I learned a long time ago to never use the default settings as you're putting yourself at the mercy of something over which you have no control.
A much better idea is to use a bitrate calculator and take control back.
http://www.johncline.com/bitcalc110.zip is the one I've been using for a very long time and it's never let me down.
My rules of thumb for rendering files for a DVD are very simple.
Anything 70 min. or less gets a CBR setting of 8,000,000
Anything longer and I use the VBR numbers provided by the calculator.
If the video is over 90 min., I do it as a 2-pass render.
Always use good name brand media like Taiyo-Yuden or Verbatim and burn at 1/2 the recommended speed.

Mike

Helllo

I have a question regarding this also..

Is there anything wrong with using the bit rate calculator in DVDA? (Other than extended render time).

ie. Render out to avi in vegas
Import avi file into DVDA
Then use the Optimise option in DVDA 'Fit to Disc'

Thanks, Paige

The MPEG2 encoder in Vegas is more customizable and far superior to the encoder in DVDA. Additionally, DVDA does not do "2-pass" VBR renders which will greatly improve the quality on renders of programs longer than 70 minutes in length.

Mike's (rs170a) comments above are absolutely correct. (Although, I always use "2-pass" whenever I use VBR, not just on renders longer than 90 minutes.)

Also, one thing to note when using the bit rate calculator from my web site. It defaults to "1 kilobit = 1024 bits" in the settings and that needs to be changed to "1 kilobit = 1000 bits" for Vegas. Then if it says something like "3364", you would enter "3,364,000" in Vegas.

Just to clarify, it's the same mpeg-2 encoder in Vegas and DVD Architect.

DVD Architect = No user encoding options.
Vegas Pro and VMS10 = All encoding options exposed.

Musicvid, of course, you are correct. I guess I should have made that clear; the "superiority" of the encodes from within Vegas are due to available customizations, the basic MPEG2 encoding engine in Vegas and DVDA are the same.

Thanks everyone

Great tips here!

I didn't know about 2 pass render recommended for VBR, especially for long files.

I do have Mark's calculator - it's a great tool,

Paige

...and burn at 1/2 the recommended speed.

"recommended" by who? Did you mean *maximum* speed?

brighterside, a lot of blank media will have a burn speed listed on the face of the disc.
Try to keep your burn speed down to no more than 1/2 of this.

Mike

As long as you are experimenting try the following. I think you will find that it comes out at least as good and it is a lot easier.

Use Vegas to render the file at a CBR of 8350.

Let DVDA author the disc at whatever size it comes out ignoring the warnings that it won't fit.

Use DVD Shrink to make it perfectly fit.

John

Thanks John
I do have DVD Shrink, but I haven't used it in this capacity.
I'll do some tests and see if I can tell the difference.
Paige

I'm slowly feeling like I know a lot less about this program. I tried the number cruncher program and must have not entered some key data somewhere because I didn't get the file size the program said I should. All I know is that in Vegas Video 6 this would have easily fit on a 4.75G disc. Not sure what info to give that may raise a red flag as to what I did wrong. I hate asking someone to walk me through this, but its either that or wait til Vegas Pro 10 for Dummies comes out. That or does anyone know the default settings for the rendering portions of Vegas 6?? Sorry to all the serious users who are rolling your eyes. Just feeling like a blew a lot of cash and didn't get the upgrade I thought I'd get out of the product.

So open an instance of Vegas 6 at the same time and match all the settings in Vegas 10 to the settings you have in Vegas 6.


John

...I didn't get the file size the program said I should.

