DVDA estimate problems

ThomasTyndan wrote on 11/1/2005, 8:09 AM
I used Movie studio to render a video, I rendered it as a MPEG-2 DVD architect widscreen format. the size of the video itself was 4.4 gigs. As usual I had to render the audio seperately as an AC3, which was about 300 MB. When I imported them straight into DVDA and went to make DVD I noticed the following:

It gave me an over estimate fo the DVD output size being about 6 gigs, I had found earlier that I should ignore the estimate. When I did it created the DVD (VIDEO_TS) as being about 5.3 gigs, there was an over estimate, but why is it that I am forced to recompress the video file that is supposed to work right into the DVDA when I encoded it the first time, is there any way around haveing to re-encode the video file?

NOTE: I am using DVD architect 2.0. The dvd I was making was not at all changed from dragging the video file into the project, I was only making a preview dvd that I could watch to verify a good render.

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 11/1/2005, 9:23 AM
This sure seems to come up a lot. If anyone at Sony still reads these posts, you REALLY need to create a FAQ that answers these Frequently Asked Questions (wow, what a concept). You also might consider modifying your products so not so many people have these problems.

End of open letter to Sony. Begin answer to your question.

The estimates in DVDA are bad, but they aren't that bad. Also, DVDA should NEVER have to re-compress video that you create in Studio or Vegas (assuming you create these as MPEG-2 and AC-3 files, using one of the DVD Architect templates -- do NOT use the default templates).

Here are things to check, that can cause the size to increase, and can cause DVDA to re-compress:

1. If you use animated buttons for your menus DO NOT use the entire movie for those buttons. This forces DVDA to re-compress the whole movie to fit the tiny button. This "new version" of the movie is a much smaller pixel version, so it doesn't take as much space as the original. Thus, your project size doesn't double. However, it does get a lot bigger and you have to wait hours while the compression occurs. To solve this problem, if you use movies for your buttons, create a 30-90 second clip in Vegas or Studio, encode that to MPEG-2 (usually no need to encode audio), and then import that clip into the button.

Just to emphasize one thing noted above, and that is this: Use one of the DVD Architect Templates, and DON'T use the Default Template. The usual reason for this warning is that the video settings in the Default produce awful looking video (the quality slider is set really low, so Sony can get really fast benchmarks from reviewers that just click on the Default, start their stopwatch, and then encode). However there is another reason, namely that the default templates encode the audio into the video file. DVDA has to strip this out in order to use your AC-3 audio file. This may also lead to unnecessary re-encoding.

2. Make sure you do NOT use PCM audio. This usually isn't a problem, because it requires you to do a separate encode, but some people have used this format and then wonder why the project in DVDA is so much bigger than just the size of the video file.

3. The same issues discussed in #1 also apply to menus. Some people put a movie as a background for each menu. You need to make sure to use movie clips, and not entire movies.
ThomasTyndan wrote on 11/1/2005, 12:23 PM
That is exactly why I am wondering why I am having a problem. I am using the DVDAS standard MPEG-2 Widscreen, this of course has no audio output with it. I am then rendering the audio as the AC-3, but it is still telling me that it is too large, by my esimated, without the animated buttons and such I should have a little less that 4.6 gigs of information for audio and video. but that is not what is happening.

If I assume that DVDAS is over estimating, which it is. It still creates a VIDEO_TS that is almost a full gig over-sized. I cannot for the life of me figure out why...
nolonemo wrote on 11/1/2005, 1:32 PM
Check your project propertiesin DVDA. If the project audio property is set to PCM instead of AC-3, when you import the pre-rendered AC3 audio, DVDA will give it the PCM size, which often is enough to put the project over the limit. I beat my brains out for hours over this one. As soon as I changed the project audio property to AC3, the size problem went away.
ThomasTyndan wrote on 11/1/2005, 7:30 PM
Okay that makes sense, except I don;t think I can change the audio property in DVSAS 2.0, it seems to be set peranently on PCM...
johnmeyer wrote on 11/1/2005, 7:47 PM
it seems to be set permanently on PCM...

Hmmm ... "nolonemo" seems to be on to something. You definitely can produce projects with AC-3 in DVDA 2.0. However, you say you have DVD Studio ... I don't know enough about that to know whether it accepts AC-3. Perhaps it does not, in which case, that is the problem.
ThomasTyndan wrote on 11/2/2005, 8:19 AM
I just re-encoded it, using an uncompressed AVI instead of MPEG-2

I am going to buy Vegas 6 soon, but I just need a little more money. I bought studio to get some editing practice with, soon I will be able to get more indepth.