First and foremost - this is not a mess up.

This is what is suppose to happen.

Look at your bitrate and adjust accordingly.

Piece of advice....anytime an application is doing the exact same thing no matter how many different ways you tell it not to - it's a prety safe bet that it is doing what it is suppose to and that you have to learn the perspective in which to look at it and work within it's peramiters.

There is another possibility that I have seen too, although this may not apply to you.

Once I created a disc with a "play all" button for the one long file as well as chapter selection menus.

Then I noticed a problem with the main file, so I rerendered it. DVDA reimported it, and suddenly the file sizes had doubled! It was including BOTH copies of the file on the disk because of the chapter indices.

Since then, I did the same thing, but DVDA asked "Do you want to refresh your chapter markers?" and when I said 'yes' it worked perfectly, so either I did something different or one of the poit releases fixed a bug.

It could also be, as mentioned by others, that your bitrate is set too high of course, but assuming that you are basing your size esimates on the already-rendered MPG/AC3 files, this isn't likely.

I should also note that yesterday I made a disk where the total of the Vegas-rendered MPG & AC3 files was 4 Gig, but DVDA estimated the final disc size at a whopping 6 Gig. It warned me, however, I told it to go ahead, and the disk it made was fine, so... you may want to just render it anyway. I have no idea why its estimates are routinely high, but unless the final program REALLY IS too big, it will create the dik fine anyway.

Hope this helps.

"I should also note that yesterday I made a disk where the total of the Vegas-rendered MPG & AC3 files was 4 Gig, but DVDA estimated the final disc size at a whopping 6 Gig. It warned me, however, I told it to go ahead, and the disk it made was fine, so... you may want to just render it anyway. I have no idea why its estimates are routinely high, but unless the final program REALLY IS too big, it will create the dik fine anyway."

I have to sort of agree. I've noticed something like this too. But, sort of in reverse.

I think I was creating a Test DVD with a file that was rendred at (something like) 1.3 gig. DVDA of course saw it much bigger, but I didn't care, it was the only thing I was going to put on the disc. So I let it burn.

When everything finished - it played fine (of course), but when I looked at the used file size on the DVD, it only showed what I thought it would show (a little over 1.3 gig) not the whopping "whatever" that DVDA was telling me it was going to be.

Hmmmmm. sort of makes you go "Hmmmmmmm".

I've seen this with PAL footage..

A long story but anyway- I'd changed my mind from a music compilation (multifile MJPEG.AVI source, didn't want to use Vegas4 to render a single file). DVDA crashed before it finished creating the PAL.m2v files in the rendering phase. It just popped its clogs overnight.

So I decided to use Satish's plug-in and have Vegas send uncompressed transcoded frames into TMPGEnc. I made a system stream (.mpg) with no audio. In fact this crashed with a Vegas message. I changed nothing in Vegas and tried TMPGEnc with a more simple motion estimation choice (faster mode, not the fastest). Maybe this was related but this worked.

I noticed that when I imported the .mpg file into DVDA that the 3.5GB file looked to DVDA as being 7.9GB. However I'd failed to notice that my NEW PROJECT had defaulted to NTSC, and once I put this onto PAL, and rendered the AC3 from Vegas4, all was well again.

I'm not sure what I'll do next time. I trust DVDA and Vegas4 MPEG-2 rendering with DV and uncompressed. I've changed my PICvideo MJPEG codec to deliver 720x576 as lower field first, as per DV, and will stick to DV project types in Vegas. Perhaps not being able to fiddle with the field dominance in DVDA imported media is a blinding omission considering that many capture apps do get this part wrong or miss it completely in the AVI headers.

Check your sources AR and fielding is correct before checking the DVDA size prediction. It should be a DV/DVD type if you want to give the MPEG-2 coder a better chance. YMMV.

My menu'd DVD title looks great even though it took me two (failed) nights and one day of rendering and some cursing under my breath.

