Needed: Incremental Render

johnmeyer wrote on 10/17/2004, 2:29 PM
I just found the following small mistake in a one hour project: I used the wrong photo in one five second segment.

I am producing a DVD, so I need to render to MPEG-2. Also, I want DVD Architect to create a single titleset because this makes chapter navigation work on all DVD players. I therefore need to render to one single, large MPEG-2 file.

As a result ot this, my simple change to five seconds in my project means that I have to render this ENTIRE project again.

What a NEEDLESS waste of time (three hours, in this case)!

What Vegas and/or DVD Architect need is the ability to do "incremental renders." One way to do this would be to have Vegas specify, via chapter markers, which section of the MPEG-2 file had been re-rendered. DVD Architect would then combine this new segment, via a lossless cut/join capability with the original MPEG-2 (and AC-3) file.

One closely related benefit of this approach is that it would let me avoid having to render the project in one large MPEG-2 in the first place. With the current releases of Vegas and DVDA, this is something I need to do in order to avoid multiple titlesets and the navigation problems these create in some DVD players.

However, there is another way for this feature to be implemented

The other possibility would be for Vegas to offer some sort of "incremental render" feature directly within Vegas itself. I envision using markers stored in the MPEG-2 file to sync up with chapter or other markers in Vegas. With incremental render, you could specify that you are re-rendering only the section between Chapter 3 and Chapter 5. Vegas would then render only these sections (just like render to new track), but would then cut and join this new render with the original MPEG-2 and AC-3 files, at the chapter marks. The lengths of the new rendered segment wouldn't have to match, because the cut & join operation would merely splice the segments together.

This would save a TON of time. The same thing could also be done with AVI files. Imagine not having to re-render the entire project? All you would need to do is make sure you include chapters in your project, and that these chapters be saved to the rendered object (or in some sort of associated file).

Am I missing something here, or would this not be a KILLER feature?

Comments

wcoxe1 wrote on 10/17/2004, 3:02 PM
Have you tried the Print to Tape? I use it for exactly the sort of incremental rendering you describe. Works well unless you move more than your "mistake." Even then, you can always go to the folder where your prerenders are and just import all the finished pieces, if you need to.
johnmeyer wrote on 10/17/2004, 4:02 PM
Have you tried the Print to Tape?

Years ago I used to do this when I first got started with Pinnacle's Studio DV. It requires that you have the pre-roll for your camera pretty well calibrated, but it does work.

Unfortunately, it doesn't help at all for rendering to an MPEG-2 file, which is the main problem I described above.
rmack350 wrote on 10/17/2004, 10:34 PM
Being able to splice in a new section would indeed be a great tool. Is there anything out there that does this now? It doesn't really have to be Vegas that does it, although it would be nice.

Here's a good use for it. Last year I went on a helicoptor tour of Kauai and by the time we got back to the tour office they had a VHS tape made with footage of my family getting on the copter spliced right into the middle of their canned Welcome to Kauai tape. A cool idea except that when they showed it the tape deck lost it's tracking at the splice.

It might be nice for the tour company to be able to splice the footage into a DVD, complete with menus and all the other nice stuff (like language tracks, half my group spoke no English)

Granted, there are other ways to skin that cat but the flexiblity this would provide would be nice.

Rob Mack
johnmeyer wrote on 10/17/2004, 11:29 PM
I can splice MPEG with Womble and AVI with VirtualDub (or Vegas), but the process is a kludge. What I'm talking about is something that would be totally seemless.