If you mean the bitrate calculator I recommended, it doesn't give you a file size.
What it does is give you a recommended bitrate to use to achieve the goal of fitting the data on to a single or dual-layer DVD.
For 1 hr. 45 min. on a single-layer DVD using 192 k AC-3 audio, I get a CBR of 5,624and VBR of 9,608/ 5,624/ 3,376
To be on the safe side, I set my Safety Margin to 5% (default is 1%) which brings these numbers down to a CBR of 5,392 and VBR of 9,440 / 5,392 / 3,232

It was reported here a week or so ago that Pro 10 has some rendering problems.
The user said that he did 4 identical renders and got 4 different final sizes.
He did it in Pro 9 and the file size was consistent.
Needless to say, this is not acceptable behaviour for Vegas to be doing this to us :(

Mike

This thread was the closest to the question I wanted to ask, so I'll enter it here.

Where is there a detailed technical guide to the Main Concepts MPEG-2 and MP4 encoders? I'm very confused by all the options available for MPEG-2 and need to know specifically what each one does and when (or when not) to use a particular option.

I'd be glad for a general practical guide to mp4 and mpeg-2 variables. I find the Wikipedia article impenetrable.

There is no such technical guide I could find on the Main Concepts site or in the Vegas 10 Pro help files. The Wikipedia article on mp4 doesn't help with learning specific settings, although there are not so many that trial and error is not an option. However, I'm used to using H264 with QT 7 Pro for Windows, and transcoding with QT in Win7 64 is severely broken. Even Vegas 10 QT output can be garbage. So I'm relying on mp4 and perhaps mpeg-2.

It is my understanding that while mp4 with H264 creates smaller files, the visual quality of mpeg-2 can be superior. Is this not correct?

It is also my understanding (from somewhere) that mpeg-2 files should have resolutions with the height divisible by 2 and the width divisible by 16. My output is side by side stereo pairs, total 2800x1050, so I'm assuming the total resolution for these pairs would qualify, yes? (2800/16=175).

I've made mp4 files at various bitrates, both constant and variable (optimum variable settings another mystery to me but one just goes ahead and does things). No matter what the bitrate (CBR of 14 Mbs doesn't look too bad frame by frame) there is about a 2/3 drop out of frames, so that the 30fps video plays in Quicktime 7 at 10 fps, average, even with a 4 Mbit/second rate, which looks like crap. I've used the QT H264 encoder a lot and got much better results than this, but on my Win7 64 system, nearly every transcode fails.

I would be content with a simple reply conveying a link or book title that made these things technically clear for an operational environment, so I could relate settings to results.

Thanks for whatever time you can spare.

SMcQ

Don't play back AVC video in the Windows Quicktime player. It is the worst for stuttering and hogging system resources. It doesn't respect PAR. That's just the beginning.

Some of the advice given in this thread may be misleading, so I thought I should clear up a few things.

1. You should always encode in Vegas and not in DVD Architect. As already stated, this lets you use 2-pass encoding for long projects (over the 75-minute amount that can be put on a single-side, single layer DVD at the "maximum" 8,000,000 bps average bitrate). Much more important than this, however, is the workflow issue. If you encode in DVD Architect, then any time you have to make small changes to your project, you must re-encode everything. By contrast, encoding in Vegas lets you make all sorts of changes in DVD Architect, and you never have to re-encode anything except, perhaps, the menus. This is a LOT faster if you are like me, and end up having to "tweak" your DVD authoring a lot before you get it just right.

2. John Cline's and musicvid's recommendation are, as usual, accurate and should be followed.

3. Burning at less than recommended speed is a waste of time and actually may not improve the quality of the burn. This advice may have been correct in the early days of CDs, when drives were first able to burn at more than "1X" speed, but it seldom, if ever helps anything with DVDs. In fact, most DVD media is optimized for the amount of time the laser is able to focus on each spot as the disc is spinning at the stated burn speed for that media (e.g., 4X, 8X, 12X, or 16X).

For those who disagree, or for those who just aren't sure because they are getting conflicting advice, what I highly recommend is that you do your own tests with the media you use, using your own burner. To do these tests, download DVD Speed or similar tool. It can tell you, with great accuracy, the quality of your burn. To do the test, wait until you have to create more than one copy of a disc. Then, do one of these burns at the recommended speed, and then do one at half that speed. Put each resulting disc through a complete DVD Speed test, using 4X as the read rate. Compare the results. In my experience I have never seen any statistically significant difference in burn quality between 8X (this is the speed of the Taiyo-Yuden/JVC media I've been using for almost five years) and 4X or 2X. And, when I've had to burn 150-200 discs in 24 hours, the difference in burn times is the difference between meeting deadline or not.

