You don't even have to remove the other parts. Double-click one of the pieces to highlight it, then under advanced render check the box labelled "render loop region only".

Thank you so much! Is there any loss in video quality by rendering it and then using it as a separate clip like that?

When you render out to a "for viewers" codec, there is always loss of quality. If you want to keep the files for your own library, save them as .avi instead, which uses Cineform's lossless codec instead. Remember though, lossless codecs are for intermediate and archival reasons, not for dvd/youtube etc reasons.

Thanks, Eugenia. What formats would you use for DVD or Youtube?

For DVD you export in .m2t/mpeg2. That's the native format. Or, you don't export at all. You save the project, and then you re-open it in the DVD Architect, and so this way you save 1 generation of encoding.

For Youtube/Revver, I export in h.264, 480x270 for my widescreen HD footage, 1 Mbps for video, 128 kbps AAC for audio. Comes out really nice on youtube as you can see:



However, you might have to do the same using WMV instead of h.264 as VMS does not export customized h.264 videos.

You wrote, "You save the project, and then you re-open it in the DVD Architect, and so this way you save 1 generation of encoding."

I've had trouble with DVD Architect causing audio glitches. I gave up with the version that came with VMS6, and have always kept ULead around for that production step. (DVDA was also completely unintuitive for me.) Did you experience these audio glitches, and if so, has the problem been fixed?

Thanks,
Dennis

I don't actually use DVDA yet (although I will have to at some point), I just know what's possible with it (what I suggested, to open the VMS project itself instead of a rendered video). Bugs do exist, I am sure.

I had never thought about opening a VMS project directly in DVDA. That's an interesting idea. I have a question now based on reading this.

Given three different approaches for creating the DVD:

1) Do what you said (open VMS project directly in DVDA), then create DVD;
2) Export desired video from VMS to avi, pull those into DVDA, and create DVD (DVDA handles the conversion to MPG2);
3) Export desired video from VMS to MPG2 (the setting that is compatible with DVDA, so it shouldn't have to re-render; I forget what it's called), pull those into DVDA, and create DVD;

do you think the final quality will be the same for all of these approaches, or would you expect a difference and why?

Does the youtube setting you are using have the best equivalent in VMS of "Sony AVC/AAC", "PSP Full screen - 896 Kbps" ?

I have no idea how one would open a Vegas project in DVDA. DVDA won't read or recognize Vegas project files.