I appreciate your quick reply. My limited computer lingo fails me to comprehend, which is why I chose ScreenBlast for ease of use.
But yes, the my destination file is FAT32. I didn't know. I bought this external drive for all my stills and videos. Don't know the advantage or disadvantages of FAT32 or NTFS. Can it be changed?

Well after messing around I tried to render again but now its saying that files are missing. I may have to do over. Time is getting short. People are waiting for this production and I'm starting to stress-out.

I should have mentioned on the original post, after sending rendered movie to SonicDVD it shows that I used only about one-fourth of capacity with about 3GB free space.

>Don't know the advantage or disadvantages of FAT32 or NTFS. Can it be changed?

If you're running under XP, it's very easy - instructions are here. There's also some blurb on the different file systems, but NTFS is generaly regarded as a better choice.

>Well after messing around I tried to render again but now its saying that files are missing.

Are these MS or source files? If they're MS files you should probably reinstall - if they're source files MS should give you the option of telling it where the files are.

>I should have mentioned on the original post, after sending rendered movie to SonicDVD it shows that I used only about one-fourth of capacity with about 3GB free space.

Is the "rendered movie" the 30 minutes worth you produced before the rendering stopped? How big is the file?


Ian G.

You also don't mention what you're rendering your project as, Jaskat.

If you're trying to produce a DVD, expect your computer to have to produce a lot of temp and auxiliary files -- and with a project as long as yours, you're likely going to need a good 30-40 gig or more of FREE hard drive space. Stalled renders are often the result of your simply running out of room for "scratch disk" space!

Jaskat,
As a guide (And I do mean ball park numbers) your output file could be causing you some heartache.
When you render as
.AVI 20 minutes is abt 4 GB size
.MPEG2 20 minutes is abt 700 MB
.MPEG1 20 minutes is abt 250 MB

Now, e.g. If you use FAT32 file system, the output file (if AVI) keeps building until it becomes 4GB size and stops as the windows O/S does not allow the file to get bigger. From reading your mail, your external drive is abt 12GB size

You are using SonicDVD (so you should be using SMS 3.0), remember like grisetti said, when you output to a DVD authoring tool, it has to make other files into a working directory.
Try to have at least 30-40 GB space free on the directory where everything is place to have lesser heartache

Cheers

So I should capture and save it as MPEG?

Thanks, I really appreciate you all.

>So I should capture and save it as MPEG?

No! MPEG is a poor format for editing - save your files in the highest quality you can for as long as you can. This normaly means saving the captured clips as avi files. The final render will be to MPEG2 if you're making a DVD, but you'll still need to keep some working space free.

Ian G.

And, since your hard drive space is apparently small, keep your projects very short or your renders will crash.

OK
I went out and got me a new external drive with more than enough space (man, these bad boys aren't cheap).

Am now able to render to whole thing, though I trimmed it down to 1 hour and 45 minutes.

New problem. Sonic MyDVD will not burn it. After rendering and sending it to MyDVD it loads everything. I'm able to preview but the Burn button is not highlighted.

Is 1 hour 45 min video too large for this 4.7GB DVD disc? I thought it could hold 2 hours!

A 4.7GB DVD can only hold 4.37 GB of data as expressed by Windows - so, go to the folder where your IFO and VOB files are, and if explorer says the contents are greater in size than 4.37GB, no, you aren't going to be able to get it on a DVD.

It's all about bitrate. You can get 2 hours of video on a DVD with PCM audio, only if you lower your average video bitrate to 3,500 Kb/s (which is pretty darn low and will likely result in very poor quality).

if you have access to an AC3 encoder and encode the audio at 192 Kb/s, then you can raise the video bitrate to 4,800 Kb/s for 2 hours of materialm which is right on the edge of acceptability in terms of quality.

I personally do not like to put much more than 1.5 hours of material (with AC3 audio) on a DVD - that lets me run 6,500 Kb/s, which is very reasonable quality (IMO). With PCM you'd need to drop that to 1 hour 15 minutes for a video bitrate of 6,500 Kb/s.

There's a very nice bitrate calculator at: http://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm

For PCM audio, use the value of 1536 in the audio drop down list.

--Scott
p.s. for 1 hour 45 minutes w/PCM you need to lower the video bitrate to 4,200 or so (assuming no complex menus).

In short, what I'm trying to do is not going to happen!? I can't cut-out any more of this project or it will lose some of its context.

I'm trying to comprehend what you're saying about bitrate and PCM and AC3.....my head hurts....I gotta go lie down.

I appreciate all the help from you all.

Maybe I'll go the old fashion way. Play it into my DVD Recorder and just pause-n-play. But that's no fun, no titles and no credits.....no way!

Thanks again all.

>I'm trying to comprehend what you're saying about bitrate and PCM and AC3.....my head hurts....I gotta go lie down.

It's a joy, isn't it!

Each picture in your movie is defined by bits - the more you have the more detailed you can make those pictures. Hence the higher the bitrate the better the quality.

Regarding PCM and AC3, you're having to work with the DVD standards. For a NTSC DVD you can have your audio encoded as either PCM (WAV) or AC3. WAV is free, but it uses a lot of space on your disk - AC3 is much smaller, but you'll need to pay for a separate encoder.

There's another possibility though - cheat! The DVD standard for NTSC says that mp2 audio isn't supported, but that doesn't mean it wont work - it all depends on your player. If you render in MS using the DVD NTSC template it will produce mp2 audio for you - small and free. Try making a very short DVD and see how you get on.

Ian G.

I think he is quite confused as I "Believe" he is using ScreenBlast MS which has MyDVD bundled.
I had this combination before upgrading to VMS + DVDAS

MyDVD does not have an option of variable bitrate during DVD burning like DVDAS hence he is lost.