Help Working with 5.1 Surround Sound

jkb242 wrote on 12/11/2003, 10:25 AM
I have tried to read as many of the post that I can find in this forum regarding the creation of a DVD video with 5.1 surround sound as the audio track. The DVD A manual doen't even contain a reference in the index about surround sound. I have asked quiestions in the Vegas forum about this since I used Vegas to perform the edits but there is no concise steps to follow to complete this prepartion process into DVD A for the burning of the finished product.

So once again, appealing to the wealth of talent here, please assist me in taking this video which is now edited, containing the desired content, and is now rendered to an MPEG 2 from Vegas 4 to get this project into DVD A to obtain surround sound on the audio clip. The clip was renered with both video and audio with audio set to surround sound pan effects set and with a separate channel for the LFE effects.

Do I need to render the clip without video then again without audio to accomplish this or what? This process does not seem to be well documented and in some cases may involve the use of external programs but I think Vegas can do this completely but I am at a loss. Somehow, I think I am suposed to end up with two files that are to be used by DVD A, one audio and one video that somehow are to be merged into one during the burning within DVD A. Obviously, I am missing something here, can you tell.

Please assist and much thanks!!

Jerry

Comments

Rogueone wrote on 12/11/2003, 10:54 AM
I just created a 5.1 surround DVD, and here's what I did:

Rendered my video clip with Mpeg2 format, but in the Template select "DVD Architect Compliant Stream" This renders only the video portion of the clip. Next, when that is done rendering, render the clip again, but this time choose the AC-3 format. You'll now have two files, an MPEG-2 file, which is the video, and a AC-3 file for audio. (It's also best to name the files the same, i.e. like Disc1.mpg and Disc1.ac3)

Go into DVD Architect, and add your video only clip. When it's in the project, double click the clip. Then, drag your AC-3 audio over the clip; you should get a red border around the video clip. Drop it in there, and now you will have your Video file, and the corresponding AC-3 audio, which would either be Stereo or 5.1, depending on how your render options were set.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Ben
jkb242 wrote on 12/11/2003, 11:26 AM
Ben,

Much thanks this is really helpful since you have done this successfully. Only one issue:


I cannot find an option to render to the DVD A compliant stream option in Vegas.

jkb242 wrote on 12/11/2003, 11:39 AM
Sorry I found it finally.

I am trying your suggestions now and thanks again so very much!!

Rendering seems to take hours, (the clip is 1hour 35 minutes). Can I do anything to make this happen faster like turning off the preview window?

Rogueone wrote on 12/11/2003, 11:52 AM
What are your source files? I used to have loooong render times, because I previously used MPEG-1 as my source. I've switched to DV AVI, which goes a lot faster. It takes roughly 13 GB per hour of video. The last project I did which was 1 hour and 11 minutes took my computer 4 1/2 hours to render, and a half hour for the audio (AC-3) render.

Also, try shutting down any active programs (background stuff), and that should help. I run IntelliPoint software usually, but I disable it for renders, and I also disconnect my computer from our LAN.

Hope this helps!

Ben
jkb242 wrote on 12/11/2003, 2:58 PM
Ben,

Sounds like your time to render is about the same as mine. Current project is 1 hour 35 minutes with rendering currently at 2hrs 45 minutes and 2hrs 18 minutes remaining. My source files are AVI caputure files from VHS tape with an aspect ratio of 360x240. Vegas produces an MPEG 2 with no aparent loss in the original quality. I was capturing at 720x480 and could not tell any difference compared to the smaller aspect ratio but the files got a lot smaller!!!

I am running a single P4 with hyperthreading and only 260M RAM. That is not much compared to many folks using Vegas. Got any suggestions, I am always open to suggestion for improvement.

Thanks so much again!

Jerry
Rogueone wrote on 12/11/2003, 7:07 PM
Sounds like you've pretty much got everything covered. Only thing I could really suggest is more memory, and make sure that your hard drive is fast and you defrag often. The other thing with hard drives is that renders go faster if the output drive is different than the Vegas drive. For instance, I've got Windows & Vegas installed on my primary IDE controller/drive, and my 'video' drive is on my RAID controller. (Secondary IDE is taken by my 2 burners). It seems that getting the output drive off of the Window/Vegas install helps somewhat with renders.

