...unless the rendered MPEG is too big to fit on the DVD.

The green checkmark in the DVDA optimize window is your friend- this will tell you whether or not an assett is being compressed. (Green check= no-recompress)

Ther'es lots of misinformation on this. NOTHING is recompressed if it doesn't have to be. I typically drop in MPEG-2 files that have both video/audio usually several to make my DVD's. If you keep within bounds of what fits on a DVD (4.7 GB) and keep in mind that DVD-A will all by itself recompress the audio portion, no need to do seperate renders of video and audio streams in Vegas. In fact I consider that method an extra step, which I just as soon avoid letting DVD-A do it on its own, which it does transparently dueing the prepare phase.

I agree with BB on this one...to a point.

I tend to render the audio separate in Vegas rather than let DVDA do it. But it really is just a preference. It is just about 6 in one hand, half a dozen in the other.

Alls I know is when I'm making DVDs in DVDA - when I bring in my media, it is all pretty much ready to go. It takes me about 20 minutes to prepare/ burn the DVD and I'm off to the races.

But again, that's just how I prefer to do it. There is nothing wrong with dropping in an MPEG2 file with video and audio and letting DVDA take care of the audio.

The other part to keep in mind is the size of the file(s) you are trying to write.

As long as it is under the size allowed (as BillyBoy said) you are fine. If you go above that and you need to bring down the file size ... then DVDA will want to kick in with a "recompress". You can ultimately set the bitrate of how it goes.

So far, I've pushed a disc with about four hours of video on it and to the naked eye haven't given up any quality.

As a test, however, I rerendered a file to the ultimate lowest setting I could - and it turned out viewable...but looked like warmed over crud on a biscuit.

So my advice is grab a rewritable and an MPEG2 you create in Vegas and run some tests. Go up and down the compression scale and see what the end result is for yourself. Or...said a different way - see what you can live with as far as quality goes.

What you end up with may just surprise you.

What I would like to see is an option in Vegas than automatically renders the AC-3 once you select the DVD-A template. Then we could have the best of both worlds.

The original poster's issue has to do with not knowing what size MPEG file Vegas will create and therefore not knowing whether the results of the Vegas encode will fit (that's what he said in his response above).

What this points to, once again, is the need for future versions of Vegas to provide tools to help estimate the size of the eventual DVDA project files. Obviously it cannot include the size of menus and other files created by DVDA, but a clever, built-in bitrate calculator could include a wizard that could ask you how many menus you plan to create, whether you want motion background, menu music, etc., and then come up with a recommended bitrate. Also, assuming DVDA 2.x includes end actions, this bitrate calculator could ask you to click on any MPEG or AC3 files already created that will be included in the project.

Finally, such a calculator needs to be accurate. As everyone here knows, the estimates built into the current DVDA (1.0c) are not very accurate.

Huzzah! Yes, John, that is my issue! If I am to maintain maximum quality, I either perform some manual calculations before encoding in VV, or I encode away for many hours a throw, and try the thing in DVDA and see how well it fits. I would then adjust my bitrates accordingly, re-render for another 8 hours, and try it again. And so on.

OR, I render the movie to an uncompressed format from VV, and then let DVDA do the final encoding, based on it's estimations. Either way, I definately *don't* want to encode once to MPEG in VV, and then re-encode yet again to MPEG in DVDA.

TimmyRaa,

The usual way to get around the lack of a bitrate calculator in Vegas, is to use an external one. There are many such calculators lurking around the Internet, but the one people usually start with is at the excellent www.dvdrhelp.com site. Here is the link directly to the online version of that calculator:

Bitrate Calculator

You can download a version of this that will work directly on your PC so you don't have to go online. Download it here:

Bitrate Calculator Download

I find it works best to just use the defaults. Leave the audio set for 224 kbit/sec. If you are encoding to AC3 at the default 192 kbs (default for the stereo template), everything seems to come out just right.

Now, if you are going to create a really fancy set of DVD menus, with motion in every icon, motion backgrounds, audio on every page, etc., you will have to set the bitrate somewhat lower than what this calculator advises. If you really want to be precise about this, you could create a DVD menu structure and then prepare that to a folder to see how big it will be. In the bitrate calculator, click on the Advanced Mode button, and then subtract the size of your menu structure from 4480 and enter the result in the Custom Size box.

Generally, however, all I have to do is go to the end of my Vegas project, read off the total duration from the timeline, enter that into the bitrate calculator, and then enter the Calculated Bitrate from the bitrate calculator into the "Average (bps)" box in the Video tab that you get to by clicking on the Custom button after selecting Save As Type: Mainconcept MPEG-2 (*.mpg).

>Either way, I definately *don't* want to encode once to MPEG in VV, and then re-encode yet again to MPEG in DVDA.

True...unless there is something in the MPEG compression standard plus DVDA's ability to know it is recompressing a Vegas-generated MPEG file that allows DVDA to recompress without any additional loss. IOW, if you (1) used Vegas to compress from A to B, then DVDA to compress from B to C, will this give the same quality compared with (2) using Vegas to compress from A to C?

I assume we would all definitely expect (2) to be superior. But I have never heard a definitive answer to this one, or perhaps we've never asked the question specifically. I'm not an expert on the MPEG compression algorithm, so I don't know if two "incremental" steps are equivalent to one "global" step. One thing I think I have noticed is that the DVDA incremental compression is far faster than the Vegas compression. I may be fooling myself, though. However, it is definitely not decompressing the "B" MPEG to AVI then recompressing to the "C" MPEG, so there is some kind of "shortcut" going on. Anyway, just wondering...it would be nice to hear a definitive answer once and for all.

Where is the VV DVDA tempate?

Thanks

Choose "Save As Type" MPEG-2, and then you will see, in the Template, box, a list of options, one of which is NTSC DVD Architect (along with PAL for European standards).