Merging multiple clips?

2G wrote on 12/24/2004, 1:09 PM

I have typical DVD design with a "Play Video" button and a "Scene Selection" button on the first screen. The problem is that the only way I have gotten this to work is to have one huge video clip for the entire DVD with one huge MPG render time. If I want to change a 3-min segment inside the hour DVD, I have to re-render the whole hour again taking another 3 hours.

What I want to do is render each individual segment (i.e. scene selection chapter) into its own mpg file and let DVDA chain them together into the logical full length video. But I have not figured out a way to get it all to work.

I tried putting each clip into the scene selection menu and changing the end actions to chain to the next clp. They chain when played. But the 'next chapter' and 'prev chapter' buttons don't work the same way they do if you just do marker-type scene selection in one huge clip.

Is there either:

1) A way in DVDA that I have overlooked to make multiple clips behave precisely like one big clip with markers?

2) Some 3rd-party app that will take several mpg files and concatenate them into one mpg file (WITHOUT another 3-hour render)?

This seems to me to be something that many people would need. Does everybody just accept the fact that each time you change one trivial little thing in the video, you're condemned to another 3 hour render of the entire video? This is ludicrous!

2G

Comments

bStro wrote on 12/25/2004, 11:30 AM

I tried putting each clip into the scene selection menu and changing the end actions to chain to the next clp. They chain when played. But the 'next chapter' and 'prev chapter' buttons don't work the same way they do if you just do marker-type scene selection in one huge clip.

Right. Because what you're doing is putting each clip into it's own titleset, and then telling the DVD that you want titleset 2 to play immediately after titleset 1, and titleset 3 to play immediately after titleset 2. But the "next chapter" button doesn't move between titlesets...it moves between chapters.

1) A way in DVDA that I have overlooked to make multiple clips behave precisely like one big clip with markers?

Put them in a music compilation. This will put all the clips into a single titleset, and each one will be a chapter. This means, however, that you cannot have chappters within any of those clips.

2) Some 3rd-party app that will take several mpg files and concatenate them into one mpg file (WITHOUT another 3-hour render)?

http://www.womble.com The programs here are kind of expensive for what you want, but they're really good. And there are free trials.

Rob

2G wrote on 12/25/2004, 12:35 PM

Rob,

Thank you so much. That's exactly what I want (and have wanted for 15 huge projects since I purchased DVDA).

But with just a touch of sarcasm, how could I have been so dumb? It should be intuitively obvious that when I see "create a music cd... a collection of music... songs..." etc... that they obviously meant this is how you combine video clips into one logical clip. Sure, I suppose I could have figured that "Music and mp3s" actually mean video clips as well and tried it. But why? Why SONY??? If (since) the "Music Compilation" can also be a "Video Compilation" would it really be too much trouble to simply call it a 'Clip Compilation' to give your users a fighting chance at understanding how to use the product?? This thing is a big enough pain as it is without purposely using terminology that doesn't convey the function.

I have even attended a Sony DVDA hands-on workshop at the WEVA convention in Vegas, and the instructor said you use that music compilation thing if you're creating mp3 compilations. (I guess even he didn't know...) I'm not creating music DVDs. I'm creating videos. So 'obviously' there was no reason for me to head down that path.

<sarcasm off>

Seriously, Rob. You have been a life saver for me teaching me this.

2G

bStro wrote on 12/25/2004, 9:17 PM

The reason it's not obvoius or taught at seminars or given a relevant name is because this isn't really the intended purpose of the music compilation. This is just sort of a "hack" that was discovered by a forum member. For best, most precise results, clips that are to be part of a single feature should be joined outside of DVDA.

Rob

2G wrote on 12/26/2004, 5:14 PM

I'm curious about your term "best, more precise results". Are you saying there might be a blip or a time shift porblem at the join point using this technique? I can understand how that might happpen. But that's not an issue in my case. Each of my chapters is an independent clip with a fade out /fade in on each one. So this should work for me.

But whether or not this is a supported function, I contend that the requirement still exists. Huge all-in-one mpg renders have two huge problems. The most pressing is a 3-hour+ render every time you make any change, no matter how small. The other problem is that if you render one massive mpg file, you can't adjust mpg bit rates. I know there is variable bit-rate. But if I have one segment that I want super-quality and other segments where I can choose to reduce the bit rate a little, that gives me versatility.

There have been many times that I've been forced to deliver a DVD with a few things I'm not satisfied with simply because I can't afford a 3-hour render followed by another 30 minutes or so for DVD to create the DVD image. Simply having the ability to have separate small mpgs, I can reduce that to under an hour. This is huge for me.

2G

jc1 wrote on 12/27/2004, 10:35 AM

I'm using DVDA Studio Version and according to other posting in this forum this "end action" is not available to DVDA Studio version.

The response to question 1) indicates to put the movie in the "music compilation". By put it in the "music compilation", do you mean to do this in the Vegas Movie Studio Program (for which I'll have re-render) OR is this performed with in the DVDA Studio?? If so, I would greatly appreciate where in DVDA Studio this option/ is performed?

Note to SONY- It would be a great enhancement to DVDA Studio to include the "end action" option. Coming anytime soon???

jc1

thief_ wrote on 12/28/2004, 2:56 PM

2G wrote on 12/28/2004, 5:21 PM

Well, the question is whether you want the individual clips to act like one clip with chapter points, or if you want them to act like really independent clips (i.e. main movie, outtakes, director's cut).