I didn't realize about the quality with the 320x240 windows; whenever I captured at that source and played the file in Media Player, full-screen distorted it pretty bad. I'll have to try a sample with that size and have Vegas render an MPEG-2. If it looks the same, having smaller files would be helpful! Thanks for that tip!

Cheers;
Ben
jkb242 wrote on 12/11/2003, 9:41 PM
Completed the rendering of separate video and audio files as described. The video burned in DVD A but no audio. I saw the video track become enclosed with the red boder for a second when draging and dropping the ac3 file on the video event in DVD A but I did not see the file size of the project change after I did this which make me feel like it DVD A did not accept the audio file. In the preview mode, DVD A would not pay sound either so I feel I have missed a step somewhere in DVD A. Got any suggestion?

Rogueone wrote on 12/12/2003, 8:19 PM
The file size doesn't always change, because AC-3 is pretty compressed, allowing for more video/audio per disc. When you dropped the AC-3 on the video, before that step did you double-click the video link? I always insert my AC-3 when I'm looking at the short timeline of the clip. I double-click, have the preview window above, and the timeline below the preview window with all the buttons. (Chapters, start clip, end clip, etc) Then I drag/drop my AC-3 onto the Preview portion, and it works fine. You might try rendering the AC-3 audio again if it doesn't work. Also, did you name the files the same except for the mpg & ac3 part? I don't know if that's an issue with DVDA, but I always name both files the same.

Hopefuly it's something simple!

Ben
kerrying wrote on 12/16/2003, 2:34 AM
Just to share with yall here, and hopefully it helps.. It is pretty strange that DVD A demands mpg2 video stream and *.ac3 (or *.wav stream) be separated before being brought into DVD A because if all you want to create is a video with only 1 audio track, then the readily rendered transport stream straight off Vegas (using the DVD PAL/DVD NTSC template) is good enough, it is not like DVD A support multiple audio tracks in a single transport stream at this moment of time.

Anyway, I did pretty much the same thing and everything seems to work fine. Generate, wIth the DVD A Compliant stream, the mpg stream, then generate the ac3 audio stream separately (script may comes in handy..), then bring them into DVD A and they work fine. One thing different is just instead of double-clicking and draging and etc, I always use the modify button to get into modifying and updating the chapters and manually specifying the audio stream.

By the way, one important factor that affects render time include filter plug-ins. You can easily double or triple the render time simply by throwing in one or two additional plug-ins. Some very commonly used plug-ins here include the default 3 audio filters, broadcast colors and color corrections. So, if you want to cut down on render time, one way is to sacrify the filtering.



Rogueone wrote on 12/17/2003, 8:52 AM
Thanks for sharing all that. I still amazes me somewhat how much the render process can increase by adding a few small effects. But it's usually worth it when it's all done!

Ben
Yahoo_Serious wrote on 12/17/2003, 4:00 PM
Hello to you all! I am new to this forum and have been lurking and reading here for a few hours now. I have a question about the Vegas 4 regarding the fact that it seems that it is making you render to Mpeg2.. Well I have a Sony Vaio RZ32G with 1.5 gig or RAM. This model of Vaio has Gigapocket which imports Video in Mpeg 2 format.
Will I still need to Render the Mpeg2 that I have to a Vegas Compliant Mpeg2?
Can I just make an AC-3 5.1 audio and have DVD Arch make the project that I want without having to render my existing mpeg2 video?
Manny thanks and Manny more to come Im sure!
Yahoo!
Rogueone wrote on 12/18/2003, 2:13 PM
You could, but if you made changes to the video in Vegas, it would have to re-render. Vegas uses non-destructive editing; meaning it leaves the source files unchanged. So any modifications, even if it's a 3 second change has to result in a render.

Hope this helps!

Ben