Hi, Stevebol. I'm hardly an expert, but I can give you a quick crash course...

DVDA has the benefit of giving you control over a huge number of things, yet also allows you virtual 'drop in and play' type of functionality.

First determine if you want a menu... If so, choose a Menu Based project. If you just want a movie (single clip) on there to play, then choose the single movie project (...I think it's called that... Sorry, I don't have it open here.)

It sets it all up for you. Just import the footage by going to the browser (bottom left, usually), and double click on the footage. It will then be put in the timeline.

That's pretty much it for setting it up quick. If it's menu based, you'll have a menu screen there (thumbnail to select that film/chapter). If you want to add more clips/chapters, just import more clips (and more thumbnails will be made) (assuming you chose a menu based project).

Preview it by clicking on the Preview button at the top. If all is good, then click on the Make Disk (...I think that's what it's called... the button to the right of the Preview one), and it'll alert you if there's any issues. It will probably tell you that clips will have to be re-encoded, but that's fine. One other thing you can do is that on the first page(?) there's an advanced button where you can click then on the 'Fit To Disk' button which will set the compression so that the clip fits best on the disk (....very nice!). Just keep going through the Make Disk wizard screens, and soon you'll be making your disk. You can either Prepare Disk (just preps it on the harddrive, but doesn't burn a disk yet), or Burn the disk (either from your current project or from a previously prepared file.

Pretty easy, actually...

Hope that helps...

Thanks for your quick replies.
2 things;
What settings should I use to render in Vegas, and what kind of disk should I use? I don't know a thing about DVDs. The original file was for a blog from film class and I had to use .263 (.mov) I believe to keep the file under 10MB.

most likely you could put that right in DVDA no problem. It would be a good idea to let vegas render though (much faster). Use the DVDA mpeg-2 templates (widescreen or not, depending on what you want to use) & the dolby digital pro AC3 for the audio.

It turns out my laptop doesn't burn DVDs so I picked up an LG portable burner from Best Buy. Everything turned out O.K. I just have to figure out titles, etc...

Thanks,
Steve

Ok, you make it sound easy, but I am sitting here completely dumbfounded as to where to start with DVDA.

Vegas is a piece of cake compared to this. One of my many problem is the rather foreign terms being used in the software and absolutely no tutorials available to show me a simple step-by-step process to create a menu based DVD.

I have rendered a file with markers embedded from Vegas. My understanding was that DVDA would use the markers to build the chapter stops, but I have no idea how to get the rendered file into the project.

Basically, I have no idea what the various panels are in the application or how they are supposed to be used.

I really need a tutorial more than anything else as I just do not know enough about what I am looking at to make any sense of it at all.

I have been beating my head against the wall for about a week now and I have got nothing to show for it.

check the online help. It will tell you what things are & how they work.

What is the URL for the online help?

Everytime I try to go to the online help in the application, I get a URL not found error. I tried it manually as well.

I also read the help files that came with DVDA and they really confused me. I could go back and author my DVD's using Pinnacle's stuff, as it is pretty straight forward, but the MPEG2 encoder they have does not support VBR.

I really want to try to see if I can get any better video imaging with DVDA/Vegas, but I am really lost as to how to start in DVDA.

EDIT: By the way, I am using DVD Architect Pro 5.0

F1 is the online help. It's the same as the pdf manual.

it's not confusing at all, just read everything about what you want to know & don't skip everything. It's not like editing, it's a skill all it's own.

I have been through the help files many times. I am not adverse to reading and learning how to use software. I use many complex sofware packages everyday. This should not be that complex. On the contrary, it should be quite simple.

I just do not understand the relationship between all the panels on the screen and where things are supposed to go and what they call things is foriegn to what I have come to understand. Just trying to figure out where you are actually supposed to do the work has been a nightmare.

I appreciate the responses, but I have already wasted a week reading and re-reading the docs. Trying and re-trying. I have even taken the screenshots in the help files and tried to mimic them, but I can't. My frustration has reached its limits.

Basically, the answer to my question is there are no tutorials for DVDA. That's a shame. Vegas Pro 8 has some wonderful tutorials which allowed me to move from Premier Pro very easily.

I know it is difficult ot help someone when they cannot ask anything specific. I wish I could have gotten to the point where I was not so ignorant about this package so I could ask specific questions.

It seems to be overtly convoluted, from my perspective.

Skuzzy, I understand where you are coming from. It took me forever to figure out where to start with DVDA, whereas I found VMS9 to be a piece of cake.

Then I realized this: DVDA is so very, very simple and I was just going about it the wrong way--trying to make DVDA more complicated than it is.

Once you are in DVDA, drag your movie file onto the menu screen in the middle of your program.

That is ALL you need to do! But, you can do more if you wish.

If you want a "scene/chapter selection" menu, then right-click on the movie you dropped in and choose "make scene selection menu." A menu with chapter selection will be created out of the chapters you marked in Vegas.

Now you can burn your movie onto a DVD.

That is ALL. It's that simple.

From here, just play around with stuff; that is how I learned. For example, I created animation to play after selecting to play the movie, and I had to move links around, etc, but I figured it out just from messing around. To create animation, I just made another movie in Vegas (about 6 seconds) and told the DVD to play that movie when pushing a button, for example

Again, for types like you and me, DVDA is complicated because it is so darn simple and we make things complicated when they aren't.

I also understand your pain, having run into software that just doesn't "compute" with me initially. You've done your homework, reading the manual and looking at the help files. Sometimes, it take a push to get started.

Sonata has given you good advice. Give that a try. Make sure that your first project is SIMPLE, and then learn from tweaking and playing with more advanced features as you go along.

There are some DVD training videos available at a cost. The closest thing I've see to a free tutorial was a video that appeared on the web when DVDA-2 was released. I believe it was made by a Vegas user group attending a conference that featured Gary Rebholz demonstrating the new features in DVDA-2.

I've stored a copy of this video (wmv format) temporarily, if you would care to download it. (97meg file) Clicking the link should stream it and right-clicking should allow you to save it to your hard drive. The link will only be active for a limited time. (Edit: if you elect to save the file and it shows "htm" as the filename extension, change it to "wmv" in order to play properly...)

DVDA-2 new features video

Please keep in mind that this was created for a earlier version of DVDA, but it is still relevant and shows much of the process you need to know in order to create a DVD.

Sonata, that may be what the doctor ordered. I am off site today, but will give that a shot when I get back. And I could very well be guilty of making it more difficult than it is. It would not be the first time. The UI had me going, "whoa, what the heck?".

I am trying to start simple, but all my DVD projects require menus, so I picked one that should be pretty simple. It only has 4 chapters.

Thank you as well cbrillow. I'll take a look at your supplied download tonight as well.

Thank you folks. I appreciate the feedback/help and apologize if I sound like a whiny twerp. The frustration factor was really being pushed hard. I'll let you know how it goes.

You're welcome.

There are also some videos on youtube that may help.

Unfortunately, due to security, I cannot partake of the Youtube site.

I'll be back on-site in about 2 hours. I will start up working with the information you and Sonata have provided. It might be the catalyst that gets me going and starts making sense of all of it.

I am anxious to get back and get to work on it.

I have a week's worth of lost time to make up.

Again, thank you all for the help. Between the tip from Sonata and the tutorial from cbrillow, it all clicked and I got the first DVD done last night.

Only 42 more to go before the end of the year.

The only thing I have to figure out now is how to get Vegas to render the project small enough so DVDA does not have to re-render it after adding the menus.