Rendering-88% and counting..and counting

kman17 wrote on 8/15/2006, 4:55 PM
Okay darn it, I admit it! I'm a novice! Now give me my candle and well wishes!
I've been trying to burn a compilation of home video's into a best of series.
When rendering the video to import into DVDA the program renders up to 88% and stops every time. The status block shows 88% with no time remaining but continues to count for time expired. I strongly believe that it is stalling at a long slideshow I installed with music and about 150 pictures. Most of the pictures were downloaded at about 150dpi. Any ideas on what I can do to get through this?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 8/15/2006, 5:44 PM
150dpi means absolutely nothing. How big are the pictures? Are they 200x300 pixels? Or are they more like 2000x3000? Larger pictures can slow Vegas down substantially.

Look for any effects, compositing, pan/crop, track motion, titles, color correction, etc. that you may have added at that point. Some of the effects slow rendering by an astounding amount. Combined with other effects or movement makes matters vastly worse.

One thing you could try doing is rendering just that slideshow section separately to a new .avi file then replacing the slideshow in your project with the new .avi file.
johnmeyer wrote on 8/16/2006, 7:23 AM
Depending on your version of Vegas, there was a bug dealing with large numbers of high resolution photos. As Kelly (Chienworks) states, the only thing that matters is the total number of pixels in the picture. If you have NTSC DV video, then your project is 720x480. Unless you are zooming into the pictures using pan/crop (don't use track motion to zoom photos), then your photos don't need to be much larger than 800x600.

The solution to your problem is to change the resolution of some or all of your pictures, using your photo editing program. You will find two related controls in your photo editing. One changes the dots per inch. This doesn't actually reduce the number of pixels and is therefore useless for this problem. The other actually reduces the number of pixels. Make sure to save your original photos before you do this, because this will result in a picture of lower quality.

The other solution is to upgrade to Vegas 6.0d.
kman17 wrote on 8/16/2006, 7:42 AM
Thanks gents.
I had been trying to render as mpeg 2 up until last night. I decided to render as an .avi file last night and it worked fine. I am using Vegas 6.0 Platinum addition. I wanted to render in the highest quality possible but the .avi looked better than I thought it would. I've burnt tons of .avi files in my time and have never been overly impressed by their quality but this doesn't appear so bad.
I really didn't want to have to adjust the resolution or size of the pictures since the slideshow portion had around 165 pictures.
I still may render the video and audio seperately eventually. I think that may allow me to do the video in a higher quality while actually doing AC-3 for the audio. I've done plenty of Movie construction before but I am rather new to Vegas/Sony.
Do you think rendering them seperately would perhaps make things a bit more smooth?
johnmeyer, two things.
Was a patch developed for the bug and do you know which versions it effected?
Thanks!
Former user wrote on 8/16/2006, 7:47 AM
You can use programs like Irfanview or Xnview to batch convert the photos. They are both free and work extremely well.

If you are rendering to a DV AVI or an Uncompressed AVI, it will be MUCH higher quality than an MPEG2 file.

Dave T2
kman17 wrote on 8/16/2006, 8:42 AM
"If you are rendering to a DV AVI or an Uncompressed AVI, it will be MUCH higher quality than an MPEG2 file"

Really? I always thought .avi was pretty much the bottom of the barrel. Most studio movies take up about 700,000kbs on .avi while taking up much more on anything else.
If I want to use ac-3 for the audio, what would you suggest for the video?
Jay Gladwell wrote on 8/16/2006, 8:49 AM
I always thought .avi was pretty much the bottom of the barrel.

Nope, you're looking at the barrel upside down.

Render using the MC mpg2 file and under "Template" select "DVD Architect NTSC Video Stream."


Former user wrote on 8/16/2006, 9:20 AM
It depends upon two things

1) The Codec used for the AVI
2) The Bitrate

An MPEG2 is the compression used for DVD video. A Digital Cam such as MiniDV or Digital 8 create a DV AVI. This is the native format and is a much higher bitrate than MPEG. It is also less compresssion and uses an Interframe compression rather than Intraframe, which is what MPEG uses.

Now, you can make a low quality AVI is you use a low bitrate Indeo or something like that. But for your purposes, a DV AVI or uncompressed will give the best you can get.

Dave T2
johnmeyer wrote on 8/16/2006, 11:20 AM
Was a patch developed for the bug and do you know which versions it effected?

Vegas 6.0d is the "patch." If you are using version 5, I don't think it had as much of a problem.
kman17 wrote on 8/16/2006, 12:13 PM
"An MPEG2 is the compression used for DVD video. A Digital Cam such as MiniDV or Digital 8 create a DV AVI. This is the native format and is a much higher bitrate than MPEG. It is also less compresssion and uses an Interframe compression rather than Intraframe, which is what MPEG uses."

I'm using a Sony DVD-201. It seems that the .avi worked pretty well.
kman17 wrote on 8/17/2006, 10:56 AM
Argggghghghghg! I tried to make a menu based dvd in DVDA and found that the avi file is far too big. All I had done was add a menu main page with one picture and one button w/ the movie included and it told me I was at 10.3GB!!!!!!!!! Could this be that I used the wrong template? kman's getting upset!
Chienworks wrote on 8/17/2006, 11:27 AM
DVDA's size estimation is often very wrong. Try preparing the project anyway and see what size the finished .VOB files are. They might fit.
johnmeyer wrote on 8/17/2006, 11:37 AM
If you import the AVI into DVDA, tell DVDA to shrink to fit. Better way, however, is to render to MPEG-2 and then render sound to AC-3, both from Vegas. Use a Bitrate Calculator to determine the average bitrate needed to make the MPEG-2 rendered in Vegas fit into DVD Architect.
kman17 wrote on 8/17/2006, 12:07 PM
Will I lose quality by rendering to mpeg2?
kman17 wrote on 8/17/2006, 3:27 PM
I have Vegas Movie Studio+DVD Platinum which to my understanding doesn't have AC-3. What's my next option?
Chienworks wrote on 8/17/2006, 4:51 PM
Your video will be MPEG2 by the time it's on the DVD. DVDs are MPEG2 format, so if you don't render to MPEG2 then DVDAS will do it for you.

How long is your whole project, including menues? More than 90 minutes? Less than 60?