Authoring approach...advice

dand9959 wrote on 6/21/2005, 10:11 AM

I am authoring a DVD that will contain several chapters (in reality, they are individual vignettes).

My question is: Which is a better way to build the DVD:

1) Assemble the vignettes in a large Vegas project and render as a single mpeg2 along with chapter points placed appropriately. Import the master mpeg2 into DVDA and insert a chapter menu. (Each segment is its own .veg file, so I'd render each one to avi, assemble them all in a master .veg, then render to mpeg2. - I don't have V6 yet.)

2) Render each vignette as its own mpeg2, import them all into DVDA, and use end actions to flow them together. Build menu page with buttons pointing to each segment as if they were chapters.

The number of segments is small (about 10 or so).

Comments

ScottW wrote on 6/21/2005, 10:43 AM

It really depends on what you want to have happen at the end of the vignette. If you want the end of each vignette to return to the main menu then you need to render each individually to an MPEG-2 file.

If you need a "Play All" button as well, then you need to bring each clip into the project a second time and set the end action of the second instance to link to the next clip in the series. I would suggest that if you do this, that you rename the second instances of the clips so that you can correctly set the end actions to link to the correct clip.

--Scott

dand9959 wrote on 6/21/2005, 11:10 AM

Thanks, Scott.

The "vignette as separate mpeg-2" approach gives me more flexibility - as you suggested. In fact , this is the approach I had started to use, then I started wondering if all this editing of clip properties I was doing was overkill compared to just dropping in a composite, chapter-marked piece.

I also started wondering if people had seen problems with discs not playing correctly, given that this approach would seem to generate a more complex DVD structure.

bStro wrote on 6/21/2005, 12:38 PM

Trouble with the seperate MPEG2 method is that, if you hook 'em all together using end actions or playlists, the skip forward / skip backward buttons will be unpredictable. Specifically, on some DVD players, they'll work as the viewer expects. On some, they'll send the viewer back to the menu. And on others, nothing will happen at all. This is because DVDA puts the files as individual titles, and navigation between titles using the skip buttons is not very consistent between DVD player manufacturers.

Rob

dand9959 wrote on 6/21/2005, 1:27 PM

Interesting, Rob. Thanks.

Here's a followup question, probably more apropos the Vegas forum:

If I were to take my (already rendered) mpeg-2 vignettes, load them into a master .veg project in sequence, and render the whole back out as a composit mpeg-2 file without further edits, will I loose noticable quality?

Chienworks wrote on 6/21/2005, 1:42 PM

Probably you will. It would be a lot better to re-render the individual pieces as AVI files, then load them all together into a fresh project and render them as one MPEG from there.

dand9959 wrote on 6/29/2005, 2:47 PM

Rob, that is true.
I've implemented both approaches with this project and you are right. With the multiple mpeg2 chapters hooked together with end actions, the skip keys on my set top DVD players do NOT behave as you would expect. (In these cases, they "skip" to the final chapter regardless.)

Since users expect proper behavior of these buttons (I, for one, use them all the time), the chapters-as-separate-mpeg-2 approach is not viable.

Guess I'll incur the extra assembly and render step to compile each avi chapter into a master project. (Eventually, I'll use V6, so this hinderance should go away.)

nolonemo wrote on 7/12/2005, 1:41 PM

I'm sure I've set up multiple vignettes rendered in Vegas to a single mpeg-2 file to play both "play all" and play by chapter...but I don't use the software that much any more and its a little vague...

I think I dropped the rendered mpeg-2 file into DVDA and set the menu button automatically created when you do that to a text "play all"

Then somehow I inserted separate menu buttons for each vignette, and using that button to get to the timeline, set appropriate in and out points. I think I remember that there was a little space between the end point for the first vignette and in point for the second vignette, which was OK because I had some black screen between the end of a vignette and the title for the next.

I don't think DVDA created a second instance of the video for each segment, but the disk was short enough so mybe it did...

Sorry this is so vague.... As I said, it's been a while. Anyway, for sure there was only one mpeg-2 file rendered from the individual vignettes and titles.

bStro wrote on 7/12/2005, 3:24 PM

Then somehow I inserted separate menu buttons for each vignette

Insert Scene Selection...

I don't think DVDA created a second instance of the video for each segment, but the disk was short enough so mybe it did...

Correct the first time. Beginning in DVDA2, you can add a media item multiple times, and DVDA will include the file only once so long as you use the same video and same audio stream.

Rob