This is feedback really, and it might help someone else who has bought or is trialing DVDA4 (my machine already had Vegas6+DVD installed).
I rarely knock out more than a single DVD in a day, but I've had some files sat waiting for some free personal time. So I decided to put DVDA4 through it's paces but at a basic level of complexity. The main thing special about the work being that I would be running two or more jobs through a single instance of DVDA4.
I ran DVDA4 through a pair of PAL DV->DVD single movie (720x576 AC3 stereo) authoring sessions. I sat and chaptered up the first 1hr video, prepared the DVD files only - no burn. Saved the project.
[whilst the first job was running, I ran up a second instance of DVDA4-trial, but the interface was too slow to use during the waveform rendering, so I gave up. I had been able to run two DVDA3 sessions a couple of night before the V7/D4 was released - and these jobs completed and both application sessions were smooth. I have c. 768MB on the machine - so this is usually enough to do a dual render overnight while I sleep. I closed the second application instance of DVDA4 - it was too much for my single core 2.6 P4 CPU to suffer]
So after the original incarnation of DVDA4 had finished preparing files, I did:
File, New (same settings as before) - to start my subsequent session to do the same DV->DVD conversion of about an hours worth from a single AVI.
When I'd finished chaptering up, there was a stray file in the temp working area. This caused an error that DVDA couldn't tell me the cause of. I tried to delete the file, but it was in use. Saved this 2nd DVD authoring session. Closed DVD-Architect, tried again - in use. Rebooted.....
Reloaded the 2nd DVD session that had failed earlier - went to temp working area folder (on an external drive) - and was then able to delete the DVDA1.m2v file that was in the way. All fixed again. Maybe DVDA could have deleted/overwritten the file by that point too.
It may have been a XP-SP2 issue, my antivirus or a memory (leak) issue - hard to detemine unless it is repeatable on someone elses machine. Problem solved by rebooting.
The only other problem I've had is that after preparing files, my Outlook (I use this for reading work email) could no longer connect to the mail server to collect mail - I get a 800ccc15 error. This doesn't bother me at all and is probably impacted by my personal firewall product. The common factor is DVDA4 as no other application has caused such a nuisance. A reboot sorts this out.
The files generated are certainly up to snuff.
This may be too poor a fault report for Sony to do anything. However it (the rebooting approach) may help others remedy their issues if they have a similar batch authoring task in hand.
I rarely knock out more than a single DVD in a day, but I've had some files sat waiting for some free personal time. So I decided to put DVDA4 through it's paces but at a basic level of complexity. The main thing special about the work being that I would be running two or more jobs through a single instance of DVDA4.
I ran DVDA4 through a pair of PAL DV->DVD single movie (720x576 AC3 stereo) authoring sessions. I sat and chaptered up the first 1hr video, prepared the DVD files only - no burn. Saved the project.
[whilst the first job was running, I ran up a second instance of DVDA4-trial, but the interface was too slow to use during the waveform rendering, so I gave up. I had been able to run two DVDA3 sessions a couple of night before the V7/D4 was released - and these jobs completed and both application sessions were smooth. I have c. 768MB on the machine - so this is usually enough to do a dual render overnight while I sleep. I closed the second application instance of DVDA4 - it was too much for my single core 2.6 P4 CPU to suffer]
So after the original incarnation of DVDA4 had finished preparing files, I did:
File, New (same settings as before) - to start my subsequent session to do the same DV->DVD conversion of about an hours worth from a single AVI.
When I'd finished chaptering up, there was a stray file in the temp working area. This caused an error that DVDA couldn't tell me the cause of. I tried to delete the file, but it was in use. Saved this 2nd DVD authoring session. Closed DVD-Architect, tried again - in use. Rebooted.....
Reloaded the 2nd DVD session that had failed earlier - went to temp working area folder (on an external drive) - and was then able to delete the DVDA1.m2v file that was in the way. All fixed again. Maybe DVDA could have deleted/overwritten the file by that point too.
It may have been a XP-SP2 issue, my antivirus or a memory (leak) issue - hard to detemine unless it is repeatable on someone elses machine. Problem solved by rebooting.
The only other problem I've had is that after preparing files, my Outlook (I use this for reading work email) could no longer connect to the mail server to collect mail - I get a 800ccc15 error. This doesn't bother me at all and is probably impacted by my personal firewall product. The common factor is DVDA4 as no other application has caused such a nuisance. A reboot sorts this out.
The files generated are certainly up to snuff.
This may be too poor a fault report for Sony to do anything. However it (the rebooting approach) may help others remedy their issues if they have a similar batch authoring task in hand.