On whether to render in Vegas or in DVDA, here's the advice Sony gave a long time ago:

DVDA Workflow (Sony advice on whether to render in DVDA or Vegas).

As to settings, when making a DVD, you should always render to MPEG-2. Rendering to MOV makes no sense whatsoever, if the file is going to be put on a DVD for playing in a standard set-top DVD player.

Finally, when rendering to MPEG-2 from Vegas, always use one of the "DVD Architect" templates, and never use the "Default" template. In your case, for a PAL DVD, you would select "Save as type: Mainconcept MPEG-2" and "Template: DVD Architect PAL video stream." Then, before you click on OK, select the Custom button and then click on the Video tab. There, leave all the settings as they are, but change the "Average (bps)" setting under the "Variable bit rate" section depending on the total length of all the video that will be on your DVD. For DVDs under one hour, I would set this to 7,000,000. For other durations, use the bitrate calculator found here:

Bitrate Calculator

SL, if you want an easy way to accomplish this, use the freeware script, try this

> For example: I was requested to provide a five minute video on a DVD disc, format: uncompressed .mov (in this case DV PAL) When the file was exported as such it was far too big to fit on a DVD disc

Let’s be sure we are answering the right question:

If you were asked to provide an uncompressed mov file on DVD media, I assume the person who requested it will be using it to further process it on a Mac. (there is no other reason for needing uncompressed video or to use mov files on a PC) If this is not correct, then disregard the rest of this section of my post.

You should NOT use DVD Architect to make this DVD because it sounds like they are asking you for a data file, NOT something they can watch on their set-top DVD player. You should use the DVD Burning software that came with your DVD Writer to make a DATA disc. Since the uncompressed data is 11GB you will need to fill two DVD’s. The best solution is if the burning software has a backup mode where it will automatically split the file across two DVD’s for you.

> i would like to learn which settings I can alter - and what they should be set to - to retain required quality but reduce file size.

Reducing the files means reduced quality, BUT since the data is uncompressed, you might try and just ZIP it into a ZIP file. This may make it small enough to fit on one DVD.

> Or alternatively, what I'm doing so horribly wrong that is producing an 11gig five minute .mov file.

You are doing nothing wrong. Uncompressed video is huge. Nobody works with uncompressed video unless they are going to process it heavily (e.g., bring it into After Effects) and want to maintain the highest quality while processing

> Also : When exporting for use with DVD Architect does it make any difference to the quality of the final output to use .avi/.mov or pre-compress to Mpeg-2?

DVD Architect is for authoring DVD’s that you watch on your set-top DVD player. As other posters have pointed out, DVD’s use MPEG-2 format and you should use the DVD Architect for PAL if you really want to deliver this as a final movie on a DVD to these people.

> Is it better to compress first from Vegas or is it the same to do it during the process of creating a DVD in DVD Architect?

As John Meyer pointed out, its slightly better to do this from Vegas. More control, no need to double render to AVI and then MPEG2.

> I was hoping there are reference sources I could refer to - both in print and on the web.

Others have provided references. There is a free tool available at VASST called DVDPrep that is written just for people who don’t want to deal with all the various rendering templates and just want to make a DVD of their work that they can watch. Here is a link to the VASST Freeware page where DVDPrep can be found.

~jr

THANKYOU everyone for your time and information here. It is the first
time I have used this forum, and I'm grateful and impressed!

Apologies for lack of clarity in my initial question, yes the file was requested
on DVD disc as a data file. My DVDA question was a separate issue.

Another related question: when using 'render to new track' or just rendering out
a clip that has so many effects etc it's impossible to view real-time, I'm presuming
I should be keeping the clip uncompressed as it is still to be used within either
another Vegas project or another programme. Should I render it as an .avi using
PAL DV template? I've also been setting everything to lower field first and not
changing the interleave settings. Is this ok?

SL