Thanks Ken. Yes, should have said it's Platinum. And I should have said, starting a project. That is, I opened Vegas and clicked on Project, new, then I selected PAL (being in Australia), audio stereo, video - DVD, Project - DVD PAL (so this was my first error??!). I put a lot of photos and text in the timeline, clicked on Make a Movie, clicked burn DVD, the first time just that and it didn't work so clicked on DVD with menus. That worked, then connected to Architect and clicked on Make DVD... When we played the DVD in our DVD player (which is Blu Ray) the photos were small and centred in the TV screen as I first described.

Any hints/comments???

If you have an HD teevee, and you play a DVD at 1:1 aspect, it will play small but look pretty sharp. If you enlarge (zoom in) with the teevee controls, it can fill the screen but be quite blurry. It can be a little better with a "smart upscale" DVD disc player, but that 's about it, sorry to say.

Do commercial DVDs play correctly?

Yes, all our other DVDs do.

Can you post a pic screen grab of your timeline with the photos? Are you photos full screen when you are editing iin Movie Studio?

@Christo, if you are creating a slideshow video of photos, I would humbly suggest (as Musicvid hinted) that DVD is not the best format. PAL DVD is only 720x576 size, but photos usually have much greater size. If your TV is full HD it will have screen size 1920x1080, and photos from a DVD will always look a bit blurry when expanded to fill the screen. Better to make a MP4 video with dimensions 1920x1080 and your photos will be much clearer on the TV. If you want to make the video for your own use, buy a Chromecast for $59 AUD and stream it straight from your computer or phone to the TV. If you want to share it with someone else, just upload it to Dropbox or other cloud service and send them the link.

However, I understand if you want to make a DVD. I am currently putting together, every week, DVDs of our church's livestream service for two ladies who have no internet and only a DVD player. Let us know what your requirements are.

Ken.

Thanks Dot. No the photos are not showing full screen but in the video preview it says the project is 1920x1080. I can't figure out why the photos are small! Please see what I've said in reply to Ken.

And thanks Ken. A few years ago I made DVDs of our travels using Vegas (movie maker 11 from memory) and the photos were a bit stretched as you say but I liked using it as I want to mix up photos and videos from a couple of cameras, add text as titles and on the photos - so we can put up with a bit of stretch and poorer quality photos. Having said that, I do think that a program like Vegas should be able to deliver a better product. Anyway, with version 15 and rendering to MP4 with the preview showing the project will be in 1920x1080 and copying it to a Blu Ray DVD, the photos still were not full size! The video was full size. We've watched our old videos and they play as they always have. So, I must have some setting incorrect although I've tried all sorts of combinations. Anyway I will try to find a phone no to talk to someone but would still be interested to hear what you both think and Ken, is there another program that I can use to make a DVD, just for us, combining photos and video from different sources? I can't do any of that live streaming...!

 using Vegas (movie maker 11 from memory)

If it was an SCS Vegas program, must have been a Movie Studio version.

@Christo, can you take a screenshot of Vegas with your project loaded, so we can see the the project and preview settings? Easiest way to take a screenshot (assuming you are running Windows 10) is to hold down the Windows key and press the PrtScrn button. The screen should dim briefly when you do this and you will find will the screenshot saved in Pictures\Screenshots. Then you can upload it in your comment here using the blue "Upload file" button just above where your are typing your reply here.

Ken.

Thanks Ken. Here is the screenshot. I have thought of using Windows Video Editor program instead but getting that onto a DVD doesn't look easy either...

Hi Ken. Maybe the problem lies with the version of DVD Architect I have, although it is the one I have used for other projects. It is version 7.0. thanks for your interest.

Ah, I see the problem. You have placed your photos into the Picture-in-picture track. A common mistake for unwary users. Most people on this forum wonder why Magix includes that track by default. A simple solution: click on the "f" in the track header, and disable (untick) the Picture-in-picture effect.

When I start a new project, the first thing I do is delete that Picture-in-picture track (right-click in the track header and select Delete track) because I have never used it. You can add more video tracks easily if you need them (right-click in the track header of an existing video track and select Insert video track, or go to Insert menu and select Video track).

Ken.

Maybe the problem lies with the version of DVD Architect I have, although it is the one I have used for other projects. It is version 7.0. thanks for your interest.

You have the latest version.

Ken.

Wow, thanks. I'll do what you say and fingers crossed!! I knew I must have been doing something wrong. Mind you, I've made a trial video with Windows video editor and the photos seem much better but I'm not sure if it will be ok for multiple photos etc. Do you have any experience with that? Thanks from christo 🙂

Hi Ken, I've unticked picture-in-picture. A question: do I need to render in Vegas before clicking 'make a movie'? If so, if I chose MP4 which I think is what you recommended, what template on the right hand side should I select? I don't particularly want to make a blu ray video if that means I have to buy blu ray video discs and the one I made the other day didn't seem to any better than a 'normal' video. Thanks again for your help.

Oops meant to load this screenshot.

No, you don't need to render before clicking 'Make a movie'. That's what 'Make a movie' does - it renders! If you prefer to make a DVD then go ahead and do it as you did before. If you send it to DVD Architect, you can preview your DVD (click the Preview button) to see what it will look like before burning it to DVD.

But if you want to see sharper pictures on your Sony TV (assuming it is full HD 1920x1080), and assuming you can get your TV to play a MP4 file (e.g. maybe the TV or your DVD/Blu-ray player has a USB input?) then try rendering your project as a MP4 file. Select "Internet HD 1080p 25 fps", but before rendering, click on Customize Template... and change the Maximum bps to 12,000,000 and the Average bps to 6,000,000. That is plenty for a video containing mostly photos and will halve the resulting video file size.

I notice you have an AMD graphics card. You can try rendering using "Internet HD 1080p 25 fps (AMD VCE)" which uses the graphics card to accelerate rending. It if works without crashing, it could render up to 2-3x faster.

Ken.

Thanks Ken, you've been very helpful. Unfortunately I have more questions..... Turning off picture on picture has made a difference as the photos now show full size in the video review. The Sony TV is HD, although fairly old!

Under 'Project', 'properties' I clicked on HD1080 etc. Apply. If I go to 'make a movie' it doesn't give me the option, however, of rendering as a MP4 file. I've tried to attach screen shots of what it allows but keep getting errors...So this is what I see: 'Make a movie' takes you to a simple set of options to select from eg Upload to Youtube, camera, harddrive...I selected DVD; next is a page that you have to select from DVD; DVD with menus; Blu ray; Blu ray with menus. I selected DVD with menus. Next is a screen with default ticks against: Save project markers and Use widescreen DVD. Next - starts the render, showing the file size as 720... (see below).

However, if I click "Project', 'render as' I can make most of the changes you've recommended ie MP4 etc.... Under 'customise template' there was only 10 or 24,000,000 max bps and only 4 or 10,000,000 for average bps. So, I went conservative - selected Internet HD 1080p 25fps and left the bps settings alone. It did take nearly 1.5 hrs to render. Then the computer saved it to 'Films and TV'. I can't get it to move to DVD Architect. It will only play on the computer...

So, then I went back to the Vegas project and clicked Make a Movie. The project review showed the project settings reverted to 720x576x32, 25,000. I didn't bother to continue with the render. The photos were larger but the question is whether the quality going to be compromised? How can I get the settings you recommend?! Can you work out what I'm doing wrong??!! Again, your help is much appreciated. I'm learning but it seems weird what's happening....

Hi Ken again. I ended up finding an updated version of the movie on the hard drive, dragged it to DVD Architect and after another one hour of rendering! and burning to a DVD, we had a not too bad movie. I can't tell what the settings are ie HD1080 or 720. Is there somewhere in Architect that I can see that to know if it is worth even rendering when in Vegas if Architect renders it, again? Ahhhhh...

Hi Christo, DVDs are by definition only size 720x576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC). They can have smaller sizes, but never bigger. Also, DVDs must be encoded using MPEG-2 video (in VMS it uses the MainConcept MPEG-2 encoder for the video and usually the Dolby Digital AC-3 Studio encoder for the audio). See here for some light reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video

What that means is you can't create a DVD from a MP4 video, or anything larger than 720x576 (unless you create a Blu-ray disc). Nor can you feed a MP4 into DVD Architect to make a DVD (you can only create a Blu-ray disc from a MP4 file). You can see this when you start a new project in DVD Architect, which will show you the type of Video and Audio files required:

The easiest way to render a DVD is to use "Make Movie". If you select "DVD with menus" it will send the rendered files to DVD Architect.

You can also use "Make Movie" to render a MP4 file. Just select "Save to Hard Drive" and on the next screen select MP4. You can click on Advanced Options if you want to change settings. For example, to change the Maximum and Average bps you can either select preset values from the dropdown lists, or you can just type the values in yourself (e.g. to change 12,000,000 to 6,000,000, select the "12" and replace it with "6"). But like I said earlier, if you create a MP4 file at 1920x1080 to get sharper photos, you will only be able to see that on your TV if there is some way of transferring it to the TV. Does you TV have a USB socket? If it's an old TV there may be no USB socket.

Ken.

Thanks Ken, again! I have a better understanding. You explain things so well, thanks. I saved the project to the hard drive, copied it to a usb. The TV does have a usb port but nothing registered. Our Blu Ray player has usb ports. The usb showed up but when we clicked on it it said 'there are no titles'. I tried two different usbs. Have you seen that message come up? I'm thinking neither the TV nor Blu Ray player nor another appliance we have will recognise a MP4 file. Is that what you think? So, unless we have something that will recognise a MP4 file (other than a computer), looks like a DVD.

Thanks to you I now feel pretty confident I can make a DVD or Blu Ray DVD, subject to the following couple of questions! When I have finished putting the photos and video in Vegas, and before I click on 'make a movie' and choose DVD, do I need to go into Project/specifications to make sure it is set to ... what? HD 720 if saving to a DVD ... or 1080-50i (1920x1080, 25.000 fps)? ie does changing specifications affect anything?

AND, going back to the very beginning, when I first start a Vegas project I guess I select DVD widescreen? - see screenshot....

One thing puzzles me though. When and why would you use the feature in Vegas of Project/render as .... What do people use it for?

Your help is very much appreciated

Christo

My VMS produced mp4 files play okay on my TV's player and my Panasonic Blu-ray players usb input.