Newbie rendering trouble

John_the_mackem wrote on 4/25/2003, 6:32 AM
* I started off with 6 30-minute long xvid avi files which I wanted to put on a single DVD-Video.

* I used MainConcept MPEG Encoder to convert them all to MPEG-2 files, which took about an hour in total.

* I pulled them all into DVD Architect and the size on disk was about 7GB. So... I went to the "Optimise" settings, and knocked the bitrate slider down until the size on disc was just under 100% (including menus). This was a bitrate of about 3200 (I realise the quality will suffer, but I don't mind as long as they are all on there). I did however notice that when I changed the bitrate, the "re-render" option became enabled and I couldn't turn it off.

* I then went to Render the DVD... and nearly fell of my chair when I was told it would take 14 hours!! I have a decent spec PC (2GHz athlon, 768MB RAM etc) and never expected it could possibly take this long. It's still going now.. 7 hours later, and another 7 to go, and what's more annoying is that I don't even know if it's going to look any good when it's finished.

* I can't understand why the rendering process takes so long. I've used other DVD Authoring software, such as Ulead MovieFactory which is not as good, but it only takes 3-4 hours to render a 3 hour long DVD.

* Have I missed something, or have I made a rookie mistake?

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 4/25/2003, 9:39 AM
You've made several rookie mistakes. The biggest was thinking you could take 7GB worth of files and almost chop them in half and think it would be no big deal. You simply can't put 3 hours on a single DVD and not expect a big quality hit. If you're lucky somewhere between and 1.20 and 1.30 is what you should expect to fit on a single DVD. Worse if you stated out with AVI, then reduced the files to 7GB as MPEG, (what you said if I'm reading you right) and you're now going to cut them down by a huge factor again, your project will probably end up looking like crap and defeat the whole purpose. As far as the time involved, "only" 14 hours is decent considering what you're asking the application to do... reduce volume by half. The optimise feature is best used to squeeze a few extra minutes onto a DVD, not an extra hour and a half!

Of course the biggest mistake was rendering the whole thing waiting 14 hours to confirm its probably going to look like crap. You should have burned to a DVD-RW and only burn a few minutes worth of your project, then play it on a DVD setop. If you would have done that, you could have easily reused the DVD and your would have saved yourself all that time.

The good news is we all make mistakes and sometimes when you make big ones you end up learning more.