haha, no.. after you, i insist! ... Glad he's getting there though :) Sounds better.

Paul.

O.K. Thanks, guys! I'll give that a shot. We'll see if I can get through this in one piece!

Any other landmines I should be aware of?

Well, the good news is that I managed to successfully edit two of the three HD videos for the DVD project! It took a little hand to hand combat, and there's a cloud of obscenities still floating in space over the Lehigh Valley, but I'm getting there.

After it crashed a few times mid-edit, I discovered that the thumbnail settings in the video preferences tab have a significant impact on performance. I had it set for maximum thumbnails. Once I dialed it back to just first/center/last, it stopped crashing. Preview was also nowhere near as choppy. It seems that every time you zoom in and out on the timeline, Vegas has to redraw all the thumbnails, and playback quality has to wait for this to happen.

Anyway, as soon as I finish this post, I'm off to bed (it's midnight), so I started the first video rendering. I selected DVDA NTSC Widescreen video stream. It's telling me it'll be done in just over 3 1/2 hours. Then I'll render the AC-3 audio stream. (Probably should have done that first.)

Your AC3 audio should take 20-30 minutes to render, max.
And the nice thing is you can replace it any time you want (as I do often).

"Any other landmines I should be aware of?"

Yes but not until after you get past your current jobs and start shooting again.

Resist the temptation to shoot in SD on your HD camera. You really are throwing away a lot of the goodness that you paid for when you bought the camera.

Also if you do decide to convert our HD footage to SD to make editing easier do not use the DV AVI codec, again you're throwing away a lot of the goodness.


The issue is chroma sampling. NTSC DV uses 4:1:1 and the mpeg-2 codec that you have to use for the DVD is 4:2:0. The changes from one chroma sampling scheme to another does not help at all. If you want to use an intermediate SD codec choose one with 4:2:2 chroma sampling such as the Sony YUV codec. Go for the 8bit variant or you'll need large and fast disks to keep up with the amount of data.

Now consummer HD codecs such as in your camera use 4:2:0 however the recorded HD video contains more chroma data than a SD codec can, simply because of the lower resolution. So for the best looking SD DVD shoot HD and render to SD mpeg-2. Or use an SD intermediate codec that'll preserve as much chroma data as possible.

Bob.

"there's a cloud of obscenities still floating in space over the Lehigh Valley"Lehigh Valley! We're almost neighbors! I'm in Delaware.

Also, I'm not sure this was mentioned - make sure you do frequent project saves if you're having problems. It might be a good idea to use some type of numbering scheme for your saves eg. myProject-2011-12-13-0611.veg That way, if you disaster occurs, you can always go back to an earlier version.

Keep us posted,
...Jerry

Edit: One more thing - 3 1/2 is not unusual. I'vd had 13 hour renders on my Intel Q9550. If you haven't already discovered this... it's good to do some test renders using the "render loop region region only" option. That way you can see what your render looks like without having to go thru the full 3 1/2 hours. However, remember to uncheck that option after the test - it's a common pitfall.

Oh, I went through the rest of the editing session with one hand hovering over Ctrl-S, which got hit every time I made an edit. Jesus saves....and so should you if you use Vegas!

The ac3 render only took about six minutes. I can live with that.

My next question:
Some of the advice I've been seeing on the forum suggests that, before I render to SD, that I right-click on the HD video clips in the session, go to Properties, and check "Reduce Interlace Flicker." How necessary is this? We're talking A LOT of separate clips in this two camera shoot. Do I really need to go to every one of them and follow these steps?

""Reduce Interlace Flicker." How necessary is this?"It's very optional. I'm one of the few people on this forum that recommends this. If you get a good render without flicker/moire then there's no need.

"Jesus saves....and so should you if you use Vegas!"

Brilliant! I plan on stealing this line from you - and reusing.

...Jerry

I think I goofed! I'm about halfway through my second render (#2 of 3 videos), and I just happened to look at the project settings right below the preview video viewer. It's telling me the project settings are 720x480. I know for a fact that I editing this project at 1920x1080. Not sure how it got changed, but now I'm worrying that the render will end up giving me problems later. Do I have anything to worry about?

See paul w and amendegw posts 12/12/2011 at 11:23 and 11:27.

Hi Curt.

The settings you see at the bottom of the preview screen while rendering is actually the settings you are rendering to. Vegas seems to call them Project as well. I do not know whether Vegas actually changes the project settings prior to the render or whether it just scales etc. while rendering leaving the actual project settings as set for editing. Maybe someone else can explain that to us.

For the moment I think you are OK. Yes, it all gets a bit confusing sometimes.

Hope that helps.
Willem.

Yep, see how the project values change during a render process! totally fine - you are rendering to DVD!.
When you are finished - see them return back to 1080 :)

Paul.

"Some of the advice I've been seeing on the forum suggests that, before I render to SD, that I right-click on the HD video clips in the session, go to Properties, and check "Reduce Interlace Flicker." How necessary is this? We're talking A LOT of separate clips in this two camera shoot. Do I really need to go to every one of them and follow these steps?"

As you've shot interlace video it is very unlikely you'll need to use this.

Bob.

"Oh, I went through the rest of the editing session with one hand hovering over Ctrl-S, which got hit every time I made an edit."

I really hope you thought to increment your project version from time to time.

You can strike problems, rarely, that'll mean your saved project has been trashed. Saving new versions of your project as you work reduces the amount of work you will lose.

Bob.

"I really hope you thought to increment your project version from time to time.Hmmm... "Great minds think alike!" (9 posts up). [grin]

...Jerry

Well, the good news is that I managed to get all three videos edited and rendered. After a few tweaks and following the advise here, it actually went pretty smoothly.

Now I'm creating the DVD in DVDA. I'm assuming, since all the videos were rendered as DVD NTSC Widescreen, that I should go into the project properties in DVDA and select 16:9 under "aspect ratio." Correct?

...Jerry

The "Properties" I was talking about is in the file menu. Same thing?

"The "Properties" I was talking about is in the file menu. Same thing?"The short answer is yes. You can make DVDA as complicated as you wish, but if you just want to make a single move with no menus, do this:



...Jerry