Well this problem has just hit me as well.

After a lot of effort I've got the mpeg and ac3 files down to where they'll fit.
Drop the file into DVDA and check Optimise.

No problem, 97%, phew.

Insert Scene Selection Menu, move a few markers and goto prepare. Thout the message said I didn't have enough disc space on the HD which I knew I did so let it rip.

Got interrupted and when I came back an hout later its still trying to re-encode. What the...?

So kill that and go back to Optimise. Shock Horror, now I'm at 147% of capacity. After a little investigation I find the problem occurs as soon as I add the Scene Selection Menu. Doing this should cause it to load the markers from the pre-rendered file which it does. So I tried creating a scene selection menu within DVDA i.e. ignoring the markers in the source.

As soon as I add one scene selection marker Optimise reports the final size as being way too large. Wierder still it now tells me there are 2 instances of the ac3 audio file which it certainly doesn't need.

This is a major frustration, partivularly as I've been through this process with no dramas a great many times and I can seem to find no work around. I know this issue has been raised many times before, I'd dismissed it as finger trouble as I'd never seen it happen. My apaologies to everyone.

This is a real bug and a right royal pain

Update:

just tried again, pretty much from scratch. Added the file into the main menu, size OK, Optimise is happy. Added scene selection menu and it creates chapter points from the markers AOK. EXCEPT again Optimise says file is way too big and that there are FOUR instance of the ac3 file.

OK, just ignore that and goto Prepare DVD. No warning messages this time so I'll let her run and see what comes out.

Well, it's going to take 4 hours so something is still definately screwy. It only has to mux the audio into the mpg stream and create the DVD files, no encode but this is taking longer than the original encode. Normally this process would take less than 30 minutes so the wheels have definately fallen off.

So in the end I gve up, 4 hours is just too long to wait, I've wasted a day to do a simple copy of a VHS tape to DVD. I've pulled out the scene selection menu, prepare time dropped to 10 minutes, file size where it should be.

Good thing the client didn't expect a scene selection menu.

As I've sometimes found in Vegas. Sometimes select-all copy, New project (exact settings you need) then Paste, this then clears some of the glitches.

DVDA is difficult to back track in. In its current state.
I still like DVDA and in the case of my .MPG and .AC3, I didn't find a quick fix by going to DVDLab. Although I suppose Sony were to blame for me having .MPG (system/program streams) in the first place.

I'd say my DVDA wheels are still on. But they are held on by match sticks when I expected willow.

You know what i have had to do?
Ive had work out a different way of doing this whole thing...
this works, so maybe it might work for those having issues..

basically, now, all my work is rendered as one final AVI with NO audio

ac3 is also encoded on its own.

import your media, starting withthe ac3, then the avi.

insert your menu video and audio.

highlight your new media link that just showed up after you imported your main presentation.
Now right click and select "insert scen selection menu"

for ease, jsut rename the first icon to "play movie" and teh second to "Scene Seleciton"

once all that is sorted out and u get to the render stage, it will come up with error and jobs it needs to do...

anthign to do with audio, should be set to Dolby Digital 5.1 (if u encoded an ac3 5.1

basically all u want DVDA to do is render the video ONLY.. now set teh disc space to 99...
DVD will determine teh bitrate. which isnt too bad.
dont let it set the 5.1 channels as it DOESNT allow you to configure the metadata or any other aspect within the Dolby stream.
In all honesty, i dont think DVDA should carry the Dolby logo considering the 5.1 it produces sux the big one...
Vegas on teh other hand is a godsend..

apart from that this is the only workaround to this issue...
if u dont have the storage space for 2 hours worth of raw DV.. tough shit i guess...

heres hoping teh next update fixes this WELL KNOWN issue...
its been long enough without an update.. i think its time they got their asses into gear...

now when bubnring i find doing a master on DVDRW is the best solution then making copies from that is the safest way to a coaster free DVD prodcuciton process....