Good question! In the current project I have used Vegas to produce the .m2v / . ac3 files for the blu-ray. I find that this give me overall shorter production times.

It will be no consolation to hear that I have exactly the same problems with DVDA 7 build 67.

I am consolidating a lot of old videos onto one blu-ray and have a lot of menus. The final disc size is around 20 Gb. None of these problems never appeared with similar discs made with DVDA 6.

Come on Magix - what have you done to DVDA? Either fix these problems or give us back DVDA 6.

Update: Out of frustration I tried opening my DVA 7 file with DVDA 6. To my delight it opened and loaded ok. I could then check all out, without program crashes, and burn a blu-ray disc which then worked correctly, with all background pictures etc. as they should be.

I will now be sticking with DVDA 6!!

Just been working with DvD Architect 7.0 and no, it is most definitely NOT reliable.  A .png was rendering as a menu pick just fine, just fine...then, suddenly it posted render failure!! OK, made a .psd with exactly the same results. As if that weren't bad enough, every last submenu page will, at some point, simply turn black (since the first page starts black, then "fills in", I assume it's a render problem of some kind).. Restarting DVDA ( or may not) help but, when it does, it doesn't last. And to pile it on, if, when the big blackout occurs, one clicks the .dar  hoping for a reload without closing, it just sits there with the whirly circle whirling and whirling...requiring a click on the x to get DVD Architect is (duh) not responding. This is one unstable item and leaves me in a quandary - maybe Nero??? Yup, a Win 10 install. P.S. @ marc-s falling back to V.6 is even worse as we don't get past the gotta get rid of the whirling circle.

DvD Architect 7.0 is not only not reliable it is flat outright unstable and unusable. Simplified menu that has all of the above problems; worked last night; load it up today and get nothing but one unmanaged exception after another. This product is totally unusable; in the absence of any advice, going to Nero.

in the absence of any advice, going to Nero.

I use NeroVideo for my AVCHD discs because DVDA doesn't do AVCHD discs. NeroVideo hasn't given me any problems but it is very basic compared to DVDA. I wouldn't consider it as an alternative to DVDA.

With your DVDA problems have you raised tickets with Magix?

in the absence of any advice, going

Don't know if this thread's advice helps or is even applicable in Vegas DVD Architect (7), but you might read it anyway.

Very dangerous, but I gave it a try this 4 GB patch. It did not work. At program start I get a error code 72.

Please contact tech support at https://support2.magix.com/customer/en/vegas/form. Include your serial number and user name.

I have contacted support as you suggested.

There's a new Build 84 now available but whether it addresses any of the above problems I don't know. Hopefully the release notes should shortly be available.

Thanks for pointing to build 84. I have downloaded/installed that version and this first tests look promising. Some of the problems I mentioned at the start of the discission seem resolved. I now will rerun a blu-ray build to check whether also the background problems etc. are solved. Will let you know.

There's a new Build 84 now available but whether it addresses any of the above problems I don't know. Hopefully the release notes should shortly be available.

Where do you find the update?

HBOY - assuming you purchased from Magix go to your account https://www.magix.com/us/support/my-service-center/

Then to My Products and find DVDA. Clicking on Installation Program should give you the latest version build 84. It still hasn't been mentioned on this forum and we don't yet know what bugs have been fixed.

Unfortunately DVDA doesn't provide internally any 'Check for Updates', 'Check for News', or even' net notify'. The only hint of an update is the forums and I heard about this update yesterday on the Creative Cow Vegas forum .

Thanks

Also at http://dl04.magix.net/2016/VEGASDVDArchitect7/VEGAS_DVD_Architect_7.0.0.84_Trial.exe

The release notes C:\Program Files (x86)\VEGAS\DVD Architect\readme\DVD_Architect_readme.htm are the same as build 67.

