There could be one thing you might want to check. When you go into the optimise window, select the video on the left side. Then on the right side, select the video again. Under recompress make sure that 'yes' is selected. Then you can hit 'fit to disk'.

Hope this works.

Hi Harold. I looked at bot yours and Worleys suggestions. I decided to give yours a go - and it worked. I couldnt suss out how to recompress- The table was confusing. The two green ticks for the video implied all was OK, whilst the menu had yellow exclaimation marks indicating the 0.5MB was a prob. Anyhow, i clicked video on left side then the video on right > recompress and fit to disc. This it did. Mind you this is a very long process.

It took 2.5 hours to transfer the video to PC
A further 3 1/2 hours to render into Arcitect
A further 4 hours to recompress and then however long it took to burn it onto the disc.

Ive tried it on my DVD and it worked OK. My Tv is crap so not sure if quality is any good - but perfectly watchable and listenable too so thanks

My next step is to go back, do some more editing of the video process. Perhpas I should split the two hour footage into 2 x 1 hours and put on 2 DVDs - what do you think is best?

Then Ive to try and suss out how to do menus/chapters in Architect so expect some more questions!

Thanks very much for yours and Worleys input.

Mark

Is this normal?

Hi Worley - THANK YOU for this advice - I really appreciate it. Ive replied in the message above as to what I've done so far and where Im heading now!

Mark

Recompression...

Recompression reduces the maximum bitrate. That may not mean much, but it is important.

MPEG video works, in essence, by ignoring elements that remain static between frames. Identical data can be discarded. Thus, where there is little action, the bit rate can be very low, and there will be little noticable quality deterioration.

However, in action scenes, there is a lot of difference between frames, so a higher bitrate is required to record those differences. If the bitrate is too low, then the quality will be poor - the video will appear blocky.

UK members: If you have Digital Television then check out the shopping channels on Sky - whenever there is a scene change, watch out for an attack of the blocks. On Freeview, check on E4 or ITV 4 for action scenes or scenes of rain falling onto water, and you will see the blaocks (not as extreme as on Sky).

Good luck,

Worley

Or try watching tennis on Eurosport - the movement of the players is ok, but the ball seems to move in a series of jerks - very unsettling!

Back to the topic - splitting 2 hours of video over 2 DVDs is probably a good idea. Amateur footage isn't high enough quality to allow the compression you need to fit it comfortably onto a single disk.

Ian G.

Hello
Two hours is not too much to put on a DVD. In my job I regularly put three hours with no problems. The original spec was nominally 135 mins. but is flexible depending on data rate.
You do not need to change frame size unless you go above 146 mins (4MB full res 720x576) with MPEG or Dolby audio. A bit less with LPCM audio as it is six times larger.
The problem is VMS can not specify the data rate which should be about 4MB in your case and use a much higer rate so it does not fit.
The answer is to export the file into Architect as an AVI file and let it do the rendering to MPEG2 using the 'Fit to Disc' option or specifying the data rate yourself. I would use about 4MB in you case.
This has been complained about here several times before.
Do not try and re-render an MPEG2 file to a different data rate as the results are usually awful. Strobing on movement is often the result.
If you search the forum you should find several referces to your issue.

Hi Malcom. This is very reassuring! I am still trying to get my head around file types etc though.

I basically understand that my mini DV tape when transferred to the Vegas Studio Platinum goes in as a format called DV-avi. I had no idea what settings to use so I used a sample of video for the software to select settings. Im in UK so we are on PAL. The properties is set up as:

PAL DV 720 x 576. Lower field first. Pixel aspect ratio 1.0926 25,000fps. Resolution rendering good. Blend both fields.
Audio: SAmple rate 44,100Hz, 16 bit depth, resample GOOd.

The resulting 2 hour 8minute edited video was to be sent to burn to DVD by pressing Make Movie. This created two file threads - an audio as a .wav and a video as a .mpg. The software then started rendering it straight away. This took 31/2 hours!When it arrived in architet it was miles to big (161%). I followed advise above and recompressed it to fit disc. Looking at the optimize DVD window, the now recompressed video appears on Video 1 tab to have a bitrate of only 2.894 - 4.37Gb in size. However general tab shows it having max bitrate 10.080 abitrate of 4.550 and total audio bitrate of 1.536. I think audio is stereo PCM - no idea thouh how I can be sure!

