability of this and other apps.

In severe cases, you may find that you need to reboot the phone (or that it reboots by itself).

However, if, just after having cleared out memory, you run the DVD Bit Budget Assistant and it still fails, kindly send us along the details directly (via the Contact page; see below) so we can investigate further.

What does it mean on the Summary screen, when it says: “Note: video bitrate limited by audio/subtitle streams”?

By specifying the number and types of Audio and Subtitle streams ... you’re reserving that amount of bandwidth “right off the top” of the roughly 10Mbps total bitrate (9.8, actually) available for streaming the DVD program content off the disc.

Whatever’s left over ... is what’s available for Video playback.

Thus, if your audio and subtitle streams total, say, 1.2 Mbps — then only the remaining 8.6 Mbps of the playback “pipeline” can be used for Video. And that applies even if your total program duration is very short, and there’s lots of extra storage capacity left on the disc.

This is one of the two basic data “limits” inherent in optical media, and is explained in more detail in the Theory tab.

These sliders can be a little tricky to grab onto. Whazzup?

If you’re using iPhone OS 2.x — yes, unfortunately, the iPhone’s slider controls are very particular as to being grabbed “just so”. That’s one reason we’ve augmented each of them with the numerical blue buttons, for convenience sake.

Thankfully, however, Apple has recognized this issue, and improved the slider’s usability greatly in OS 3.0. Just another good reason to upgrade. :)

A must-have for anyone in the DVD/Video business, or who wants to be!
“How much stuff can I fit onto my Video DVD?”
“What bitrate should I encode in Apple’s Compressor, for DVD Studio Pro?”
“Can you help me make sense of all this?”

Those are never-ending questions, since creating a Video DVD can be an arcane process — and often involves finding your way through a complex Excel spreadsheet.

The DVD Bit Budget Assistant makes the process of creating optical video media far more understandable, portable, interactive — and fun. Easily and quickly run through numerous “what-if” planning scenarios, interactively, in the palm of your hand. Learn more about the DVD format, and gain a more intuitive understanding of the trade-offs inherent in producing optical video media. Keep your video from looking like crap. :O The DVD Bit Budget Assistant has been carefully and thoughtfully designed to be useful both to Professionals already working in the industry — as well as Students, prosumers and others just getting started.

Check it out — including more screenshots — on the iPhone App Store!

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Features include:
Five standard DVD capacities (DVD-5, -9, -10, -14, -18)
Total program durations up to 10 hours
Up to 5 soundtracks of each of the three most common formats  (AC-3, DTS, PCM), with configurable bitrate for each format
Up to 10 subtitle tracks (also with configurable bitrate)
Ability to set aside up to 4GB for DVD-”ROM” content
Colorful “Vid-O-Meter”(TM) shows immediate feedback,  with average bitrate of resulting video
Special excerpt explaining Bit Budgeting in layman’s terms,  from classic video/film textbook “Nonlinear”
Detailed Help screen, which explains all functions
Plus: web links to authoritative third-party resources

First professional, fully-featured
DVD planning utility for iPhone
— also designed with
Educational users in mind!

From your friends at EditGroove Software — helping keep you in the groove!

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© 2009 EditGroove™ Software
DVD Bit Budget Assistant and Vid-O-Meter are trademarks of EditGroove Software.
iPhone, iPod touch, Compressor and DVD Studio Pro are trademarks, and App Store is a service mark, of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.