OK. A while ago I promised to report on experiences with version 84. In general DVDA 84 seems a bit more stable. However the problems I reported at the start of this are still there:

- Program stops when loading a series of video files (about loading 8 at the same time gave problems)

- I have not experienced any disappearing background JPGs,

- still memory overflows during the creation of a Blu-ray disk, rerunning after program restart helped, so make sure that the project is saved before you start. I have experimented with bitrates both in the source files and the project settings, did not help. But I think that the program should recognize, be more forgiving and just deal with it.

- Program hung after changing a template

- DVDA is very inflexible in accepting media-files types/formats. Running the Blu-ray creation with compatible MPEG2 files often leads to overflows and crashes.

- DVD projects go usually better than Blu-ray projects.

And... now and then DVDA works okay. Do not do too many changes in the settings, use the templates, most seems to work. Be prepared that it takes time, so be patient and save your projects regularly.

I hope and trust that next installments will be more stable.

I've had similar issues with Steam Edition 7.0.0.67, but only on one computer. It's more often than not entirely unusable on my i7-5820k with the same OS & nvidia 960's. Crashes & freezes galore, disappearing menu pictures/items, rendering into infinity, broken menu renders, closing but still staying in memory, etc.

The program works correctly on an i3 laptop and an AMD FX-8120, both 64-bit Windows 7, 4 & 8GB RAM respectively, intel & NVIDIA 750ti graphics respectively. The exact same project using the exact same files from the exact same network folder works and renders correctly on these two systems, yet is unusable loaded on the i7. The video files are AVCHD that are Blu-Ray compliant and need no transcoding, I have used them before with other software and directly on a BD-RE in my player. Again, no problems on two systems, fail on the good on. Nothing else is a problem except these two Vegas products.

Support asked me to email them, so I did. They didn't make a reasonable attempt to understand my issue, and closed my support ticket without even asking for feedback on the suggestions they made.

The same issues that plague DVDA also plague Pro 14 Edit, so clearly it's some kind of core issue with the software engine. Been waiting forever for any updates but it seems nothing will ever happen.

As per my previous comment, in the meanwhile build 84 has become available. (I would guess that the Steam editions are also being kept up to date?) . With that version I have less problems, but still enough to be needing a re-run of a (mostly) blu-ray disk after an error message. My feeling: memory administration, file handling, but also any changes or deviations from the templates show more crashes.

Just to add my voice to things posted here. I created a Blu Ray image using DVD A 7, build 84. My work flow is to use Vegas 15 to create the AVC files. I chose the SONY template because they render significantly faster on my computers. Plural. I used two for this project to get the work done. I always burn a test Blu-Ray disc. When I did the test disc failed repeatedly on different Blu-Ray players. It would try to start up and then just crash. I replaced the media and tried again. Same result. Then I opened the same project in DVD A 6 and burned it. I made no other changes other than the software version to burn it. The resulting Blu-Ray disc worked perfectly in both players I own. Also, this is more a pet peeve, but in older versions of DVDA you were able to use Adobe Photoshop files in the design for menu backgrounds, buttons, etc. Now, if you do so in version 7 it will likely crash. You can save those files as jpegs and use that type of file with no issue. It doesn't always crash if you use a psd file type, but the more you use the greater the chance. Prior to the newest versions of the software I used psd files all the time in my DVAA designs.

As per my previous comment, in the meanwhile build 84 has become available. (I would guess that the Steam editions are also being kept up to date?) .

Nope. Steam Edition is still sitting at 7.0.0.67 today. From what I can tell, based on everyone else's threads & comments, support comes in the form of generic copy-paste troubleshooting and then endless silence.

Then I opened the same project in DVD A 6 and burned it. I made no other changes other than the software version to burn it. The resulting Blu-Ray disc worked perfectly in both players I own.

That would be great if I had DVDA6, but all I have is 7 Steam Edition that came alongside Vegas 14 Steam. Both programs suffer the same problems for me. The only solution I've seen that works for people in a number of scenarios seems to be "use the old version" which obviously doesn't apply to me.

Note that DVD Architect (7) build 84 is just a minor maintenance update (some code refactored), and doesn't have a significant impact on the user experience.