could you clarify.. sounds from what you're saying that i still have to render to a new file/files to use as input to DVD-A even if i was 'doing it right'. as long as an export is necessary, you're creating extra files. i do it to avi because is it uncompressed. i was under the impression that if i rendered to mpg, that there was another level of compression/decompression that would further degrade the resulting video.

Eugenia -- VMS does not provide any control over the bitrate for rendering MPEG2 from inside VMS. It just has a generic template to render MPEG2 for DVD Architect Studio. (Or at least I assume it is still this way -- my last VMS was version 6, before moving on to Vegas)

Also, I don't know if they have the option for AC3 sound for rendering.

Anyway, you should be able to fit about an hour (plus or minus) onto a DVD if you render MPEG2 directly from VMS. At the time I was using VMS, I never had anything that long, so I never ran into the limit.

If your project is longer than an hour or so, your best option is to render an AVI, then use the "fit to disc" feature in DVD Architect Studio. DVDAS will then calculate a bitrate and render the DV AVI to MPEG2 for the DVD. I certainly agree that it is a nuisance to do it this way, and that rendering the intermediate AVI file is timeconsuming and does take up a lot of disk space.

Your only other option -- which is likely to reduce final output quality -- would be to render to MPEG2 in VMS, then have the "fit to disc" in DVDAS re-render the MPEG2 to a more compressed MPEG2. Not a good idea, and this would probably take even longer anyway.

Even if Sony won't give VMS the option to directly control bitrate settings in VMS (you *can* manually control them in DVDAS), it would be nice if they gave you two templates -- i.e. an "up to 1 hour" template and an "up to 2 hours" template, or something like that.

Tim L

I know that VMS provides no bitrate control. But for most people, this is good enough. If you have over an hour of footage from your holidays in Caribbean you probably want to trim it down anyway. If you have more, well, export to AVI.

Thing is, Sony has to differentiate the two products. Sony would have to pay more money to MainConcept to feature the full controls for mpeg2 on VMS too, and that would make VMS more expensive. If this thing bugging you, buy Pro, or move to Premiere. Or at the very least write to Sony support for a feature request. I don't think there is more that we, in this forum can do. And from what I know, not all Sony Vegas people read these forums.

(the original mpg for VMS

What is the source of your video? If MiniDV, could you capture to AVI to begin with? Yes, you'll have larger original files, but you won't have the issue of format conversion.

As a former PStudio user, it bugged me at first that I had to render in VMS first then again in DVDAS. But since I start with AVI files, the intermediate render (to AVI) doesn't take so long. Besides, the stability of VMS over PStudio is well worth the extra time.

this time around, my original video was recorded to DVD directly from my DVR (instead of recording directly to VHS) . i then used Pinnacle to import that into a single mpg file. i don't think it gave me a choice of format. same with VMS. defaults to mpg.

DVD/DVR discs contain MPEG video, so .mpg is the best import format as it requires no transcoding.

Oh, from a DVR, then yes, mpg is the way to go. What are you doing with the shows? Cutting out commercials? I would suggest that VMS/DVDAS isn't the best tool if that's what you're doing.

My TiVo records at 480x480 when not using the highest setting. Because it's not a DVD compliant size, VMS/DVDAS wants to reencode it. I use a product called VideoReDo TVSuite to edit my DVR videos and burn to disc. It allows for non-DVD compliant sizes so no reencoding is done and renders take minutes rather than hours.

"Cutting out commercials? I would suggest that VMS/DVDAS isn't the best tool if that's what you're doing."

yes.. and yes. you may have answered my other thread where i asked if there was a way to remove commercials through some third party thing. ComSkip was mentioned in addition to VideoRedo. i actually found ComSkip to be more accurate in it's detection of commercials so i ran it creating a VideoRedo project where i then cleaned it up.

you may have answered my other thread

I think I did....

Yes, ComSkip is good probably better than VideoReDo's AdDetective but with the workflow I have, using VideoReDo works fine for me.

Before I started using VRD TiVSuite to render/burn discs, I used DVDStyler (free) to create the VIDEO_TS folder and RecordNow! Deluxe (which came with my computer) to burn it to disc. Did your PC come loaded with a DVD burning software package? If so you could use it to burn your video. Reading through some of the treads HERE will help you on the subject.

"any chance Sony will eventually integrate VMS with DVD-A?? "

I certainly hope NOT or at least keep DVDA a separate application for those of us that use other editors, too. When I want to edit, then I run a video editor. When I want to author, then I run DVD A. You simply can not do both at once so why integrate?