Thanks for your help. You will be surprised that it worked. lol Just wish the program was more explicit that it was necessary to use the advanced options in order to render the video properly. When an app provides a simple check box for a function one does not usually have to use "advanced" options in order for it to work. The least they could have done is have it pull up the render dialog so one would know there is more information needed.

Thank again.

I choose save to my hard drive and mpeg2

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I did not realize that I needed to purchase anything else so I could have sound in my rendered video, especially since there is no mention that I do.

As EricLNZ said. Next time try MP4 and see/hear what you get.

Personally I consider it would be more sensible and user friendly if selecting the mpeg2 button activated a program stream instead of just video. Movie Studio is after all a consumer level editor and us humble consumers don't expect to have to export separate streams. Why do we need separate streams? Presumably it's a pro requirement for those who need alternative audio selections in their DVDA creations.

I often feel VMS is at a disadvantage compared to its competitors because it's a cut down version of a pro editor and not designed groundup as a consumer level product.

Why do we need separate streams?

As you know it's been discussed countless times, e.g. an old SCS thread here. Anyway,

DVD A compliant VMSP to DVD A

ProgramStream to DVD A

The program stream audio is recompressed because the audio is mpeg and DVDA only does LPCM and AC3. If the Main Concept template let us have LPCM or AC3 it wouldn't need recompressing. I can use mpeg2 files with AC3 audio produced by other consumer video editors in DVDA without recompression of video or audio. A similar situation exists with Blu-ray. I've found Blu-ray files with AC3 audio produced by other video editors accepted without video recompression by DVDA. The audio gets recompressed but then so does AC3 produced by VMS! From a consumer perspective VMS and DVDA act strange at times and are out of line with other consumer editors.

As for the old thread interesting but goes round in circles. Chienworks appears the only one who really understood the situation.

SCS did and Magix Vegas still does it differently. "Product suggestion" as j_d suggested at the time. Personally I'm glad Magix did not pursue the PHD direction of MS Platinum 13.

With separate streams, you can add, edit, and modify audio tracks in a matter of minutes, not flippin' hours, because rerendered video is 100% useless, and you can have more than one audio track! Like for a narration, a dubbed language, a commentary or narrative, or even karaoke!! Are those pretty ok reason to render separate streams?

I agree Musicvid. As someone who creates fairly large projects with lots of effects, titles, etc, I find it very useful that if I need to alter the soundtrack, I just need to render that and not the video. You can only do that with separate streams.

By the way katherine-sirk. I, and many others on this forum, consider what you describe as 'a useless program' to be one of the best (if not the best) consumer video editing program around at the moment. You might find also, that you will get the most out of forum members if you calm down before you post your problems and leave out the expletives (however disguised).

I find it very useful that if I need to alter the soundtrack, I just need to render that and not the video. You can only do that with separate streams.

Jack S - Actually DVDA is very versatile and even with a video file that contains both video and audio streams DVDA shows in the Media Properties/Track Media the video and audio streams separately. So you don't have to have a separate stream to change just the audio. So if you ever have to work on the audio of a file that has both video and audio just render out your revised audio track using wav and tell DVDA you want to you use that instead of the original audio.