Hi j-v , thanks for the suggestion. I should have mentioned, my source files are AVI.

I have 70 files to deal with so my aim at this point in time is to just paste the footage into logical chunks. Once that point of pain is passed I was considering adding chapters and the odd transition etc, hence purchasing Vagas Movie Studio in the first place. If it can't handle files of this size then I guess I'll simply have to ask for a refund but I am holding out hope that some of you experts out there can identify my issues.

Testing complete - all attempts have been to create a Blu-ray image to NAS.

.ac3 makes no difference - there is no sound

Storing the source files locally (drive C:) didn't stop the screen turning black.

One more test - output ISO to local drive (was NAS)

I'll keep you posted.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-to-post-mediainfo-and-vegas-pro-file-properties--104561/

Why do you need to create such a huge file? Better to leave them in chunks because they will be cumbersome, if not impossible to work with later.

Vegas does not do stream-copy stiching. It renders each and every frame. Have you tried the VideoRedo trial?

Capacity for standard BluRay is 25 GB. You will spend much time compressing your source down to that.

Why don't you tell us what your need and goal is? The gymnastics you are putting yourself through are unknown to me in 18 years of production.

Well I'll be... Source and Dest on a local drive and video and audio is fine on a 10 minute clip.

I'll go for the 3.5 hour render now - Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!

URL? It is a mapped drive that I was referencing. I'll do a quick test using the URL for the destination if the software allows me to do so. BRB

Kindly give me a break and breathe out. Url is a placeholder i use for sixty seconds until I copy my link from my signature. You may find some more useful information there, as well as rereading my completed reply, and posting your file properties as requested in my 'Url'. Good luck.

@Musicvid - Sorry :-) I only saw the text Url and thought it was a reply/question, sorry.

My goal is to move 40 HI-8 video tapes taken from the 90's onwards on to the NAS and this I have done. I am sure that she-who-must-be-obeyed would like titles, chapters and probably transitions as well and so I bought Movie Studio 16. I thought as the first step in using this software I would see if I could at least stitch a number of tapes (one holiday) into one huge file. Once I had seen that this was possible I was going to start editing "for real".

I have fallen at the first hurdle - these black videos and no sound. It looks like VS is intolerant of file I/O stutters - this is fine, as long as I know. I'll do the huge render overnight with local source and local destination and see whether this works.

Thanks for the link to Mediainfo - it's now installed.

Thanks for your time,

Ian

In my experience, rendering to and from a network storage drive is dicey and is the cause of your problem, period. The NAS architecture is notorious for being impractically slow for nonlinear editing. Even good bilateral throughout is subject to interference and pinched pipes.

Your best render template for SD source is Magix AVC Internet 480p. NTSC or PAL? Widescreen or 4:3? That's part of the reason I ask you to actually post those neat file properties. It's kind of a requirement around here.

I still suggest you create multiple files, segmented in a logical order, as I suspect she may need some breaks in the 3,5 hour marathon you have planned for her, Women are funny like that. Apple-style mp4 chapters are not practical for you at this point in your learning curve. Mpeg-2 for optical disc will take up fully 5 times more space. But you "could" put it all on an SD BluRay.

I sincerely hope my experience has been some help to you, although I can tell you need to figure everything out for yourself from <null>. In case you ever get stuck, remember I said this isn't our first rodeo. Welcome to the forum.

Thank you for your grace and patience while I corrected the typos in this response. You may read it now.

Hi Musicvid, I am surprised at the speed and quality of the responses from this forum. I thought MAGIX were just trying to offload their issues to this forum but thanks to your input I am indeed re-thinking my strategy.

At the end of the day - happy wife, happy life :oD

The handoff goes both ways, I'm pleased to say. The level of response may taper off a bit as things get back to normal. I changed my template recommendation, as Magix has changed theirs.

Rats - the overnight render goes black after about 30 minutes and there's no sound at all. I must be hitting a limit somewhere - the fun part is trying to find it. I'll split the videos into 3 x 1 hourish chunks to see this this helps.

I'll keep this post updated in case others hit the same problem.

Well a video of 1hr 23m failed to render to Blu-ray iso image - same issues - black screen and no sound.

I am running out of ideas.

