To render audio separately, use Make Movie | Save to hard drive | click the Advanced Render button. From the Render As dialog, set the format to Microsoft Wave, select the appropriate render template and Save.

You could create a custom 48,000 Hz stereo 16 bit PCM template by clicking Custom in the render dialog if you want. That is one of the supported audio formats that will not require recompression when you prepare a DVD from DVD Architect Studio.

Make sure you put this .wav file in the same folder as you put the .mpg file you rendered to MPEG-2. DVDA Studio will find them both when you add the .mpg to your project.

It's probably a good idea to do some experimenting! The key word in SonyTSW's post is "supported" - the *NTSC DVD standard supports PCM but not mp2, which is what you'll get if you follow jimmyz's advice. But that doesn't mean it wont work - modern DVD players (the cheaper the better!) are very tolerant, so there's a good chance you can go for the simpler option and still produce a working DVD. If you're planning to make DVDs for family and friends then you'll probably run into compatibility problems somewhere along the line, but I'd keep things as simple as possible for as long as possible.

* The PAL DVD standard does support mp2, so it's a non-issue if you're on my side of the pond!

Ian G.

Personally I just use the Make Move-Burn To DVD option. VMS will then prepare the video and audio streams for the DVD architect studio . As another poster said, make sure that both of the files are in the same directory and that you know where they are.

After building the two files, you can send them to the DVD architect studio for burning. Or you can exit at that point and burn the DVD later.

I have not check since I applied the update, but you need to uncheck the option-preference "close the media files when not the active application". If the box was left checked, the sound file would be silent.

Ole

Yes, I do this too but when you go into DVD Architect you will notice that is says the video will be compressed. And, this can take quite a while (and, I assume lose some quality).

The suggesstion below by SonyTSW is what I was looking for - I tried his suggestion and DVD architect no longer says it will compress the file and it works lightening fast.

Thanks - EXACTLY waht I was looking for!!

Now my only complaint is wht can't Movie Studio do the correct mpg file generation AND .wav file generation in one step - it's a real pain to have to double render...

Thanks for all the responses. SonyTSW did a great job understanding what I was asking for and responding with the answer that works.

Scott

Is there a reason why the standard make movie button wouldn't just
render for dvd architect? They did come in the same box. I mean as the default.

What exactly does the VOB file that gets burned to the DVD consist of? Is it an MPEG-2 file for video and a PCM or AC-3 file for audio? On the same strand, what about an AVI file?
Is this a silly question?

Why is it that we must render them in two steps? When I render it in one, then import ot DVD Arch, it says that the audio stream must be rerendered but the video stream is ok. When I render them seperate, it does work of course.

But its a real PITA of course.

Does putting them in separate streams consume more disk space?

>What exactly does the VOB file that gets burned to the DVD consist of?

As you say, the vob file contains video in MPEG-2 and audio in a standard format, e.g. PCM, AC-3, MP2 or DTS. It may nor be linear though - there may be multi-angle video and subtitles, as well as different language tracks. There's also an ifo file which tells the player how to navigate through the vob and where the chapter points are.

AVI stands for Audio Video Interleave and it's a container file format for holding audio and video (surprise!). What the content looks like will depend on the coder / decoder (codec) that was used to produce it, and you need the same codec to play back an avi.

Ian G.

<edit - I updated the text to fix the mistake related to DVDA Studio doing AC3>

For DVD Audio, the required formats to be supported by a DVD player are PCM & AC3. DTS and MPEG-2 audio are optional, and not all players support them. When you render audio and video together as a program stream to an MPEG-2 file, you've created something that not all DVD players can handle, so DVDA will extract the MPEG-2 audio and re-render it as AC3.

AC3 and PCM cannot be embeded in an MPEG-2 program stream, only MPEG-2 audio or video can be.

When DVDA creates the VOB file, there will actually be 2 different streams of information (actually there could be more, but 2 for now) - the MPEG-2 video and then the PCM audio, along with timing information on how the two streams are sync'd together. VOB's usually contain lother information such as DVD navigation info, etc.

There's not a lot of space difference between having 2 files vs 1.

--Scott

Ok. Sony should add some more info to the docs on this. Two more questions.

1) Why didnt Sony make a one step option at least to render two files so we dont have to do it manually?

2) Im concerned about speed for recording so I want to prerender the files. Also I has some - but not unreaonable space constraints and why I want to redner to MPG instead of AVI. If I redner to MPG and it can reuse video (the flag says it can in optimize), but for the Audiio it has to redo it, its esentially just uncompressing it into AC3 so it will be very fast no?

One file is easier to manage, easier to render, and allows me to keep the file around separately from making hte DVD.

<edit - cleaned up text to reflect PCM audio in DVDA Studio>

1) I've no idea - this comes up as a question from time to time - with Vegas Video (maybe with MS, I don't know if it supports scripting) there are scripts that will render both files with one button click.

2) Not sure I understand. When you compress (which you do when you go to mpeg-2 audio), you lose quality, then decompress (which DVDA must do to create the PCM) you don't get that quality back. If you render audio right from MS into PCM you skip a compression cycle, so it should be faster (and better quality).

If you find one file easier to manage, and cannot discern any difference in the loss of quality, by all means, go with one file.

Is it possible to know less after gleaning more information?

What is the best way to do this for quality and
What is the best way for compatability?

Does Moviestudio dvd render to ac3?

Thanks

Sorry for the confusion, I keep getting product capabilities mixed up.

You are correct, MS studio doesn't do AC3. So the audio going on the DVD will be in PCM format (a windows wav file at 48Khz).

For the best quality and compatability, the post from SonyTSW earlier in this thread is the way to go. If you render the audio and video as a single MPEG-2 file, then DVDA will need to decompress the mpeg audio back to PCM, once you lose audio information when compressing, it won't come back.

--Scott

So PCM = .wav at 48,000 Khtz
I think I've got it !