Estimate Project Encoding ?

Geoff_Wood wrote on 5/11/2009, 2:06 PM

Sort of a combination Vegas/DVDA query here.

Say I have a project that will be too big for one DVD5, so I'll put it onto two. Or I have one that will just fit one DVD5 with a little squeezing (quality not a critical factor).

How do those with experience estimate what video and audio setting to use when rendering to MPEG-2 for DVDA, to ensure that DVDA does not need to re-encode in order to fit to the disc ? (Single movie straighforward I guess, menued titles less so....)

I found a freebie calulator DVDRCAL, but it seems a little arbitrary ....

geoff

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 5/11/2009, 7:32 PM

1) Note that DVDA is very conservative when estimating burned disc space. Often, it will overestimate the file sizes and prompt you to render when you choose "Burn." This often is not necessary.

2) When you are reasonably certain that your files will fit on one DVD, choose to "Prepare" rather than burn. Click through any warning messages and the DVD files will be prepared to your hard drive. Now close the project and re-open it -- DVDA now shows the correct space usage because it has the prepared file sizes to report. Now you can burn.

3) If at all possible, do your rendering in Vegas Pro. If you take files that are too big / wrong format and let DVDA do the work, you will have absolutely no control over the rendering parameters.

"I found a freebie calulator DVDRCAL, but it seems a little arbitrary ...."

This one can be used online or downloaded, and is as accurate and intuitive as they get, I've not yet had any surprises . . .
http://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm