I only used WMV to fit the file on DVD as it rendered as 2GB. My footage in MPG comes out to 11GB. In this case I'm not sure its DVDA because another burning software tells me it's too large too.

It works if I burn the file as a Data DVD using other burning software, but I want to be able to watch it on DVD. Do I have it backwards? Is it going by hours of footage instead of file size? Kind of like an audio CD vs data CD? If so how many DVD's will I need to make to see 3 hours and 44 minutes of video?

You can fit the whole 3 hours 44 minutes on a single layer DVD if you wish, but the bit rate will have to be so low that you probably won't want ot watch it. A double layer DVD would probably do ok.

Note the word bitrate above. How much space the file takes up depends entirely on the length and the bitrate. In order to get 3 hours 44 minutes into a 2GB WMV file you had to use a low bitrate, probably something like 1.2Mbps. WMV handles this sort of bitrate well especially on smaller frame sizes. DVDs must be MPEG and MPEG doesn't work as well at this low a bitrate.

Since DVDs have to be MPEG, DVD Architect is planning on reencoding your video to MPEG for you and it appears that it wants to use a bitrate around 8.7Mbps. At this rate you can only fit a little over an hour on a single layer DVD. The other problem is that your video has already been compressed to 1.2Mbps and reencoding to MPEG from that will look terrible.

Probably the better thing to do is to encode directly to MPEG2 from Vegas to begin with. If you want to use a double layer DVD then render the whole thing at about 5.1Mbps. If you want to use single layer discs then split it in half, rendering each half around 5.1Mbps.

Now I see why you did a WMV render :-(

As far as an MPG render being 11 GB. (you're using the defaults, right?), that sounds about right for an almost 4 hr. video.

I've encoded slightly over 2 hr. productions to DVD but I use a good 3CCD camera so the image quality is much better than a consumer camcorder and that helps a lot with the quality of the DVD.
I'd never try to encode an almost 4-hr. video to a single DVD though as the quality would be pretty bad.
If you don't have a dual-layer burner, my recommendation would be to spread it out over 2 DVDs.
Even then, you'll still need to either render out from Vegas as AVIs (and let DVDA figure it out for you) or use a bitrate calculator (NOTE: this is a zipped file) to determine the proper encoder settings.
Using the calculator I just linked to, I get settings as follows (add 3 more zeroes to each number):

3 hr. 44 min.
CBR: 4700 - 2300 - 1700
VBR: 2360

2 hr.
CBR: 4500
VBR: 8000 - 4500 - 2700

1 hr. 44 min.
CBR: 5312
VBR: 8000 - 5300 - 3100

Mike

>> Probably the better thing to do is to encode directly to MPEG2 from Vegas to begin with. If you want to use a double layer DVD then render the whole thing at about 5.1Mbps. If you want to use single layer discs then split it in half, rendering each half around 5.1Mbps.


Thanks for this great info. That's what I want to do. I'll do 2 single layer dvd's because I only have those right now. How do i change the bit rate to 5.1. In render settings, under custom, and the video category, for MPG I only see bit rates in the millions and 2 options:

"constant" bit rate which is in the millions.
and
"variable" bit rate with 3 categories: maximum average and minimum.

I'm not sure how to configure the number in millions to 5.1 mbps?

Biggest points here:

--An authored DVD always uses MPEG2
--DVDA MUST re-encode your WMV as MPEG2
--You could (and probably should) have authored the MPEG2 directly from the Vegas timeline doing audio and video streams separately.
--Some people use a program called DVD Shrink to reduce a rendered MPEG2 if it came out too big. I'd think there's a little loss in doing this but if the original render was lengthy (days) then this can be an acceptible fix.

--A WMV file can be put onto a data DVD but you'd have to author it in some other way to get menus. It's probably possible but not nearly as easy as authoring a DVD. The learning curve would be a waste of time unless you want to make a career out of it.


Rob Mack

Select either CBR or VBR.
Click in one of the bvoxes and manually enter the new number.
Before exiting this tab, go to the Template box at the top of this screen, click in there and enter a new name (eg. MyVideo-2hr.-VBR) and then click the Save button (the icon that looks like a floppy disc) just to the right of the box.
I've got several templates that I've saved this wasy that I use over and over again.
The biggest advantage to it is that it now shows up in the very first render screen once you select MPEG-2 as a format.

Mike

Back to your original post, be aware that some DivX compatible DVD players will play raw wmv files as well. In this case you could just copy the wmv file to a data DVD and play it in one of these players. You might have to split it up into several smaller files though depending upon the DVD format you choose.

I rendered 1 hour and 44 min of footage as MPG2 using 5300000 bit rate and it still came out to 4.38 GB. When I dropped it in DVDA it says 5 GB disk space used.
This is driving me nuts. Its difficult to keep rendering such long footage to find out it doesnt fit.

For Lawrence, thanks for that info. I try it on my DVD player, fairly new, and it doesnt recognize the DVD but maybe some other DVD players will.

Ignore what DVDA says. It's notoriously wrong on it's estimates. Go ahead and prepare anyway. It should fit.

yeah. 4.38GB, I believe is the perfect maxed out size.

> Ignore what DVDA says. It's notoriously wrong on it's estimates. Go ahead and prepare anyway. It should fit.

Will it allow me to go further? I tried "Optimize DVD" I believe it prevented me at a certain point and said the media does not have enough space for the file and itwould not go any further.

As we've said earlier, as long as you know you're right and it's wrong, just ignore all of DVDA's warnings.

My thought on your media does not have enough space for the file warning is that your Temp folder may be filling up. Check it and delete any unwanted data.
DVDA 4 has 2 temp folders, one labeled "Default prepare folder" and the other labeled "Temporary files folder".
As I recall, the default is C:My Documents and this is one thing most of us change immediately after install.
Hopefully you have at least 2 hard drives on your system as this makes things much easier for editing. Drive C for all programs and drive D split into separate sections (not partitions) for capturing and editing.
If you don't have at least 2 drives, how large is your C drive?

Mike

I'll try clearing the cache.
Doesn't DVDA use up space for menus and DVD file structuring.

Could that be what makes it go from 4.38 to 5 GB? I also rendered a shorted version and 3.13 becomes 3.7 GB. So that's just an error; it's not menu space?

Doesn't DVDA use up space for menus and DVD file structuring.

Unless you have obscenely complicated menus, it won't make too much of a difference. Also, the bitrate calculator I referenced earlier has allowances for that.

The bottom line is don't trust DVDA to accurately report files sizes.
For example, two recent projects that were 4.3 GB get reported as 4.5 GB.
Another one that was 1.2 GB gets reported as 1.3 GB.

BTW, when you're checking file sizes, right-click on the file and select Properties to get the actual size.
A file that, according to according to the standard Windows view is 4.05 GB, in size shows up as 3.90 GB (4,188,925,952 bytes) when you do as I just mentioned. The largest number is what you're interested in.

Mike

I downloaded the software. When you select the single layer DVD5 it says capacity: 4.7 GB. Is that understood as 4.37 GB or do I have to compensate myself.