In reverse order:

The two processes can be combined. You have the option to select "NTSC DVD" as the render selection. If you do this, the audio and video will be combined into a single MPEG file, which may be used as a media file in DVDA2. The audio will be rendered to AC-3 or PCM as part of the DVD preparation step. One way or the other, the audio must be rendered, either from Vegas or in DVDA2. And in either case, it's not a long process, compared with rendering your video.

If you want to render while still in Vegas, you have to go back and select the audio file type you wish to use. You don't have to worry about matching the audio to your rendered video afterwards. Simply open both files in DVDA2. Works great, lasts a long time...

I agree that this aspect is a little confusing at first, but it's largely a by-product of the enormous flexibility that's built into Vegas/DVDA2. There are several different ways to accomplish some tasks.

"The two processes can be combined. You have the option to select "NTSC DVD" as the render selection." this is the long way about it. DVD1 or 2 will re-encode the format to match acc3 needs. acc3 rendering in vegas is real fast. Follow the suggestion from the first post, encode aac3 from selected vegas time line, then encode meg2 for dvd arch output from vegas rendering options,( using the same timeline used for acc3). This is the fastest approach, because dvda will accept the meg2 abd acc3 files, the encodeing in dvda appears to be a lot slower.


AJP

Rendering audio into MPEG, then reconverting to AC-3 in DVD-A? I don't know if that's a good idea. First, the audio is then being recompressed twice: once as MPEG(lossy) and then uncompressed and recompressed as AC-3(lossy again, somewhat). From that point of view I would not go this route.

Also, and this I'm not sure about, if the audio is encoded into the video, then it must be stripped out of the video by DVD-A. Does this have any negative consequences? Does this cause the video to be re-rendered(bad)? If it does not cause the video to be rerendered, then what? Does it leave the audio(unused) in the video stream? If so, this wastes DVD space. If it actually can strip out the audio without hurting the video, it's not so bad, although you will increase your rendering time because it will have to perform this process.

I render to MPEG and AC-3. It's not that much of a pain, and I think it's a much better way to do it. The limiting factor, I think, that prevents your request from being implemented is that every type of rendering in Vegas only produces ONE file. So, audio and video can go together if they are in one file, but you can't create separate audio and video with a single render step.

-Jayson

If you are comfortable with scripts, here is a general one that lets you do the two separate renders (MPEG and AC-3) in one operation. This script lets you render the same project, selection, or ranges to as many different formats as you like. There are much simpler scripts that merely do the two renders for DVD Architect, and nothing else. I don't have the links to those scripts.

Here is the link:

Batch Render Script

This script was written for Vegas 4.0, up through version d. If you have a later version of Vegas 4, or if you have Vegas 5, then you need to change this line in the script:

import SonicFoundry.Vegas;

to:

import Sony.Vegas;