Batch Rendering - Workarounds for Movie Studio

Tripecac wrote on 8/4/2010, 2:15 PM

I have Movie Studio 10 and am trying to find a way to render a large project in such a way that I end up with a separate output file for each marker. My understanding is that Pro lets you do this through "batch render", but this is not available for Movie Studio.

So, I'm trying to find the best workaround.

Let's say you have an hour-long project, with 10 markers. We want separate output files (e.g., wmv) for each marker.

Here are you options:

Option A -- Render Looped Regions
1) select each area between markers
2) render as
3) rename output file after marker
4) make sure "looped region only" is checked
5) repeat for each marker
-- PRO: you can stick with original project file
-- CON: manually renaming output files is tedious and error-prone
-- CON: have to repeat all steps each time you render to a different format

Option B -- One Project Per Marker
1) copy main project to file named after a marker
2) open the marker's project file
3) remove all other clips and markers from that marker's project
4) render the marker's project completely
5) repeat for each marker in the main project
-- PRO: once you set it up, rendering is less tedious and error-prone than option A
-- CON: tedious to create 10 new projects
-- CON: discourages reorganization of markers later

Option C -- Render and Split
1) render entire project to a single big video in a format which supports markers
2) use another program to split big video into separate videos for each marker
3) rename resulting files (if necessary)
-- PRO: easiest option
-- PRO: requires the least "baby-sitting" during rendering
-- CON: need to find a program which splits the big video according to markers
-- CON: if splitting is slow, this might be the overall slowest option

I've tried options A and B, but not C, because I do not have a program which splits videos according markers.

Has anyone tried that strategy? If so, what splitting program, and output format, would you recommend?

Also, are there other strategies for rendering large projects into separate videos for each marker?

Thanks!

Comments

jetdv wrote on 8/5/2010, 6:15 AM

Wouldn't it be easier to just upgrade to Pro and then let the script handle everything for you? How often do you do this and how much time would that save and error would it eliminate? Just the time saved may be enough to pay for the upgrade.

Tripecac wrote on 8/5/2010, 10:48 AM

Thanks for the response!

A couple years ago, I used Vegas Movie Studio to put my old home movies (VHS, Hi-8, Mini-DV) onto DVD. Now I'm breaking up those long projects into shorter, better organized clips, which my family can download.

I'm not doing anything fancy, just simple trimming, fading, and titling, so it's hard to justify an upgrade to Pro.

Anyway, in the process of trying out Option A again yesterday, I noticed a problem, which will affect just about every strategy except Option B:

If you use cross-fades at markers, then the beginning and/or ending of your rendered video will contain small bits of the adjoining section.

For instance, let's say your first clip is about a boat, and it cross-fades into a wedding. If you have a marker at the start of the wedding segment, then it's positioned either at the beginning, middle, or end of the cross-fade. Either way, the cross-fade will be visible at the end of the boat segment, the beginning of the wedding segment, or both.

Unless Pro has an option to prevent cross-fades at the start or end of rendered video, like that, you're stuck with that problem. Only Option B, which is to split your project into multiple projects, one for each marker, lets you fix the problem, unless you are willing to remove all the cross-fades from your projects.

If the goal is to get your project setup so that it's easy to generate different output formats for each marker's segment, then it's looking like Option B is, overall, the best time-investment.

Or is there another way to avoid picking up the cross-fades?

jetdv wrote on 8/5/2010, 10:58 AM

If you have a crossfade, you'll either have to start after the crossfade or make sure there is no crossfade. Or are these separate events on the timeline? If they're separate events, just make sure there's no overlap on the clips.

As for marking the pieces, I'd use REGIONS instead of MARKERS. Regions have a beginning and end point which is what you want for a render. It's easy to select a region for rendering just by double-clicking the timeline inside the region.

Tripecac wrote on 8/5/2010, 12:00 PM

I always position markers right after the end of the cross-fade, so that when someone jumps to that point in the DVD, they don't see the previous scene fading out.

I like your regions idea. I could position the start of each region at a marker, and the end at the start of the cross-fade, so that none of the cross-fade is included. Of course, that might cut off some audio, so to be safe, I'll have to look at each marker's cross-fade and decide whether to eliminate it altogether.

I'll try regions next! Thanks!

Tripecac wrote on 8/8/2010, 11:45 AM

The region labels cover up my markers. Is there any way to force markers to appear on top of region labels?

jetdv wrote on 8/9/2010, 6:54 AM

No. I would just use regions INSTEAD of markers, though. Without moving the marker, I don't know of a way to display both when they're both in the same location.