Editing Movie After DVD Authoring

vegasnewbie wrote on 7/27/2004, 11:37 AM

I have just gone through the whole process of editing a 60-minute movie with Vegas 5 and then preparing a nice DVD menu with 18 chapters using DVD Architect 2. If I want to make further late amendments to the movie using Vegas 5, can this be done without having to subsequently redo the whole of the DVD authoring? Can you do any last-minute editing of the movie in DVD Architect itself?

I suspect that I might be able to alter or add in new titles etc provided that the movie is kept at exactly the same length and rendered to the same name and location on the hard drive as previously, is this correct? However, I have some doubts as to whether I could add or delete film without having to redo the DVD authoring. I guess lots of you must have had to deal with this problem, so any feedback would be much appreciated.

Regards, Fred

Comments

BJ_M wrote on 7/27/2004, 11:59 AM

you can re-author a dvd .. but it is not a easy thing always //

best to start over in many many cases ...

Liam_Vegas wrote on 7/27/2004, 12:54 PM

I have certainly done what you have before... where I found I had a typo in a title. I re-rendered the MPEG file and just opened the original DVDA progect and did the prepare step again.

I think you have to be careful not to alter ANY thing that would adjust the length of the video or modify the chapters as I am not sure what might happen to the scene selection and other parts of the DVD setup you have carefuly created. One would hope that DVDA would adjust itself if it found the chapter markers had moved and the video had altered length slightly but it is the sort of thing I would not want to press my luck with!

vegasnewbie wrote on 7/27/2004, 2:52 PM

Thanks for these replies. In a couple of short tests that I have just completed, I agree that correction of a typo in a title, or even adding a title within an existing scene, is unlikely to upset the structure of the DVD menus, so they won't have to be reconstructed in these circumstances.

However, it doesn't seem that DVDA will always adjust itself when chapter markers have been moved, and broken chapter links can result, necessitating the complete reconstruction of the DVD menu! But perhaps there is a way of adjusting the DVDA chapter links after they have been moved without redoing all the DVD menus? Can anyone advise on this please?

Regards, Fred

JaysonHolovacs wrote on 7/27/2004, 2:53 PM

I'm not sure, but I THINK chapter markers move with the markers Vegas puts in the input file. HOWEVER, thumbnails are saved as time references relative to the start of the video, not relative to the chapter marker, so I think your thumbnails wil be screwed up.

You can easily do things that do not affect length, though, like re-rendering for better quality or adding an audio track.

-Jayson

vegasnewbie wrote on 8/2/2004, 12:44 AM

Just a further note on this topic for the record. I tried adding a few seconds of credits to the end of a veg file that had previously been rendered and DVD authored in DVDA.

After rerendering the amended veg file and writing over the original mpg file, DVDA recognized all the chapters that had been set when the file was first DVD authored, but the rerendered film stopped part way through the extra time that I had added. This meant that I had to redo the DVD authoring process. Fortunately, I had made a record of the exact times of the start points for each chapter, so it didn't take too long to construct a new menu. But guess what, the client now wants a few other minor changes, so I have to redo the authoring process for the third time!

It's a pity that the editing and the DVD authoring functions are completely separated, because clients like to see an interim version of the DVD and the menu structures, but then they may want to make a few changes to the film itself. This means redoing the DVD menu, because even if you just subsequently add or delete say 5 frames from the original edit, you will most likely need to redo the whole of the DVD authoring process. Please correct me if I am wrong in saying this.

Wouldn't it be possible to have the 2 programs completely integrated as one package, so that the need to redo a DVD menu just because of one quite small editing change is avoided? Any views on this? I think there are some programs that integrate editing and DVD authoring so that late edits don't muck up the DVD authoring that you have done to date.

Regards, Fred

kentwolf wrote on 8/2/2004, 1:07 AM

>>Wouldn't it be possible to have the 2 programs completely
>>integrated as one package, so that the need to redo a DVD menu
>>just because of one quite small editing change is avoided? Any
>>views on this?

If you just need to redo a DVD menu, you can strip your elementary streams (video/audio) from the actual DVD via DVDDecrypter, redo your menus, then peice it all back together again.

I have actually done this once and it was a HUGE lifesaver.

With respect to redoing the video, that's pretty tough, especially if you are going to AC3 audio. I think Sonic had something "Open DVD" for just this kind of thing, but I don't really see that it ever caught on. I do not know what sacrifices were made for this allowance.

Stripping the elementary streams, then redoing the DVD works terrific!

JaysonHolovacs wrote on 8/2/2004, 6:45 AM

Fred,
Did you check to make sure the out point wasn't set on the file? Because if it was, that might be why your second version stopped in the middle of the added section. If the out point had been set previously, it might not have moved it when you changed the source file.

Just a thought.

-Jayson

Catwell wrote on 8/2/2004, 7:46 AM

When I redid an unsatisfactory file it was a little longer than the original. All I had to do was to reset the out point in DVD-A timeline and all was well. No new menus or anything else. Except of course I had to twiddle with everything to satisfy my fussy nature.