Pugsley, how are you rendering the AVI files in Vegas Studio? DVD Architect will use just about any AVI file that Vegas can produce. You must be doing something very unusual to create one that doesn't work.

If you render an .AVI file from VMS and send it to DVDA Studio, DVDAS will always re-render to MPEG2 when you make the DVD because MPEG2 is the only legitimate video format for a DVD. DVD players (in general) don't have any idea what to do with an .AVI file.

There are mixed opinions on whether approach #1 or #2 is better.

If you select approach #1, you generally only have to do one time-consuming render operation, but you are stuck with with the pre-defined (but un-disclosed) bit-rate of the DVD Architect template. Also, if your video file ends up too big to fit onto a disc, then DVDAS will have to re-render to a lower bit-rate anyway. (But I think this will only happen if you have well over an hour of video?)

If you select approach #2 (render to AVI to send to DVDAS), then you have the option in DVDAS to manually select the highest DVD bit-rate (i.e. 8 or higher), and presumeably get the highest quality. You also have the option to use the "fit to disc" option, which will look at all of your video, audio, and menu sizes, and calculate the best bit-rate that will still let everything fit on the disc.

There is some talk that *generated* effects like text, etc., and high resolution still photos, etc. (things that aren't DV to start with), might be better when rendered directly to MPEG2 from within VMS, because MPEG2 has a more detailed color space (4:2:2, I think, compared to 4:1:1 for DV NTSC format). In this case, if you render to DV (AVI) first, then to MPEG2, you've gone to an intermediate format which might have lost some quality (in color detail).

All in all, it's a pretty tough call.

My gut feel is that rendering to DV/AVI and sending that to DVDAS is probably the best way to go, because then in DVDAS you can select the highest MPEG2 bit-rate available, or use the fit-to-disc option. But this is just a gut feel -- no data to support that. This approach is the most time-consuming, however (because of doing two separate renders).

If your video is long (well over an hour) and you render to MPEG2 in VMS, and then you see that DVDAS renders a second time (to fit the video onto the disc), then you almost certainly are taking a quality hit in that case, and rendering to DV AVI and sending that to DVDA would almost certainly be better.

So, no clear cut answer...

Tim L

Tim L., thanks for the response. That makes perfect sense

I wish I knew what the pre-defined bit rated is for the DVD Architect template in VMS. None of my projects are fancy. I'm basically just taking some home videos of my son, as well as some still pictures, and then making slideshows for the grandparents. For the basic project that I'm doing, I probably won't notice much of a difference either way.

I know that the clips I capture from my DV camera are in AVI format, so I was wondering if it might be best to just keep them in AVI format and then let DVDA do the mpeg2 rendering.

Basically, the advantage to rendering to AVI from VMS and then using DVDA to render to mpeg2 is that in DVDA, I can control the bitrate, correct? Whereas, if I use the DVDA template in VMS, the video is only rendered once, but using an unknown bitrate?

I guess I could mess around with it tonight and burn two discs (using dvd-rw's) to compare quality. The simple slideshows I'm doing are plenty small enough to fit on a single layer disc, so I don't have to worry about space. I necessary, I'll just use dual layer discs.

A lot of it depends on the material. I videotaped an original opera a few years back. There was minimal movement on stage so it encoded to MPEG very nicely. Even though it was 2.4 hours i decided to try making a single disc/single layer version just for kicks. I rendered with an average rate of about 3.6Mbps and burned it. I also created a two-disc version at 6.6Mbps. No one i showed it to could see any difference at all, much less pick which version they were watching.

True, you couldn't get away with such a low bitrate if you have lots of bright colors and fast action. But if you do have low action then there's no reason to worry about putting a couple of hours or more on a single disc.

This last DVD I did consisted of 3 simple slideshows. Each slideshow contained stills and video and had background music. There was about 20 minutes total for the slideshows. I exported the 3 projects to DVDA using the mpeg2 DVDA template and everything looked fine on the TV.

So, tonight, I'm rendering one of the projects to AVI, and then I'm going to just add that AVI file to the original DVD project in DVDA. Then, burn it to a DVD-RW disc and watch them to compare the two. It's burning now.

When I went through the MAKE DVD screens in DVDA to burn the disc, I noticed that it said the original 3 projects were all encoded at either 5000 or 6000 bitrate. So, it looks like the DVDA template uses something in that range. The 4th one I'm adding to this disc right now was rendered as AVI in VMS, and during the mpeg2 rendering process in DVDA, I set it to 8500 bitrate.

We'll see how they compare. I'm guessing that I won't be able to tell the difference. If that's the case, I'll just continue using the DVDA template in VMS so that I don't have to wait an extra hour to render the files twice.

"When I went through the MAKE DVD screens in DVDA to burn the disc, I noticed that it said the original 3 projects were all encoded at either 5000 or 6000 bitrate. "

Excellent! Very observant! I've been wondering what kind of bit rate the DVD Architect template used. I think the dvd player on my PC can display the rate as you play a DVD, but of course, the rate jumps all around. I hadn't noticed that DVDA shows it to you when you do the Prepare DVD step.

I checked a 44 minute long video I'd done a while back (kids Christmas program), which I had rendered to MPEG2 from within VMS (first time I did it that way -- I usually do the render to AVI to send to DVDAS...) Anyway, the Make DVD screen shows it with a bit rate of 7.759, with a max bit rate of 10.080. If I was doing it the "other" way (avi sent to DVDAS), I would have set it to 8.0, so I probably got essentially the same results without having to render twice.

Still, I'll be looking forward to the results of your test.

Tim L