i think the problem is that DVDA is limiting RAM used by the application to 1GB - that's what it shows it's using when I render as MPG2 -

I found on Vegas 8.1 vs 8.0 that when I raised the memory limit on 8.1 i was able to much more fully use the CPU - it bumps up to 100% reguarly on my Q6700 running at 3.33ghz when I let Vegas use 7Gb of my RAM. This knocked my rendering time down by 30% vs 8.0

Unfortunately there's not a x64 version of DVDA or a way to adjust the RAM limit that I can see - the ability to feed data fast to the CPU is probably the choke for DVD5a as well. The only way to go faster and better use the CPU is more cache or faster drives - SAS in RAID0 would be about the best you can do until an X64 version is available or there's an adjustment to up the RAM limit added.

It does make multi tasking a non issue though - I can work in Vegas while rendering in DVDA easily with 8GB of Ram on the computer, and still have room to open Adobe to work on pictures, read email, surf the web etc without any slow down in the application's response time.

I'm doing my first BD render as I type, looks like the estimated time is about 1 hr per GB I'm rendering to the disc - thats painful! It will take a day to fill a single sided disc at this rate? Ouch!

Was there a second list of updates for DVDA5a? I don't see anything about improving CPU processing/usage. Where'd you get that info from?

I didn't say that it was in the list of updates. I just said it's pathetic that a program is constrained to use only half the processor power you have. If that was a setting that let's the user choose the amount of CPU usage then it would be great, but you cannot choose it anywhere. If Vegas uses 100% to do the same task, then why DVDA uses 50% or less?

I found on Vegas 8.1 vs 8.0 that when I raised the memory limit on 8.1 i was able to much more fully use the CPU - it bumps up to 100% reguarly on my Q6700 running at 3.33ghz when I let Vegas use 7Gb of my RAM. This knocked my rendering time down by 30% vs 8.0

Well, I'm not so sure. When I was working with 32 bit Vista, Vegas 8.0b and 8.0c still used 100% to render to AVC and Mpeg2. The problem with DVDA to me is that it's just mediocre programming, and it's really disappointing that they didn't fix that in the current update.

I'm doing my first BD render as I type, looks like the estimated time is about 1 hr per GB I'm rendering to the disc - thats painful! It will take a day to fill a single sided disc at this rate? Ouch!

If your footage is about one hour and your final media is BD25, I would suggest to render from Vegas to the Mainconcept MPEG2 codec choosing the Blu-Ray 1920x1080 at whatever frame rate your footage and project are set to, at 40 Mbps CBR, and then import into DVDA. That will give you full processor power to render the footage. If your footage is lengthier than one hour you can try lowering the bitrate, however don't go below 30 for best quality results.

Well, I don't know about all that frame rate and codecs, etc.
I do know that I used the upgrade download for DVDA 5a.
I installed it. When I run it, it asks for the serial number.
I used the DVDA 4.5 serial number, it balks, and
tells me I need a number beginning with 1CR- ...

I checked all my emails and no message about a new
serial number for DVDA 5a ... li'l help please and thank you.

Until that time. . . Earl J.

I tried rendering my first disc last night - rendered to BD-RE and used 1080p 29.9 fps in Mpg2 - stuck it in my Panasonic BD35 player and it didn't recognize it - neither did my computer. I used variable bit rate - Not sure what I did wrong - I'm rerendering as 1080 60i Bluray and will see if that works - if that doesn't work I'll try the 40MBps -

The Panasonic BD35 will only read BD-RE version 3 - not sure what that is? This is really off the topic so I'll start a new thread if I can't get it to work after these next couple burns. Glad I'm using a RE disc and not a BDR - I would have at least 1 coaster right now if I did.

Update - rendering as 1080 60i 1920/1080 got the disc recognizable in the Panny BD35 - looke pretty good - playing with a couple different choices in rendering now to see if I can improve the quality of image some - it looks better on my computer monitor than on the Plasma TV - very good on the plasma - just not as good as on the Monitor - the monitor is smaller of course to that's part of it I'm sure - As you said - it was much faster rendering at 1080 60i but didn't really use more of the processor - about the same. Still think RAM being limited is the bottleneck - Using Windows Task manager shows DVDA is only using 1GB of RAM - and very consistently. The HDDs aren't running full time so they don't look like the bottleneck.

As you said - it was much faster rendering at 1080 60i but didn't really use more of the processor - about the same

If you read my e-mail see that my suggestion is to render to MPEG2 1080 60i from Vegas, not DVDA 5. Vegas will indeed use 100% of the processor, with the added advantage that you won't need a large intermediate file. Just render your edit from Vegas to MPEG2 1080I AT 40 Mbps CBR or 35 if you need to and you should be fine. You can only use this for BD25 or 50 though, for BD5 or BD9 the max bitrate you can use is about 20 Mbps, and at that bitrate MPEG2 is not good enough anymore, you have to use AVC.

Sorry - I missed that you meant render to bluray right from Vegas - that would be much faster for sure - Only problem is I'm making a Menu based Bluray with various clips and Vegas can't do that, right? - I think I have to use DVDA.

Only problem is I'm making a Menu based Bluray with various clips and Vegas can't do that, right? - I think I have to use DVDA.

It can't, but if you already rendered the videos that you will use to either AVC or MPEG2 from Vegas, then all DVDA 5 has to do is build the menus, which will be much faster than encoding the video files.

That's have been doing - Never thought about rendering in DVDA - really since it doesn't have much capability for rendering / editting - I did a 15GB Menu based Bluray Render last night - took 1.5 hours to complete - most of that time was writing the DVD it looked like. As far as processor utilization it never went below 50% and was up to 98% often - average looked to be around 75% until it got to burning the BD when it slowed down to a trickle - limited by the burn rate of 2x for sure.

Perhaps with bigger projects it does more work simulataneously - all 4 cores were used in good balance. It might be that more complicated projects are better as using the CPU - don' t have enough time working wtih it to really know - I was rendering from and to MPEG2 1920 1080 60i 25Mbps - which is a standard template in Vegas and set my DVDA to match. I believe this is the best that can be done for bitrate for a BD version 3 which is what's required in my player for BD RE discs. The resulting project worked smoothly and had no drop frames or artifacts - I was quite happy - now I just have to fill up the remaining 10 Gb with something and rerun it! :)

What's the reason you are rendering to AVC instead of MPEG2 just out of curiosity - is the quality better?