> can anyone explain what this option in custom settings means? are there pros and cons to checking this?

This causes Vegas to create an OpenDML compliant AVI file. The pros are that the file size can be larger than the older RIFF AVI standard of 2GB. The cons are that not all applications can open them. A workaround is discussed on my web site and in the Sonic Foundry knowledge base. From the Sonic Foundry home page I selected Support then Knowledge Base then did a search on OpenDML. i.e., Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day... teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime ;-)

> also, what are the interleave and render alpha channel selections?

Interleave has to do with how the video and audio are interleaved together. If you don’t understand it, don’t touch it. Alpha channel is like a 4th primary color (i.e., RGBA, Red, Green, Blue, Alpha), While RGB represents the presence (and color) of a pixel, Alpha represents is absence (and transparency) of a pixel. This is one way to create a video overlay where you can key out the alpha channel and create a spinning logo or something on a transparent background.

> i found that i can't import some of my rendered dv to ulead dvd moviefactory2 with proper results. i get digital confetti in my thumnails and finished product. if i render in vf without "open dml" checked, then dvd moviefactory2 handles the file just fine.

So you have the fix. All you need to understand is that DVD MovieFactory can’t handle OpenDML AVI 2 files so just render with this unchecked and you’re all set. You might want to send a request to Ulead to add OpenDML support to their products or you may want to submit a feature request to ask Sonic Foundry to give us the option of that not being the default capture mode.

~jr

The AVI2 / OpenDML option is a very technical topic. Are you sure you really want to know.

After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Here's the abridged version:

The VFW standard was created way back in 1992 for use with Windows 3.1. Unfortunately, in typical Microsoft fashion (Bill Gates: "You will never need more than 640K of RAM"), there were a number of drawbacks in the initial standard.

Around 1996, a group led by Matrox proposed an extension, called OpenDML to the VFW standard. Microsoft adopted this standard shortly after. The OpenDML extension added support for fields, timestamps, a larger size limit (4 GB vs. the old "officially 2 but really 1GB" limit) and multi-segment files. The OpenDML standard is also backwards compatible with the old VFW standard.

If you want to know more about OpenDML read up here:
http://www.matrox.com/video/press/papers/odmlff2.pdf

I think a modern video progam is pretty crappy if can't support OpenDML.

Interleaving is pretty simple. First you must understand two things. First, AVI data is stored in a single stream. Second, audio and video data are broken up into chunks. Interleaving is simply arranging the chunks so you'll have a few video chunks in a stream followed by a few audio chunks in a stream and so on.

Ex. (V= Video Chunk, A= Audio Chunk)

AVI Stream: VAVAVAVAVA

Typically, you want to interleave every frame although this isn't necessary. Interleaving is done for performance reasons during playback.

Alpha Channels basically control transparency. Most codecs don't support alpha channels (I know of only uncompressed RGB and Indeo) so I wouldn't even worry about this since you'll seldom have a chance to use it.

> I think a modern video progam is pretty crappy if can't support OpenDML.

You know discdude, I think there is more here than meets the eye. I don’t think its OpenDML support at all that is the problem. Check out this knowledge base article. Go ahead I’ll wait here... Hmmm… Hmmm… Hmmm… Oh your back. Great. Did you see where it said, “Forge tries to write metadata internally to the AVI file. QuickTime appears to have difficulty understanding this extra information.” I don’t think its that the other applications don’t support OpenDML because I can take 4GB AVI files captured with Pinnacle Studio 7 into DVD MovieFactory 2 or Cool 3D Studio and they play just fine. Since they are 4GB they must be OpenDML because RIFF only supported 2GB.

So it must be the “extra metadata” that gets written while having "Create OpenDML (AVI version 2.0) file" checked that is messing things up. What we want is a "Create OpenDML (AVI version 2.0) file without additional metadata" checkbox.

Can someone from Sonic Foundry please confirm or deny this problem with VF and Vegas capture files in other products like Ulead DVD MovieFactory, Ulead Cool 3D Studio, AlamDV, and particle Illusion 2 SE to name a few. I can’t believe that all these programs can’t read OpenDML files.

~jr