Propoer Rendering

fadeout wrote on 2/2/2009, 3:55 PM
I have had some issues recently both with getting discs to burn and getting successfully burnt discs to play on some of my clients’ equipment.

Part of the problem may relate to the initial rendering process, so I would like to ask a few important questions just to make sure I’m not making any critical mistakes.

1) If I am making a DVD to be played on a DVD player which is attached to a monitor of some sort I would render it as an mpeg-2 file. Is there anything else I have to do to get it to play on a run of the mill DVD player? I’m talking about a simple video (wedding or otherwise) without menus or frills of any kind.

2) If one renders a file as an mpeg-2 will that file have the same mpeg-2 resolution quality regardless of its origin? In other words, if I capture video from my PD-170 it comes into Vegas as an .avi file. When I put it on the timeline it takes on an alter ego as a .veg file. I finish my project and then I render it as an mpeg-2. But what if, instead of saving the file as a series of .veg files until I am ready to render to mpeg-2 I instead render the file as a .wmv until I finish the project, and then render it as an mpeg-2 file? WILL THE QULITY OF THE MPEG-2 FILE BE ANY DIFFERENT THEN IF I HAD RENDERED IT FROM THE .AVI BASED .VEG FILE?

3) Is there a preference as to which files to work with before final render? Because of some trouble I have been having with the stability of .veg files, I have been rendering in .wmv format during the various stages of my projects. I then do a final render in either .wmv or mpeg-2 depending on the client and/or the nature of the client. Am I doing something wrong?

Thank y’all in advance.



Comments

Chienworks wrote on 2/2/2009, 5:17 PM
1) Depends on the DVD player. Some cheaper ones will play almost any mpeg file burned to a data disc. Older players and lots of more expensive ones will tell you the disc is invalid. To get the highest compatibility use DVD Architect or something similar to author a real video DVD. You can make a "single play" movie that just starts playing the video when the disc inserted.

2) The .veg file doesn't contain video of any sort. The .veg file contains all of the editing steps you have performed on the timeline and references the video clips which are still in the original .avi files.

.WMV is a very poor choice for intermediate renders. Do not do this. Rendering to a highly compressed format and then using that for another generation will lose a lot of quality. You'll be very disappointed with the results. If you must use intermediate files then probably the best choice is DV .avi, which is the same format that your camera produces.

Why not continue assembling your entire video as one project?

3) What problems are you having, specifically? You should continue working with the original files until you do the final render at the end.