DVDA 4.5 misreading file sizes?

Cheno wrote on 2/18/2008, 3:17 PM
Trying to author a DVD using DVD 4.0 / 4.5

It's telling me that it is over the gig limit - total file including assests as per Explorer is 3.7 gigs - main media file that I'm chaptering from in the vid is 2.13 gigs - DVDA showing it as 4.5 -

I've always though that DVDA didn't duplicate the media when doing a separate scene selection menu (or reusing the same media clip elsewhere) but it almost appears that it's duplicating it somehow here. Any thoughts? I don't wanna have to compress the mpgs per DVDA but it appears to be "mis-informed" - carrying over from 4.0 - 4.5

Comments

bStro wrote on 2/18/2008, 3:38 PM
To answer the question in the subject: Always has, (probably) always will.

The estimate in the corner is pretty much useless. Ignore it. As long as a) you know that your assets add up to less than the size of the disc you're using and b) you see all green checkmarks in the Optimize dialog (File > Optimize), then you're likely good to go.

I've always though that DVDA didn't duplicate the media when doing a separate scene selection menu

Correct. Adding a scene selection does nothing more than that -- adds a menu.

...(or reusing the same media clip elsewhere)

Also correct -- in most cases. There are some situations where DVDA has to duplicate the file if one instance is significantly different from the other. Can't recall what situations, though. Subtitles, maybe?

Rob
Cheno wrote on 2/18/2008, 3:52 PM
Yeah - not getting all green check marks - even on the menus - want's to recompress. I'll probably pull it into DVDSP if the recompressed mpg2s look like mush

Asset medis still at a total of less than 4 gigs - something bug-wise going on here

nolonemo wrote on 2/18/2008, 4:57 PM
I've had this where if I dumped the whole project and started fresh it wasn't showing over the limit (but this was back in DVDA3). I always drag in my media and dupe any assets that need duping before doing any kind of work in DVDA now.
Cheno wrote on 2/18/2008, 5:23 PM
Yeah - I'd love to just rebuild - if I do, it won't be in DVDA - don't wanna take the chance of it doing this again, it's obviously a bug. Aside from this, I've never had an issue with DVDA before.
bStro wrote on 2/18/2008, 5:26 PM
Yeah - not getting all green check marks - even on the menus

Are these menus created entirely outside of DVDA, or did you add any text and/or graphics (including button thumbnails / frames) in DVDA? If you added anything, it's normal for DVDA to have to recompress the menu. To avoid that, create the enter menu (other than the highlights themselves) in Vegas and render to MPEG2.

I'd be more concerned about the videos than the menus. If you don't get green checkmarks for the movies, and if the videos are already encoded as MPEG2, then DVDA must not consider them DVD compliant for some reason. (Which means its estimate is based on DVDA's default bitrate of 8Mb/sec, which is probably more than you want.)

Are the videos MPEG2? And what template did you use in Vegas?

Rob
Cheno wrote on 2/18/2008, 5:31 PM
24p NTSC Wide in Vegas - average bitrate (per calculator) was 5.3Mb/sec for an 102 minute project. Menus are stock images with links / text created in DVDA - Markers created in DVDA as well -

I prefer to do the menus as either photoshopped files or everything in Vegas, but this time decided to do it differently - should have stuck to my normal method. Not sure any of that has to do with this issue but the fact that DVDA is reading my main file as twice as large denotes some issue...
bStro wrote on 2/18/2008, 6:03 PM
Hm. I've almost no experience working with 24p, but I just created a short clip in Vegas 8.0a and rendered it using the DVDA 24p Widescreen Video Stream template and dropped the resulting MPEG2 into DVD Architect 4.5a. Got a green checkmark.

Wanna post the file properties as reported by DVDA (Right-click the file in DVDA's Explorer, choose Properties).

Rob
Sherif wrote on 2/18/2008, 6:18 PM
thank god someone else has seen this in DVDA - thought I was going mad!! Happened to me. Then mysteriously a week later I started DVDA up and the reading was fine. I just put this down to a bug that hopefully will be sorted in next fix.
Cheno wrote on 2/18/2008, 6:44 PM
well it appears to be a semi-regular problem over on the DVDA forum. My concern is whether the encoder in DVDA is exactly like Vegas or better or worse... I just hate re-compressing an mpeg when there's nothing wrong with it in the first place.

Most have gotten around this by rebuilding the project - not worth it to me if there's no guarantee it won't happen again. Don't have the time to sit on it for a week either or I would consider that.
johnmeyer wrote on 2/18/2008, 10:39 PM
DVDA definitely will NOT re-use the video under quite a number of circumstances.

I note that almost every week or two, someone posts that their project has somehow exploded in size, but can't figure out why. Here are some things that can cause the "same" video to NOT be re-used, but instead two separate copies are created:

1. Add subtitles to once instance, but not the other.
2. Different audio channels for each instance.
3. Additional video ("angles") added.
4. Using the video from the main project for animated buttons or menu backgrounds (create a short snippet of the video and use this instead).

The first three should be obvious: once you add another track, there needs to be a different VOB.

This last one (#4) can really surprise people, but the video has to be completely re-sized for buttons (and also for menus) and therefore becomes a totally different stream.