Render and Burn Times

Jameson_Prod wrote on 5/1/2004, 7:37 AM
Let me preface this with I have had some problems with getting my DVD burner(Sony DRU-530A), OS (XP-SP1) and MB (ASUS P4800) to work together "perfectly". Always seems to have some small problem.

But I just upgraded to V5 and DVD-A2. Never have used DVD-A. In burning my first DVD with the program I noticed what seem to me to be some very long estimated times for rendering and burning. I know times are estimates but I have an 1 hour 41 minute mpeg movie. I have an opening menu with a bmp and play button. Nothing fancy at all. I am burning it to a +RW at 2.4X. The estimated time to render and burn is over 3 hours. Is this normal? I've always used Sonic's DVDIt! SE. Times are generally around 20 minutes for a full DVD.

Am I doing somethnig wrong? What is the rendering process? (if iit is already in mpeg2 format) Is there a hardware/softeware problem? Does it take approximately twice as long as the movie is to burn?

Thanks in advance.

Comments

SonyEPM wrote on 5/1/2004, 8:15 AM
Is your MPEG movie being recompressed by DVDA? Sounds like it. Go to optimize- is there a green checkmark next to the movie?
laffTrax wrote on 5/1/2004, 8:20 AM
What did you render your final file in Vegas as? MPEG 2 or avi? If avi, then yes it will take a few hours of rendering (in my experience) in DVDA. If MPEG 2 (as i think you did) from Vegas, i use the template that is video stream specifically for DVDA and crank up the quality settings to highest (adjust bit rate, all that stuff). Then render the audio seperately as an AC-3 (dvd standard). Then, when you import both files into DVDA, it should not have to re-render anything, and your prepare time will be substantially reduced.

As for Sonics MYDVD preparing a DVD in 20 minutes - i'd be a little concerned about quality issues with ANY program that claims to prepare a dvd in 20 minutes...
Jameson_Prod wrote on 5/1/2004, 9:06 AM
I see a few things I am doing...not necassarily wrong...but not right. I did rendered from Vegas as a MPEG but not the DVDA NTSC compliant template. The sound and video are together in the program stream. So that makes sense. It is re-compressing.

I'll try the rendering from Vegas to the DVDA template and render the audio to an AC-3 and see how that works.

Thanks again for the advice.

PS....The DVDIt! time was just a guess however I know the time was considerably shorter. It does seem to me to have been around 20 to 30 minutes. Quality has always been acceptable. My understanding is that DVDIt! is being phased out and is no longer supported with updates and drivers. It really doesn't like my new Sony burner.
dvddude wrote on 5/2/2004, 4:13 PM
Personally, I don't consider a couple of hours a long render time at all.

On a P4 2.8 GHz PC with 2GB RAM, the discs I make are from 1.55-hour material. In Vegas, I edit, place the chapter points, drop a filter or two onto the timeline, fudge the audio a bit... a few crossfades...

Then I render the AC3 audio with the template -- happens rather quickly.

Then I render the video stream with the DVDA template -- 12 hours. If I'm lucky, nine or ten. This is using the dual-pass switch, but even without it, my render times are very long.

Sure, I'd like it to be faster, but I understand the deep voodoo going on here and I don't consider these render times long. This is all being done in software, not hardware.

I'm curious how the network rendering might work. The docs are pretty sketchy, but I do have seveal machines on the network. I wonder if together they can chew on this material much mor quickly.
pb wrote on 5/2/2004, 5:18 PM
DVD Dude, you will shorten your rendering times considerably by rendering the tracks into a single AVI then encoding that to MPEG2. Billy Boy suggested that last year and he is right, it does shorten total time from decide to make finished into a DVD and then watching the disc.