Frankly I am confused so if these figures mean anyhthing to you am i on the right track and what should I do to improve things as I really want to get best quality onto 1 DVD and i obviously have to go back to video edit to add crefits etc yet and before I go though pain of rendering want to be sure i can get it right!

You say that I need to export my file to architect as an avi file. Is this not what is happening? - I am really not sure. All that seems to happen when i export it by saying make video is it renders the edited video into mpg and avi files.

Thanks everyone for helping me through this. The Sony Vegeas books are no help at all.
Mark

Kind regards
Mark

When editing in VMS save as an avi file. An avi file is typically an uncompressed file. If you start with an avi file, edit, then save to an avi file; you won't lose any video quality. These format being uncompressed will be quite large, say thirteen gigs an hour. When you open DVDA, find this file in explorer. Select it to make a movie. Then go through the normal process of making a movie.

By making a movie from the avi file you are saving quality. The video is being compressed only once and at the maximum bitrate to fit on the disc. You are also saving the time of rendering into mpeg2 in VMS.

Just to give an example using my setup. If I were to render into mpeg2 in VMS, that render time for say a 1 hour video would be about 1 hour and 40 minutes. If I render into avi in VMS, the same video would be about 20 minutes. Rendering an avi into mpeg2 or re-rendering an mpeg2 in DVDA takes about the same amount of time. So you can save a significant amount of time by using DVDA to render the video into mpeg2 for the dvd.

Also if you haven't heard it seems to help the video quality if the file you are making a movie of and the folder to which you are saving your dvd are on separate drives.

Careful!

AVI is uncompressed but DV-AVI is compressed.

VMS should render as DV-AVI which will give you, as HaroldC says, 13 GB/hour. Uncompressed AVI will result in a file roughly 3x that size!

So many formats to get your head around...!

Worley

Hello Mark
I am in New Zealand and use PAL also.
All your settings are OK except the audio. I presume the video is not Widescreen.
Audio for DVD must be 48,000 Hz. DV cameras usually have two options for audio, 32,000Hz 4 Channel or 48,000Hz 2 Channel.
Stick to the 48,000Hz option and set your project to this as well.
If you have not used 48,000Hz when shooting don't worry as the project will convert it when you render.
An uncompressed audio file is an LPCM file with a .wav extension.
DVDs can use LPCM, MPEG1 Layer II or Dolby AC-3 audio in PAL countries.
LPCM audio is about six times larger than the other two so it leaves a little less room for the video. It is 1.536Mbps whereas the others are usually 224, 256 or 368kbps so your audio is LPCM.

While DV-AVI is compressed within each frame most people regard it as non-compressed as there is no compression between frames.
Each frame is a complete picture where as MPEG2 used for DVDs only has a complete frame every 15 frames. All the others contain difference or predictive information.
DV-AVI is what is recorded on the tape and it is merely transferred to your HDD when you capture.
I agree with the advice in HaroldC gives in his last message.
Currently you are rendering an MPEG2 file not an AVI.
Use either 'Make Movie' and 'Save it to your hard drive' or 'Render As' and Select 'Video for Windows' in 'Save as type' or 'Format' box and 'PAL DV' in Template box.
When you come to rendering in Architect use the Fit to Disc option.
This should result in about a 4MB average data rate for a job of your size. This is where the real compression happens.
Good luck.
Malcolm

Hi

Thanks for the info. Lots of replies to my questions so its time for me to think all this though and try a few things out. I picked up on your last question about using separate drives. I only have the 1 drive, 160Gb. It is a partitioned drive with all the operating system/program files etc on 30Gb C drive. The 130Gb D drive is for video of which I have about 60Gb available for video work. The default file paths for various files in software is always on C drive so I keep changing them over to D drive. IF I go for the uncompressed AVI route - which sounds like it will produce video at around 3x capacity of the DV-AVI - I am clearlly going to need a much bigger drive. Does anyone here use a plug in external drive and what do you recommend. Are they slower than the drive in the PC?

Thanks
Mark

You have plenty of room on your current drive.

Many of the replies (including mine) probably contain more information than you really needed, and have caused your mind to reel!

Honestly, don't get phased by the different formats. The best thng for you to do is edit your video, render as AVI, then import the finished project into DVDA, and allow that to do the final render to a suitable DVD format.

