Thank you. I've gotten most of this to work.

Another problem I'm having is rendering. I need to render a movie to either an .avi, .mpeg or .mov file because that's all my ISP allows me to stream. However, I can't seem to set the compression to get the movie file small enough (`10 MB).

I can get the Quick Time movie file rendered but the audio stutters all the way through. Any ideas what's causing this? Do I need Apple's pro version of QT?

For the .avi & .mpg format, VMS doesn't seem to let me set the bitrate?

Mike

No, you don't need Quicktime Pro.
As far as avi, there isn't a bitrate to set if you're working with DV. It's fixed. With MPEG, you do have the option to set your bitrate in VMS.
As far as the Apple QT stuttering, what bitrate are you rendering to? It could be you're exceeding the ability of the computer's speed to play it back.
I'd recommend using the Windows Media Templates to set the size/rate of your movie. Avi's don't stream, neither do Quicktime files or REAL files unless your ISP has a Helix or Quicktime server.

>No, you don't need Quicktime Pro.
Thanks - that's good to know!

>With MPEG, you do have the option to set your bitrate in VMS.
How?

>As far as the Apple QT stuttering, what bitrate are you rendering to?
I tried 56, 512 and 1 MB - all the same stutter.

>It could be you're exceeding the ability of the computer's speed to
>play it back.
Unlikely because it rendered just fine in .wmv, etc. I have a pretty fast computer - 3.0 GHz, RAID-0 SATA, etc.

>I'd recommend using the Windows Media Templates to set the
>size/rate of your movie.
How do I do this?

My ISP, verizon.net, only supports .avi, .mov and .mpg.

Thanks!

Mike

>With MPEG, you do have the option to set your bitrate in VMS.
How?

I'm sure that was just a slip of the keyboard -- I'm sure he meant to say "With MPEG, you do not have the option to set your bitrate in VMS."

In the full version of Vegas, you can set MPEG bitrates from inside Vegas, before you render. With VMS, you cannot, but you can render a DV AVI file from VMS, then send that file to DVD Architect Studio. DVD Arch. Studio does let you manually specify the MPEG bitrate. The drawback here is having to render twice to accomplish it (render to AVI from VMS, then render AVI to MPEG from Arch. Studio).

But, that's the price we pay in exchange for saving about $500 or so off the cost of the full Vegas package.

Tim L

Tim - thanks about the tip of using DVD Architect Studio as an intermediate renderer. Can I use DVD Architect Studio to render something other than an .avi, or does it have to be that?

I just installed & ran DVD Architect Studio and I don't have a clue how to run the program. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again.

Mike

DVD Architect is only used for making DVDs. The only rendering it does is to create MPEG2 VOB files to be burned to a DVD. You can't use it to render to any other format.

Ummmm... Yep, I kind of lost sight of the original thread. Chien is right -- DVDA Studio is only good for making MPEG2 for DVD's. This will be of no help to you, because you're talking about putting MPG's on the web.

DVDA will create ".vob" mpeg files, and will create an audio file that is separate from the video file -- which is how it should be for a DVD, but not for posting on the web. Wrong! See note below!

Sorry for going off track here. You may have learned a little something in the process, but not anything that helps out with your present needs.

Tim L

Edit March 25: Sorry, but I just reread my post and the paragraph noted above is wrong. .VOB files contain both audio and video. Audio and video are not separate files on the DVD. Rendering MPEG2 files from VMS to send to DVD Architect Studio will create separate video (.MPG) and audio (.WAV) files, but DVDA recombines these elements into .VOB files for the DVD, which contain both the audio and the video in the same file.

To clarify (or confuse!) the issue of adjusting the bit rate in MPEG, you can do it for MPEG-1, but not MPEG-2. If you're going to stream video you might get away with MPEG-1. I'm guessing the .avi files would have to be DivX - I'm not sure what VMS' support is like for that, but I think you'd need to get a DivX codec. Going into the advanced render options should allow you to make the adjustments you need.

Ian G.

Thanks for all the posts.

>To clarify (or confuse!) the issue of adjusting the bit rate in MPEG,
> you can do it for MPEG-1, but not MPEG-2.
But you can't do this in VMS, hence my questions?

