Comments

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 5/31/2009, 10:15 AM
dv-avi or mpeg2 is the normal format for burning dvds. The former is fast but will yield big files (13GB per hour), which DVDA will rerender to burn on dvd. The mpeg2 takes longer to render, but if it fits on one dvd, burning the dvd will only take 12 minutes because dvda won't need to rerender. Stay away from wmv: the files are the smallest, hence you lose a lot of information, and dvda must rerender to mpeg2 anyhow. Use wmv format only to play locally on pc, or to distribute via vimeo or youtube or the like. Good luck.
After dvda has 'prepared' the dvd and burned the first dvd, it will ask to burn another. 39 to go... . DVDA will store the dvd image, so you don't need to burn them all continuously.
MSmart wrote on 5/31/2009, 10:28 AM
I always render to avi.

As Ivan said, if your video is less than one-hour then you can render to mpeg. VMS doesn't allow you to set the bit rate so it had better be less than 4.5gb to fit on the DVD.

My videos are always longer than one hour so I render to AVI then use Architect Studio's Fit to Disc option to set the bit rate needed to make it fit on the DVD.

Either way is fine. However, don't render to mpeg in VMS then use fit to disc in Architect to adjust the bit rate, reencoding mpeg video will result in some quality loss.
Byron K wrote on 5/31/2009, 11:22 AM
Interesting post!
So bottom line, if my videos are relatively short (less than 1 hour) would it be better to reder directly to .avi or to mp2 before making the DVD?

I've always rendered to mp2 because creating the final DVD is quicker. But quicker doesn't always mean better, if I get better quality rendering first to avi than I'll do that.

Thanks!
Byron
KHolle wrote on 5/31/2009, 12:23 PM
I am confused - can someone clarify? Rendering in AVI is faster and better quality??? Rendering in mpeg2 helps eliminate a step in DVDA - thus making the burn of DVD faster, is that correct? Again, my audio is missing when I input a segment rendered in Mpeg2 into a DVDA project.

Really appreciate all the advice.
Chienworks wrote on 5/31/2009, 1:12 PM
You will get the best quality rendering directly to an MPEG2 file that will fit on the DVD without further recompression. You will get worse quality if you render to DV first then encode that to MPEG2.

On the other hand, if your video is too big/long to fit on a DVD then your only choice is to let DVD Architect's optimize function reduce it for you. In this case rendering to DV first and then converting to MPEG2 will have less quality loss than rendering to MPEG2 and converting that into another MPEG2 file.

So, if your video is short enough, you're better off rendering to MPEG2 first.
If your video is too long, you're better off rendering to DV first.

Note that i keep saying "DV" instead of just "AVI". AVI can contain lots of different codecs, and most of them are far worse quality than DV.
Ivan Lietaert wrote on 5/31/2009, 10:21 PM
Some mpeg2 templates in Vegas create a 'video only' file. You need to render the sound separately, which is very quick, and then DVDA will combine the two. Some templates, however, mostly the 'standard' ones, contain both video and audio. Look at their descriptions to make sure.
nb: rendering sound apart may be necessary if you have special sound, like 5.1 surround.