4. Do not use DVD Shrink as part of a normal workflow. Don't get me wrong, DVD Shrink is a wonderful piece of technology and is a great quick-and-dirty "patch" if you don't have the time to go back and re-render, but I would never recommend using it instead of encoding at the proper bitrate in the first place. Once you understand the actual technique used by this program, you'll see why. DVD Shrink's author described how his program works in a long post at doom9 seven years ago. That original post is gone, but fortunately several of us archived it, and you can still find a quoted copy here:

DVD Shrink Explained

The errors introduced by this process are quite visible, once you know what to look for. They include a sudden "jump" at GOP boundaries (every 1-2 seconds). You can create a test that will purposely make a bad-looking DVD, just so you can know what to look for: take a good MPEG-2 encode, and then manually set the shrink factor to maximum, and then do the shrink without either of the two quality enhancement settings checked. These two settings help reduce the problems but don't eliminate them. With these unchecked, and using maximum shrinkage, you will grossly magnify the problems DVD Shrink creates. Obviously, when you use lesser shrinking amounts, and actually use the two quality enhancements, the problems will not be as grotesque, but smaller versions of them will still be there and, now that you know what to look for, you will easily be able to see them.

So, use VBR 2-pass, set your bitrate correctly, and stay away from DVD Shrink except when you need a quick fix for already-encoded material.

5. Practical Guide to MPEG-2 variables. You don't need one. There are only four variables you should ever change: VBR, CBR, average bitrate, and 2-pass The main one is Average bitrate. Set this to 8,000,000 CBR if your total MPEG-2 content is going to be 75 minutes or less. Some people worry about having a high bitrate because they claim that it can cause the media to not play on some DVD players. I have shipped many thousands of DVDs, and I can assure you that this is not true. Every problem of this type with which I have helped other people has always turned out to be bad media, not burning at too high a bitrate or too high a burn speed.

If your project is over seventy-five minutes, then use VBR instead of CBR, and use a bitrate calculator to figure out what average bitrate to set (just leave the min and max bitrates at their default settings).

Finally, if the average bitrate on your bitrate calculator is less than 6,000,000, or if you absolutely want to ensure that your encodes come out at exactly the predicted size, use the 2-pass option (Vegas does a very poor job of getting the file size correct when doing a one-pass VBR encode).

That is all you need to know about the MPEG-2 settings. Leave everything else alone. I am familiar with each one of these esoteric settings, the result of having studied, many, many times, the full MainConcept guide for the standalone version of the encoder that is bundled in Vegas. All those other settings will do absolutely nothing for you when creating a DVD. Some of these settings (especially those only available in the standalone version) were very useful ten years ago when some of us were still making SVCDs, a MPEG-2 variant of the MPEG-1 VCD, which were encoded at dreadfully low bitrates (like 1,500,000 bps). I was able to get some stunning results by altering the quantizing matrix (not available in the Vegas version of the MC codec) and doing some other things. However, for DVDs, you never need to do any of this.

Thank you so much for the thorough and thoughtful responses. The information is really useful.

What players would decode AVC or MPEG-2 from Vegas smoothly? I'm using QT7 Pro because nothing else I have plays mp4 on my PC, but also, because the end result has to show on a Mac Pro computer with a Quadro connected to two projectors for stereo display. QT on the Mac seems less problematic than QT for Windows, and is the only player I know of for the Mac that will allow a 2800x1050 image to be moved over the projector screens. A good part of the codec woes I'm facing owes to this cross platform requirement.

Thanks again.

SMcQ

What players would decode AVC or MPEG-2 from Vegas smoothly?VLC.