.wmv format works fine by my ISP doesn't support it. I would use Quick Time, but the audio stutters & is intolerable. All that is left for me is .mpg, and I can not make VMS create a small enough file to be practical.

Mike

Something sounds very fishy there. WMV is the most popular web format out there so it's hard to believe that your ISP wouldn't allow it.

That being said, it's not really necessary to stream files. You can upload WMV files to your web space and provide hyperlinks directly to the files. Your website visitors will be able to download and view the files even if your ISP doesn't stream them.

Yes I agree. My ISP is verizon.net and their web building tool won't let me upload a .wmv file.

If I could figure out why Quick Time isn't working then I could use that?

Mike

I have Verizon also (DSL). I know almost nothing about creating and maintaining webpages, but about a year ago -- when I first got my miniDV camera, and before I had VMS -- I posted a few small .wmv files on my Verizon "personal webpage". I wanted to share some video samples with some people over on the camcorderinfo.com forums, to show what the output from the Sony HC85 looked like.

http://mysite.verizon.net/timandkathy/

Like Mike says, the Verizon site somehow doesn't handle .wmv files correctly. My main page has a link to several .wmv files. If you mouse over a link, Internet Explorer shows you (at the bottom of the window) what looks like a normal link: "http://xxxxx..../file.wmv". But if you click on the link, it tries to load the .wmv file as a webpage or text or something -- you get a huge page of junk letters.

You can right-click the links and "save as..." to download the .wmv file, and then play it fine once its on your computer.

I never contacted verizon to see what could be done.

Mike: 10 MB isn't much space anyway. Depending on your needs, you might consider using a free webserver like "savefile.com" or "putfile.com" or one of the other, similar sites. These are good for short term solutions -- like you just want to put files up where somebody can see them or download them -- but most of the free services will erase your files if they go 14 days or 30 days or whatever without any downloads.

I just used savefile.com (first time I ever tried anything like this) for a post I made here last week. You can upload any file up to 60 MB, and you can upload an unlimited number of such files. I was pretty impressed with savefile.com (I checked out others too).

Again, this isn't any good for something permanent, like a webpage, but is useful in some circumstances.

Tim L

Let me know if you hear anything from Verizon.

I did a search about the QT stuttering & some stuff came up. It may be due to a setting on my computer and not with the actual .mov file.

Mike

>> you can do it for MPEG-1, but not MPEG-2.

If you go select MPEG-1 and then go into the advanced options you should see all the adjustments.

Ian G.

Ian - thanks. I must have missed that?

The .mov file that I created is OK & plays fine on my work computer. I found some web links to the stutter problem in an earlier version of QT but the information didn't seem to apply to current verions of QT (7.0.4 I think).

Mike

>If you go select MPEG-1 and then go into the advanced options you
>should see all the adjustments
I'm not seeing any settings at all? I'm selecting "Make Movie\Save to Hard Drive\MPeg-1. If I click the Advanced button it just takes me to the Render dialog. No options to set?

Mike

Is there no Custom button?

>Is there no Custom button?
Yes - I found it on the Render As dialog. However there are numerous settings I can set and it's not clear which I should set, ie., I can set it to constant or variable bitrate, set the video quality, etc.

I tried setting the video quality to Good, Draft, Preview and it didn't matter, all the files came out the same size.

If someone could explain to me how to get a 3 minute video to around 10+ MBs, it would be much appreciated.

I have Version 6.0a (Build 85) of VMS.

Mike

Look for bitrate. If you have it on that screen then set it lower to get smaller files. Bitrate and duration of the video are the only factors that determine file size. 3 minutes in 12MB would require a bitrate of about 512Kbps. If you can't set the bitrate then you may have to look at some other encoding tool besides Vegas Studio.

MPEG is not a good format for small web files. Of the various codecs, it looks about the worst at low bitrates. WMV or MOV are probably the best to use if you want files smaller than 20MB. I'd be getting on your ISPs case about not allowing WMV uploads (though i'm sure there's a way around it somehow; do you have FTP access to your web folders?) and tell them that they'll lose a lot of business if they don't support it. In my considered professional opinion, they're being just plain stupid. Then go find somewhere else to host your files.