General
ID                                       : 0 (0x0)
Complete name                            : H:\BDMV\STREAM\00000.m2ts
Format                                   : BDAV
Format/Info                              : Blu-ray Video
File size                                : 4.20 GiB
Duration                                 : 1 h 23 min
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 7 188 kb/s
Maximum Overall bit rate                 : 48.0 Mb/s

Video
ID                                       : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4
Format settings                          : CABAC / 2 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 2 frames
Format settings, GOP                     : M=2, N=12
Codec ID                                 : 27
Duration                                 : 1 h 23 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 5 359 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 16.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.108
Stream size                              : 3.13 GiB (75%)

Audio
ID                                       : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Big / Signed
Muxing mode                              : Blu-ray
Codec ID                                 : 128
Duration                                 : 1 h 23 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 919 MiB (21%)

@Ian-Jones Please confirm that when you say your files are avi they are actually DV-avi.

You appear to be upscaling to 1920x1080 which in my view is a waste of time. Players generally do a better job of upscaling than software.

Faced with your task I would run the files through VMS converting them to compliant mpeg2 files which I'd load into DVDA. DVDA should put them into the iso without recompression. The mpeg2 files become m2ts on your Blu-ray disk but they are the original SD files and Blu-ray players will upscale them to 1080 (that's assuming the player is set up to output 1080).

Hi Eric - thanks for your interest in my issue. I used Sony Video Capture to read all the tapes. Thanks for the upscaling hint - it will increate the rendering speed I hope.

A mediainfo of the 1st source file of 5 I am working on shows:

General
Complete name                            : C:\temp\to be processed\1992 - Egypt 1-1.avi
Format                                   : AVI
Format/Info                              : Audio Video Interleave
Commercial name                          : DV
Format profile                           : OpenDML
File size                                : 3.10 GiB
Duration                                 : 14 min 49 s
Overall bit rate mode                    : Constant
Overall bit rate                         : 29.9 Mb/s
TAPE                                     : Alex up to 8.5 months
TCOD                                     : 1671868000000
TCDO                                     : 1680767200000
VMAJ                                     : 4
VMIN                                     : 0
STAT                                     : 22248 0 3.433162 1
DTIM                                     : 0 0

Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : DV
Codec ID                                 : dvsd
Codec ID/Hint                            : Sony
Duration                                 : 14 min 49 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 24.4 Mb/s
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 25.000 FPS
Standard                                 : PAL
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Interlaced
Scan order                               : Bottom Field First
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 2.357
Stream size                              : 2.98 GiB (96%)

Audio
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Little / Signed
Codec ID                                 : 1
Duration                                 : 14 min 49 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 024 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 32.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 109 MiB (3%)
Alignment                                : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration                     : 280  ms (7.00 video frames)
Interleave, preload duration             : 280  ms

Your way of working than has be:

1. Load one or more of those files into VMS 16 and controle that your projectproperties are this

2. Your project now has to look like this

3. Go to "Make Movie" and choose this

I chose a 50 minute clip as the screen usually goes black before this. It's rendering now (and it's *fast*). So fast in fact that it completed in 7 mins (and not more than an hour).

The result: Perfect!

1 Hour of video used 2GB of DVD so I'll put all 5 files into VMS (3.5 hours), split them in half and burn two DVD's. My hopes are raised!

Thanks j-v

But what is your goal with those made DVD's?
For archiving, viewing and use in modern edit programs there is a much better and simpeler way.

My goal was to digitise the tapes in case they were damaged etc. Also moving from serial to random media makes viewing easier. Although disk space is not an issue, transferring in excess to 50GB across a wireless link when viewing can cause stutters and so I thought rendering them down to DVD or Blu-ray (as long as the quality does not drop below acceptable levels) would be the answer.

I'm always open to simplicity.

Many years already I loaded all my older videofiles (recorded from tape a.s.o.) in Handbrake to convert them to the progressive AVC MP4 file. Plays everywhere from harddisc, USB stick, a.s.o., but I use them also in Vegas to make short movies from a part of my history (1972-2000)
Handbrake is free and can be downloaded here: https://handbrake.fr/

Files of the type you want to put on DVD or BD I load and than use this setting

Selected preset is "Production Standard" which I modify to make the deïnterlaced file progressive with this deïnterlace setting

I put my videos on disks, usb thumbdrives and hard drives! It's like wearing a belt and two pairs of braces!