Actually, when you use multiple video tracks ("angles"), DVDA does NOT use MPEG-2 files directly. Thus, the usual workflow of doing the rendering to MPEG-2 in Vegas doesn't work. Therefore, you are best off rendering to a high-quality AVI format (DV AVI, for instance) and then letting DVDA do the render to MPEG-2.

This is why it is taking a long time: DVDA will always render the entire file when you are using multiple video tracks ("angles").

And, just to make the point even more emphatically, here is a quote directly from the DVDA 5.0b help file:

"Any title that contains multiple video tracks will be recompressed when you prepare your project so the main video and the alternate angles can be combined into a new video file. To avoid recompression artifacts (and unnecessary processing time), use AVI files for your multiangle video titles."

John,

are you sure that Chip is talking about multi-angle? I've thought that he simply wants to add some new footage to his DVD.

Well, we'll see ;)

Cheers

darkframe

Multi-angle is correct. I shot the ice show with two cameras, plus had a "closeup" camera covering skaters during a 2nd performance. I put a couple of test shots together and have been attempting to render them in DVDA5. First time, I used the separate MPEG2 audio and video elemental streams for the first track of the DVD, and a couple of short (1-2 minute) AVI files for the second video track (alternate angle).

It crashed after 30-40 minutes of rendering with an "unable to save file" error. Last night I tried the same exercise, but with all AVI files. Same failure. I have a trial of DVD-lab Pro that I am going to try next. My goal is to start burning DVDs for the customers this weekend.

I just dug through my bug reports I have sent to Sony, and found the following (which I think you will find familiar):
I am doing two things for the first time:

I did a lot of testing for them, and finally determined that it was a bug in handling 23.976 fps material in multi-angle projects. Is your source 23.976? 29.97 works, but not 23,976. Classic bug.

If this is your problem, I think the fix made it into DVDA 5.0.

If you are still using 4.5 and don't want to upgrade, they did send a DLL to me which did fix the problem. Send me a PM and I'll send it to you.

Perfect John, that is exactly what happens. I will confirm the frame rate when I get home tonight. I am on DVDA5b so perhaps the solution is near ...

Wondering if a bug list is publicly available of confirmed issues? It would be handy to word search a particular error and see that they know about it.

Anyway, thanks for the assistance!

The problem was in a MainConcept plugin, and they were concerned as to whether MainConcept would be able to fix the problem. The fact that you are using a later release and that this bug has reappeared makes me believe that their QA group (or the one at MainConcept in Germany) blew it and re-introduced the bad code in a later build. It is a pretty obscure bug, but a good QA group that regression tests old bugs should have caught it.

I just found the patch plugin, so I can definitely send it. Don't know if it will work with DVDA 5.x. However, it is simple to rename the existing plugin and then use this one for the one project. Even if it works for you, I'd still revert back to the old one when you are finished with this project.

Just send me a PM and I'll send it to you.

I was on build 119 of DVDA5. Updating to the latest release (5b) fixed the problem. I mistakenly thought I had already applied this update. Appreciate the support here!

Good! So, the bug did NOT re-appear; you were just using an earlier version. Glad it is all working.

Came across the chipgallo post and decided to check this for my copy of DVD-A.

Just tried a short 8-minutes 9-angle PAL project in Sony DVD-A 5.0b Build 180
from PAL-DV-.avi:

Failure after encoding of video assets and still menu, I guess while building .ifos.
Reduced same assets to 3-angle: Same Failure.
2-angle: Same Failure.
Standard Single-angle: Worked.

So Multi-angle for PAL is really broken in SONY DVD-A.

P.S.
Left in project folder was a properly muxed VTS_01_0.VOB (still menu) and a partially muxed VTS_01_1VOB.
Demuxing of the latter with VOBEdit brought up two video angles,
[0] 12 min:10s with size 628MB containing parts of all intended video streams in sequence,
[1] a pure angle 11 seconds with size 9MB
and two (!) audio tracks (where only one should have been)

After putting together 4 clips as multi-angle shots, I wouldn't say DVDA 5(b) works with this material. The alternate video looks unstable and one of the DVD players (Pioneer Elite 59AVI) locks up at around 36 minutes into a 45 minute program. I may have these encoded at too high a data rate. Since this is due today, I'll be adding the extra material as chapters after the end titles.