Rendering a multi-part AVCHD project to BluRay/DVD

Jillian wrote on 6/29/2012, 11:15 PM
I recently switched from DV to AVCHD (1920X1080 60i/29.97 NTSC). I’m using Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11 with Win7/32bit, on an Intel Core i7 - 2600K machine with 8GB DDR3 2200 memory. I have three 1TB SATA III drives as C, D, and E, all about 25% full. I have set up 4GB page-file caches on each drive for a total of 12GB.

After a disastrous experience with Avid Studio, I am now learning Vegas.

I am editing 10 hours of video down to about 90 minutes as six 12-20 minute projects. I want to combine these into one BluRay/DVD with a menu to Play Movie, and a sub-menu to play each of the segments. When I was using DV, I would render each of the segments to DV after they were completely edited, then bring the segments back into a new project, make any needed adjustments, set up the DVD and render the final project. From this I would burn any additional copies I needed.

This worked fine with DV because re-rendering didn’t cost much quality and was extremely quick with smart rendering. However, as we all know, the situation with AVCHD is very different and every rendering step results in lost quality. Also, Sony uses the two program paradigm of editing in one program and building/burning the disc in a second program which means you have to render before you build the disc.

My question - which would be better:

One - Render each segment to an appropriate Sony AVC or Main Concept Audio/Video format and bring the six rendered videos into a new project, make final adjustments, then render into a BluRay format and send to DVD Architect where the disc would be set-up and burned, or

Two - Render each segment directly to a BluRay format. Then, bring each rendered segment into DVD Architect and hope DVD Architect doesn’t have to re-render to fit the full project onto a disc. My worries here are that I wouldn’t be able to make many adjustments to the six segments if something such as sound levels, etc. end up being out of whack, and my even bigger worry if DVD Architect can actually be set-up to seamlessly play six segments when the Play Movie button is activated.

Two and one-half - I suppose a related question is whether it is better to make DVD versions of the final project by having DVD Architect render a DVD from the BluRay project, or should I go back to the original project(s) and render to a DVD compatible format.

Questions, Questions! So many possibilities when switching to a complex format like full HD AVCHD! I apologize for the length and complexity of this post. I’ve read through a lot of posts and have Steve Grisetti’s Movipix.com guide to Movie Studio, but I haven’t found answers to the problems facing me now.

Thanks for any help from all you experienced Vegas/AVCHD users.

Comments

TOG62 wrote on 6/30/2012, 2:31 AM
What I would do is render each segment separately and, in DVDA, create a Music/video Compilation containing all the clips. If you now insert a scene selection menu it will include thumbnails linked to each clip. Given the max. playing time of 2 hours I would not expect any re-rendering to occur.

The only downside of this method is that you can't create additional chapter points.

To make a DVD I would re-render to MPEG2. For best quality it might be necessary to use two discs or a double layer one.
D7K wrote on 6/30/2012, 12:07 PM
Welcome. I too had the AS experience and I can tell you that VMS is a very stable and useful system. If you something goes wrong here (except for keyframes with certain titling) you can almost besure that it is an equipment or user error.

Did you get the production suite? If so you will find SoundForge a very useful program.

Also if you decided you want Vegas Pro Sony often runs upgrade specials (I could upgrade now and actually save the the price of VMS Production suite I bought on Amazon) and most of the learning you do in VMS is similar to VegasPro.

I think you made a good choice.