If you really want to learn more about the more techincal side of digital video, then have a look at www.videohelp.com. There is loads of information there.

Concentrate on producing a cleanly edited project, and then worry about digital video file formats!

Godo Luck,

Worley.

Mark, you do probably have enough storage unless you work on several projects at the same time. Should you decide to get an additional hard drive, get one that has a firewire connection. Some posters have said that there are problems using usb to connect the hard drive to the computer. But firewire is also faster. Additionally make sure the stoarge on the drive is NTFS. The FAT storage system severly limits the file size.

Harold

Question for Haroldc. You said in one of your posts in this thread that it helps the video quality if the file you are making a movie of and the folder to which you are saving your dvd are on separate drives. This is the first time that I have heard this. Can you elaborate further? I'm not sure how this could improve the quality of the video. Are you telling me I need to keep my raw avi files and my authored files on separate drives? Thanks in advance.

Billy

As I understand it, the reason for this is more to do with the capture stage than the editing/rendering/authoring stages.

If you have just one drive, then the operating system and video storage area are necessarily sharing the same space. When the computer needs to follow an instruction issued by the OS - possibly resulting in a read/write to the HDD - then it cannot simultaneously write other data (your video) to another section of the disc. This will result in dropped frames in the captured video.

With two drives, you can (within limits) happily capture video on one drive, whilst your OS merrily goea about its business on the other. No dropped frames.

Although I have two drives, one dedicated to video, I still avoid using the computer during the capture stage. Just one dropped frame is one too many.

Worley

Thanks , I knew one needed 2 different drives for the reason you stated ,one for the system stuff and one for the video work but that is not what Haroldc said. Oh well ,maybe I read it wrong.

Billy

Probably just mis-remembered what someone else had posted.

Harold

Hello fellow "student"... I'm always glad to read about someone else's progress with the program. I too, am new to the editing, but I've really learned from the guys that answer my often ignorant questions. Just a note to encourage and join in on the conversation from a distance. I'm writiong from Oklahoma. Where in the UK are you, by the way? Are you doing a lot of filming and would you consider "trading" some footage back and forth?
I do odd projects at churches and run a Christian Production studio complete with audio, video, Graphics and Artist Development. We also produce CD's and DVd's as product for artists.
Let me know if you are interested. I would love to have some footage of the English countryside and downtown shots of busy traffic and thingd like that.
John Lord
One Lord Productions
john@onelordproductions.com

English countryside?! The most picturesue part of England I've ever seen is the Isle of Wight. So many chocolate box cottages... Soryy, no footage of this though.

Downtown shots... hmm. We have out-of-town rather than downtown! Again, no footage of this on my tapes, as it's not the sort of thing I record (yet).

The only pro. videos I've worked on were an animation to demonstrate display screen health and safety, and a short educational movie about people with severe learning disabilities. I am planning to do a short feature on the identity of British television over the past 50 years...

Worley

Hello again... the former question about English footage was directed to Mark of Cambridge, but anyone that has interesting clips is welcome to contact me. I do a lot of "openings" for video projects and photo album projects. That means I'm always looking for 'reference ' material and unusual clips from other places. Oklahoma is a beautiful state and has a vast array of settings, but I am looking for "international flavor" in some of the future pieces that we have planned.
John

Free video clips from around the world (though mainly the US)?
http://www.footagefirm.com/freeclips.asp

I've downloaded a few of these free ones they offer -- just because I might use them someday? -- and about every month or so they send me an email announcing some other free clip they have available.

Set up a chromakey screen, and I could have footage of me standing on a beautiful beach in Hawaii, I guess.

Seriously, though, anybody making home "movies" (action movies, comedies, little satires, or whatever) could probably find a use for a few seconds of outdoor stock footage for an establishing shot. A few seconds of downtown New York at night, and some New York traffic, then cut to a scene of some people in an apartment, and nobody knows that your movie was actually shot in Oklahoma.

And, since they're "Free Royalty Free Stock Footage Clips" from an established stock footage firm, everything should be cleared and legal to use (though I probably haven't actually read whatever legal notices they have on the site).

Tim L

"Ah so... Grasshopper...." I will check out this site and get back to you.
It won't quite be like getting "original" footage shot bby and from another "indie Mon", if you know what I mean....Mon... (yes, I know....I'm crazy)...
Thanks for the info...
John