Using official 'blessed' sony tactics, you can chain independent clips together by making the end action on one clip jump to the next clip. But forget about using your Next/Prev chapter buttons on your remote.

The only sony-legal way to have one logical movie with chapter points (i.e. scene selection) is to have it be ONE MASSIVE CLIP. I agree this is LUDICROUS. Yes, you'll have to have two copies of the video on your harddrive (the individuals and the composite). But you can make your composite be mpg which will be much smaller (and it won't have to re-render again in DVDA if you use the right MPG encoding). But my point at the beginning of this thread is that this is an all-or-nothing render taking many hours every time you want to change something.

The unofficial way that I just discovered via earlier posts in this thread is to bring the individual AVIs (or MPGs) into a MUSIC compilation. (Just pretend the words 'song' and 'music' means 'video'). Go to the DVD project tree view and create a new music compilation. Select it, and go to the right side and click the compilation tab. Then just drag your mpg/avi/ac3 clips in sequence into the compilation window and create the order you want. From that point on, the music compilation item in the DVD project acts just like a single clip (you can insert scene selection menu, etc).

It was pointed out that the clip junctions might not be 100% clean with this, so try to split your clips on boundaries where a blip won't be obvious. (e.g. not in the middle of sentence or a song in the video). I do fade out/fade in on my individual clips (cake cutting, bouquet, toasts, etc.) so it works fine for me.

Trying desperately to not be cyncial... but I hope sony doesn't realize from this thread that they accidentally left something useful in the product that weren't aware of and therefore remove it in the next fixpack...

2G

bStro wrote on 12/29/2004, 9:42 AM

Are you guys saying that if I import say 10 AVI clips into my project, the only way I can click on one button on the main menu (the "Play" button) and have each of the 10 clips play one after the other, is to join them externally then import them in?

How does that "add GBs" to your project? Say you have a 1 hour movie... Whether it's in a single file or split up into 10 files, the amount of space taken up is the same.

And anyhow, it takes very little time or effort to combine AVIs in Vegas.

Rob

2G wrote on 12/29/2004, 4:29 PM

For example, I will have a wedding project with 15-17 separate Vegas projects (Opening, pre-ceremony, ceremony, garter, cake, toasts, dancing, etc.) I use separate Vegas projects for managability and to not have a do one mega-render for every little change. So I render each project to it's own AVI. That's 13GB of AVI for one hour of DVD. Now I have to merge those into one AVI due to the stupid requirement in DVDA. That means I create a 'master' project in Vegas that combines all the individual segment AVI files into one Vegas project. I then have to render that project to another AVI ( an additional 13GB required for the composite AVI). As I noted in my earlier post, this master can be directly rendered to MPG for use in DVDA which will reduce the GB requirements.

But 13GB for the individual segment AVIs plus 13BG for the composite is where he is saying it increases the GB requirement. The alternative is to create one massive Vegas project for the entire DVD instead of the separate segment projects with interim AVIs. But I am not about to go that route.

2G

thief_ wrote on 12/29/2004, 4:52 PM

Looks like we have a band-aide solution. One more question- instead of re-rendering in Vegas, what about these so-called AVI joiner applications? Will they preserve the chapter points in the smaller AVI projects? Joining this way would save the re-render process if the chapter info isn't lost!

PS You guys are gonna cringe at this one: In the Online Help, under Using DVD Architect Software/Music Compilations/Overview, there's a tip which I just noticed:

"Here's a trick for you: if you want to create a series of videos that play sequentially, you can create a "music compilation" made up of video files. Voilà!"

I would have made it a topic not a tip in the Help file!!

2G wrote on 12/29/2004, 7:48 PM

The basic problem for me is not the joining. It's the fact that there has to be one mega-render to mpg at some point in the process each time that I'm trying to avoid.

My process (now that I know the 'trick') is to render each individual segment to MPG2 and AC3 in Vegas, then bring the individual mpg an ac3 files into DVDA. If I need to make a change on a 4-minute segment, I re-render only the 4-min Vegas project to mpg/ac3. I still have to rebuild the DVD. But that only takes about 15-20 minutes as opposed to hours and hours of mpg rendering.

Regarding the 'tip'. That just shows Sony's cluelessness all the more. Would it have taken that much more effort for them to change the name "music compilation" to "media compilation"??

I'm really curious.... how many people bought DVDA to create music DVDs??? Either Sony is out of touch with their customers and how they use the product, or I'm out in left field. I didn't pay $600+ for Vegas/DVDA to a) create music DVDs or b) to make a DVD of my home movies. I am a professional videographer. I do professional wedding and event videos and deliver DVDs to my customers. I need to be able to create DVDs with the minimal amount of manual labor (I give Vegas an A+ for scripting and DVDA an F for manual labor to design/create a DVD that should be automated). I also need to minimize 3-4 hour renders when I have to make the enevitable minor changes. So Sony thinks it's a cute 'tip' that I 'might' care to save 20-30 hours of rendering time during the life of a DVD project. Sony, do you really understand our needs???? Are you trying to sell a product that really makes professional videographers more efficient in their business? Or are you catering only to the home movie crowd??

2G