"Sounds like your drive is formatted FAT32 - What OS do you have? You need NTFS formatting to have unlimited size avis. However, if you put the three avis together on a timeline in Vegas, you can render them to a single MPEG2 file. "

Thanks very much Peter for this reply, I am using Win98SE at the moment, do you know if this allows for NTFS formatting, or do you need to have Windows XP? I have rendered as .avi, but if I were to render to a single MPEG2 file, would the video quality be as good as rendering to avi? I am not outputting to tape, but I intend to burn a DVD using DVD Architect.

Regards, Fred

You can render multiple 4 GB files to AVI using W98SE, but you are limited to 3.99 for Mpeg. I found out this undocumented "feature" the hard way myself.
Posting here got me the answer. If your menus will be a few pages of motion icons in DVDA adjust the birate settings (using a bitrate calculator) in Vegas to have the Mpeg 2 come out to as close to 3.99GB as possible. Use the NTSC DVDA video template for the video. Then render the audio as AC3 and put it in the same folder as the Mpeg 2. DVDA will find them and put them together. That combined with the menus will bring it close to the limit for a recordable DVDR. My limit seems to be 1hr and 40 minutes of video on a single DVDR before quality takes a hit. Variable Bitrate is somewhere around 5000.

You can read through my thread from back then for some further help:

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/Forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=227596

John

If you are only going to be burning this to DVD (and not to AVI) then you may as well go straight to MPEG2 from the timeline rather than rendering it to an intermediate AVI file first.

Now if you want to go back and edit this video later on then you will have to have the original AVI's that you used to create the MPEG2 as re-editing from an MPEG2 will require a re-encode and compression resulting in a more likely noticable loss in quality.

Fred,
Windows ME and older will not do NTSC, they use the FAT32 format for storing files on disk. That's limited to 3.99GB as stated earlier. Vegas works around that seamlessly. However, for DVD, use the MPEG-2 format. Re-render using the MPEG-2 NTSC DVD template. Make sure the quality level is set to best (custom button, quality level). The file size should be less than 4.0GB. Then you can run DVDA and burn your DVD. The quality is superb, better than you would get if you copied your .avi file to VHS tape via your camcorder (unless you have a professional level VHS recorder). I'm encoraging all of my relatives to get DVD players as the video I send them are so much better viewed that way. Hope this helps.
Randy

Thanks very much for these replies. When I ask DVD Architect to burn a disc from an avi file, it says that the video and audio will be compressed. This is the case every time, even if the avi file size is only 1GB. I am not sure why this is because a DVD will hold 4.7GB of data.

Perhaps it is because a DVD is in MPEG2 format, so I would then agree with Randy that if my final output is to DVD, I might as well render in the MPEG2 format to start with, there doesn't seem much point in rendering to avi if you are burning a DVD?

When I rendered a 43-minute video to .avi, the overall file size was about 9GB, so this would have to be substantially compressed to fit on a 4.7GB DVD disc. So what would be the main use of a 9GB avi file, even if my computer could produce it?

Regards, Fred

DVD's can ONLY have MPEG formated video on them. So when you give DVDA <any> AVI file <regardless> of size it will always report that it will need "compressing". It has less to do with the file size and everything to do with the format it needs to be in to go onto a DVD.

The point about (DV) AVI files is that they are easier (more efficient) to edit and are actually higher quality than MPEG2. My prior post gives some further reasons why in your case there is probably little need for you to render an intermediate AVI from your editing projects and then render again to MPEG using DVDA. Rather for your type of workflow and needs just go straight to MPEG2 from Vegas.

Fred,

If the avi is 9 Gb the MPEG 2 will be easily small enough to get on a DVD. ( At a squash - lower bitrate - up to 2 hours has been squeezed on a DVD).

Why make a 9Gb avi? Many good reasons - so it can be output to DV tape - so that all source camera footage can then be deleted saving space - so that it can be used for rendering into various other formats - e.g. MPEG1 or WMV.

But, if you are heading for DVD alone, then straight to MPEG2 sounds the way to go, as Liam says.

Thanks very much Peter for these comments. I have just rendered the 43-minute project to MPEG2 in Vegas 4, and this took about 4 hours (a lot longer than rendering to an avi file). I then imported the project into DVD Architect and burned a DVD with about 40 chapters, including sub menus. This took a further 35 minutes of rendering time. The default bitrate was 8.000 Mbps and the file size that was generated by DVD for this 43-minute DVD was 1.89 GB. So this is certainly a substantial reduction on the avi file size for the same project of 9GB and solved my immediate problem, because I can now get one continuous video burned to DVD.

On this basis, I guess I could get about 90 minutes of MPEG 2 video (at the best quality video setting) onto a 4.7 GB DVD. Would this be about right?

If I had altered the bitrate to the maximum of 9.800 Mbps, would this have improved the quality of the video and increased the file size by much? I would have to say that the video quality on the DVD was very good, I couldn’t really see much difference on my TV between the quality of the video burned to DVD and the quality of the video I get from playing the DV tape back direct from the camera. But if I had a high definition TV, perhaps I would notice a difference.

With regard to outputting a 9GB avi file to DV tape, yes I can see this would be an advantage for subsequent editing, if required. People are advised not to buy a DVD camcorder if they are keen on doing computer video editing with a program such as Vegas 4.

Incidentally, the audio setting for DVD Architect was “automatic”, but do you think it would be better to set this to AC-3 stereo?

Thanks for your help.

Regards, Fred