rendering for dvda

dogwalker wrote on 10/15/2007, 7:22 PM

I appear to have VMS running reliably now, which is a huge relief, and I want to take my home movie and create a dvd now. I put several markers in the video, in VMS, where I plan to put chapters, and I have transitions at those markers as well.

I chose "Make a movie" and selected dvda widescreen, and it rendered the mpg and ac3 files. My movie is about 56 minutes, and took about an hour and 45 minutes to render. First of all, is that right? When I encode avi to mpg and audio using CCE, I can do 2-pass VBR at half real time (i.e. this render would have taken somewhere around half an hour), so I'm real surprised how slow VMS did it.

So, is that the best approach? I decided to try to render to AVI (and then use CCE to create the video and audio streams), but that was much slower, so I stopped it.

Tomorrow I'll run DVDA and see about actually creating the dvd. Woot!

Comments

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 10/15/2007, 9:18 PM

Your timing is pretty fast, actually.
Rendering to avi should be faster than to mpg2, because VMS does smartrendering on avi files (not so with mpg2). CCE may apply smartrendering to mpg2 too, which explains the higher speed.
I always choose 'dvd pal' instead of widescreen dvda, as this results in one mpg2 file, with the sound included, which allows normal playback on a computer. As I never print to tape, and never re-edit rendered movies, there is no use in rendering and storing the movie in avi format.

dogwalker wrote on 10/15/2007, 9:28 PM

Cool. I am going to try the avi, just out of curiousity.

I couldn't resist, so I messed with DVDA tonight, and it's pretty dang nice. I created an intro clip, and on the menu screen have three buttons:
- replay intro
- Play All
- Select Scenes (will likely rename)

And all goes well, except two things. One, the play quality is very good, so I definitely hope it's better on an actual dvd. Two, if I'm playing the movie in the simulator and press the Stop button, I don't go back to the top menu or to the scene selection menu, but to some default blue screen with no buttons. I'm trying to see what's going on there.

But all in all, this is great. I actually bought a second license of VMS because both my son and I were wanting to edit, and getting tired of taking turns! Now he's asking for an upgrade to Pro, wants me to pay half! Dang kid. :-)

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 10/16/2007, 1:18 AM

To increase render speed, use two drives: drive 1 contains the source material (video and stills), drive 2 is the target drive for your rendered movie. Drive 2 can be internal or external storage (usb drive or even usb-stick). With that setup, you get a 30 per cent profit, but only when you render to avi.
Rendering to avi should always be faster than rendering to mpg2, though, paradoxically, the file will be much bigger.

Here are some tips for DVDa:

Hint 1: don't forget to set the 'end action' of each menu to 'loop'. If not, navigation will stop after 30 secs (default).
Hint 2: Burn you first couple of trials on a dvd-/+rw. Will save a couple of bucks!
Hint 3: Do not delete your last dvd preparation, as DVDa is intelligent and will re-use (by copying) the files, if possible.
The behaviour of the simulator may not reflect the behaviour of your actual dvd player.
Hitting the stop button stops the dvd, hitting the menu button returns to the menu screen.

dogwalker wrote on 10/16/2007, 9:25 AM

Thanks, Ivan! Great tips. I do have two internal Sata drives and can do that. Thanks again!