hi, thanks - i need to create blu-rays from webinars, captured w/camtasia to avi /wmv; maybe capturing uncompressed avi then is a way to go, though large filesizes

To Ken c:
Search with the term "camtasia" in the VegasPro Video forum. Then from the posts you may think of some other search terms to further research your situation -again in the VegasPro forum. Screen capture software and interfaces are a whole subject unto themselves - one of our forum people- has even written the newest software to interface with Vegas. This has been discussed at length in many threads.

Your ultimate solution is to capture in a way and in a codec that flies directly on the VegasPro timeline.

Having just burned my very first BluRay using DVD-A5.2 for the very first time and running into some problems, but having solved them with questions posted in the Vegas Pro forum instead of here, I can give you a couple of practical tips that I just learned:

You must render your video and audio separately, apparently, as bizarre as this seems. You must use either the MainConcept or AVC templates to make the video files. You can use full PCM audio files instead of AC3, but must render them separately using, in my case, the Windows Wave PCM templates.

Even though the manual says you can use up to 40mbps files, DVD-A program says you need to keep it under 28mbps to avoid recompression. Since Main Concept only allows up to 25mbps constant stream and AVC only allows up to 16, this worked out for me doing a 48khz/24bit stereo PCM audio stream and the Main Concept render at 25mbps fixed stream.

One problem is that the Main Concept renders are not viewable in Vegas Pro! On top of this, the sync between audio and video within DVD-A preview is not 100percent reliable......but the sync for the BluRay burn turned out to be exact for me.

If others out there have different experiences, please chime in since this is my initial experience only. The burn went just fine, however, and the results looked great......once I realized that I had to stay within those methods from the Vegas Pro timeline.

I had tried rendering to an MXF, and DVD-A did not like it......thus the learning of what seem to be the rules of the road here.

SCS Support / Knowledgebase Search can also sometimes be helpful, e.g.
https://www.custcenter.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4875

This help file does give you a couple of paths, but ignores some other options. You don't, for instance, have to choose 16bit for the PCM audio option (I used 24), nor do you have to choose 1920x1080 as the screen resolution (I used 1440x1080)......

thanks all, you've posted some very useful tips; I appreciate it. learning new formats is always a challenge, so it's great to see some smart ideas from everyone.

Not sure what the specifics of DVD Architect are since I don't use it for BD (I use DoStudio, which was actually recently acquired by Sony Creative).

But, with BD, the writable optical format actually came before the ROM format. To that end, I don't think BD has the issues with high bitrates from recordable discs that DVD did.

It may be different in practice, but I've not seen a player that can't play the full 40mbps from BD-R or BD-RE.

"You must render your video and audio separately, apparently, as bizarre as this seems."

Bizzare? This has been the recommended workflow since DVDA Version One. Anything else makes DVDA recompress your video which guarantees a compromise in quality.