I Need Create Movie/Rendering Guidance, Please

Mr_Christopher wrote on 10/8/2004, 7:32 AM

Ok, I am totally new to all this and at this point I have a project that I want to test and burn to DVD.

I guess "rendering" means saving a project to a video file that is then burned to DVD.

Question: The movie is mostly a slide show with music and a few video (mpeg and avi) files. It;s only about 15-20 minutes long. I want the best quality video so what format should I render to? I want this to be played back on a DVD machine and one's television (not on computers).

Also, I heard somewhere that there is a "render in the background" feature which uses less CPU, any truth to that?

Thanks!

Chris

Comments

gogiants wrote on 10/10/2004, 4:28 PM

If you are going to make a DVD, then that means ultimately you will be rendering to MPEG-2. This is by definition what's on a DVD.

You can influence the quality by changing the bit rate at which you render into MPEG-2. But, since most people don't notice a huge difference in quality one way or the other you might want to just take the defaults.

I say that you will "ultimately" go to MPEG-2, because how you get there and what tools/products you use can vary greatly.

Assuming you're using Movie Studio + DVD version 4 then here's what you'll want to do: Make your movie in Movie Studio. Render the output directly to MPEG-2 using the Make Movie wizard, paying attention to whether you want NTCS (North America) or PAL (elsewhere). Now, import your rendered output into DVD Architect studio and design your DVD.

If you weren't using MPEG as a source file for your movie, your other option is to create your movie in .avi format using Movie Studio, and then when you create your DVD in DVD Arch Studio it will re-render to MPEG-2. You could still do this, but the rendering from MPEG to AVI to MPEG could result in visible loss of quality.

Either way should yield pretty much the same quality. What you DO NOT want to do is to use Movie Studio to render to something other than MPEG-2 or AVI. Doing so will lose quality when it is imported into DVD Architect Studio.

Be prepared for a loss of quality with the MPEG files that you'll be importing. Unless they are high-quality MPEG-2 files to begin with, editing these files in any way can cause some problems given the way MPEG works with keyframes, etc.

Preparing/burning to DVD is a whole other subject, but assuming DVD Arch Studio recognizes your DVD burner then this should be easy.

As for rendering in the background, I don't believe this is a feature of Movie Studio. The full version of Vegas has the ability to render on other machines on a network.

Mr_Christopher wrote on 10/11/2004, 12:36 PM

Thanks, this is helpful!

Chris

Steve Grisetti wrote on 10/11/2004, 2:57 PM

On the other hand, while MovieStudio is rendering, you can feel free to check e-mail, write a letter, cruise the internet or whatever and it will continue to work "in the background."

Capturing from and outputting to tape can tax the resources, but rendering just happens with whatever resources are available.

djcc wrote on 10/11/2004, 5:05 PM

Personally, I prefer to go get a cold one or 2 while rendering rather than checking email..... hehehe

Sorry folks - just felt a bit punch tonight!! :o)