DVDA 2 questions

PossibilityX wrote on 7/19/2004, 2:49 AM

I’m having some trouble understanding DVDA 2. I’ve read the manual, the help, and the chapter having to do with DVDA (1.0) in Douglas Spotted Eagle’s excellent book. Admittedly, I’m brand new with the program but Vegas was so simple to learn by comparison, I’m somewhat flummoxed with DVDA.

I have a 65-minute project with 25 minutes of bonus material I am attempting to transfer to DVD, for a total of 90 minutes of material. I have an understanding of how to encode the video and audio in Vegas for best results, thanks to the suggestions of those on this and other forums. My problem has to do with how best to assemble the material in DVDA.

The film was assembled in Vegas in individual segments, not as one large project. I assumed I could render the individual segments, then assemble them in DVDA in playback order. But I had no luck inserting more than one piece of video / audio into the timeline. How do I “stack” the clips in chronological sequence? Or do I have to assemble the entire 90 minutes together in one huge project in Vegas, render it, then import the project and chop THAT up into individual pieces----the complete movie, then the bonus tracks, each marked with appropriate chapter markers?

My other question has to do with synching audio. Many of my clips begin with a few seconds of silent video, followed by the music. Or the opposite----the music begins playing, and a few seconds later the video fades in. So, after rendering, how do I get the MPEG2 video and the AC-3 audio clips---which are supposed to go together---to sync up when, say, I have a 60 second video clip but the accompanying audio is only 50 seconds? Surprisingly, most clips DO seem to sync up perfectly, though one did not---the audio was a few seconds behind its associated video. I render loop regions; maybe I missed the first few seconds of audio by failing to include all of it in the loop region?

Any help is appreciated, and if you can point me to some online tutorials / articles in addition to your own tips, I’d be very grateful. Sure wish we had a book on DVDA 2 for Dummies!

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 7/19/2004, 3:58 AM

I'm confused by your 4th paragraph about syncing audio. Why would you have a 60 second video clip but only 50 seconds of audio? Why wouldn't you make the audio 60 seconds too? When you have the 60 second combined clip ready to go in Vegas, simply render the same timeline to MPEG-2 for the video and AC3 for the audio. You'll get both files to be exactly the same length, and if they were in sync on the timeline they'll be in sync on the DVD.

As far as having multiple media sources on the disc, you can add more menu buttons and insert additional media files to each button. Since you probably don't want the bonus material to play automatically after the regular program finishes this would seem to be the best solution. On the other hand, if you do want the additional media to play automatically you could always set the end action of the program to jump to the bonus material.

PossibilityX wrote on 7/19/2004, 10:33 AM

Chienworks, thanks for your reply.

What I meant by the audio sometimes being shorter than the video (or vice versa once in a while) is that the title would fade in with no sound, stay there a few seconds, then the sound kicks in. Or, in the opposite situation, you see a black screen but hear music for a few, then the title slowly fades in.

I suppose it was inaccurate to say that one clip was shorter than the other; it might make more sense to say that there's a period of silence before the audio kicks in. In any case, I think I've figured out that the clips, audio and video, are actually identical in length, even if it takes a few seconds of silence before the audio or video is evident.

I just wondered how the clips "knew" to sync up, even though most clips I tested did sync up just fine. The one that didn't, I realize now, was the result of slightly moving the "loop region" settings when rendering the audio, which resulted in a clip that actually WAS different in length than the corresponding video!

ScottW wrote on 7/19/2004, 11:01 AM

I think part of the problem you are having is that there are lots of ways to approach this in DVDA, and it depends on what you want things too look like.

For example, you could have an opening menu that has 2 buttons on it - one for the main program and the other for the bonus material. To do this, the easiest way is to render the main program as a single MPEG/AC3 file, then you just use the explorer window in DVDA and drag the MPEG onto the main menu (if the audio file has the same name, then DVDA will snag it as well).

Same thing with the bonus material; if it's all rendered as a single MPEG/AC3 file you just drag the MPEG onto the menu next to the main program and poof - you've got it.

Now, maybe the bonus material is something like "deleted scenes" - so you've actually got multiple MPEG/AC3 files. So one way to handle this would be to create a submenu (it's on one of the pulldowns, I dond't have DVDA2 right here so I can remember which one - there may also be a button for it). ANyway, so you select create a submenu and then position it where you want it on the main menu. Then you right click on the submenu and select "Navigate into" - so you're now on the submenu and you can start pulling in the individual files that compose the bonus footage, just drag and drop.

Now when people come to this menu they can select the specific bonus item they want to see.

You can do the same thing if the bonus footage is all in a single MPEG (this is actually easier because it makes it real easy to create a "Play All" button).

You've got your submenu, you have 4 individual subclips in the single large clip, so you drag the mpeg file onto the submenu 5 times. The first one is titled "Play All", then you title each additional copy as appropriate. Double click on the button that you want to only have a portion of the large clip play, or do the "Navigate Into" - the entire clip will be shown on the clip workspace and then you can set In and Out points where that small part is supposed to begin and end. DVDA 2.0 is smart enough to only have a single copy of the MPEG/AC3 on the final DVD, so you won't get 5 copies of the same material even though you dragged and dropped it on the menu 5 times.

So, lots of different ways to skin this cat.

--Scott