Dave, I made the same mistake. How in the $#$% do you pick the EXACT frame you want while setting chapters in DVD-A? If you're using version C they fixed it to be the same as in Vegas as far as advancing single frames. Before update c, it was more clumsy.

1. drag your clip to work area. Double click, so you see the timeline.
2. move your cursor anywhere in the timeline. Keep HOLDING DOWN LEFT MOUSE as you drag.
3. To advance forward or backward a single frame at a time, hold down Atl and either the left or right keyboard arrow key.

When rendering to MPEG2, Vegas uses a separate file for storing the marker information. It is NOT stored within the MPEG file. However, Procoder does not create this additional file so, if you want to use Procoder, you will have to manually set the chapter points in DVDA AFTER importing the file.

guys - thanks for your help - all good info - btw, I do have ver C of DVDA and Vegas 4.0.

I will try the alt key thing - nevermind the exact frame, I coulnd't get it even close...

Since vegas seems to save the markers in a separate file, I wonder if I 'render as' but really frameserve to procoder, whether (a) vegas would still save the markers if I had them set and (b) if it did, would they be in the same place. I will try this - without trying it, I hope it would still save them but am not optimistic that it could put them in the same place as vegas would no longer know my gop structure...any thoughts before I throw away a few hours on this?

and, thanks for your help - these boards are really great

I set chapters in DVDA with mpegs all the time - all I do is bring up the window and zoom it in so i have about 2 mins of video represented in the window - then I scroll forward to approximately where I want the chapter. If you click on the timeline above the video it will bring up the scene in the preview. Then simply arrow left or right to get the exact frame you want and insert the chapter. I will say that DVDA does have to load the scene previews in the timeline when I do scroll to where I want to put a chapter and it takes 10 secs or so to catch up once I stop scrolling. Once it catches up I can arrow left or right with a solid scrub preview to find the exact frame I need. I will also say that as I go farther into the mpg - say and hour into it or more - that DVDA takes longer to bring up the frame previews - maybe 15-20 sec instead of the 10 sec. I usually only set 10-12 chapters in a 90 min video so its not that painful to me. I run on a p4 2.6 with 1gb ram fyi. Good Luck

You can get them stay after you render? I cannot seem to. How do you "render using the save markers option"? I also have Vegas 4 and DVDa

T40

When you click on "render as" in Vegas, a box comes up where you select your file name, folder, output format, template etc. Down at the bottom is a line that says "Save project markers in media file", put a check mark in the box next to it to select it. This will save the marker info from your veg file to the hard disk along with the render file. (The veg file is the Vegas project file) If you don't check that box, the markers exist only within the veg file and are not available to DVDA.

It is kind of misleading in that the marker info is saved in a separate file, not in the rendered file. The marker file will have the same name as the render file but have a .sfl extension. When you load the rendered file back into Vegas or into DVDA, it automatically checks for the existence of that file and that is how it transfers markers from Vegas to DVDA.

In DVDA you can force it to write out the markers you place in a clip within DVDA by selecting the little disk icon at the bottom of the DVDA timeline, this will save the markers to a .sfl file just like Vegas does. Now when you load this clip into a different DVDA project, it will have these markers. If you don't click this button, you will see markers only when you view the clip in the current project, not in any other project, because the markers will only be saved within the current project file.

Next to the Save markers button is one for loading markers, be careful with this button!!! It loads the .sfl markers back into the project overwritting any changes you made. This is how you would undo such changes.

This .sfl file is the vehicle for moving markers into DVDA and I do believe it is proprietary, so it will not work with other programs. The DV spec does allow for marker data to be put into the clip file. If you select the Save project markers in media file and render to DV, Vegas will put markers in the media file. But it can not actually use that data when you load the rendered clip back in, it will show the marker, but not as a Vegas type moveable marker. I don't know why it can't, because DVDA can do it. The same clip loaded into DVDA will show markers you can move. Like wise if you create markers in DVDA and save them, then load the clip in Vegas, it shows the markers just like those embedded in DV files, you can't move them. Strange that DVDA can use them but not Vegas, the fact DVDA does shows it can be done. So the Save markers option is basically a one way deal, Vegas to DVDA, not DVDA back to Vegas. But you can move markers from DVDA in one project, back to the clip (well to the .sfl file) where they can now be used by any other DVDA project. This .sfl file gets around the fact you can't save markers in an mpeg clip.

I don't know how the marker data is represented in the .sfl file, but I have noticed it is overlayed in Vegas. If you display a clip with a .sfl file on the Vegas timeline, then go into windows explorer and change the .sfl filename, the markers immediately disappear. So if you rendered first to mpeg, to cause the creation of the .sfl file, then frameserved to another program, rendered with that program, then loaded that clip back into Vegas, as long as the filename is the same, it should re-apply the marker overlay. I can't try that because I don't have any frameserving software to test it with. It might then be possible that DVDA would behave the same way, allowing the .sfl file to represent markers within a file rendered by another program. But if that render resulted in a file with a different structure of I and P frames, then the marker translation could become confused. Again, don't have any means by which to try that.

great info, thanks..! I'll have to fool around w/ that. the thing I can't figure out in your last paragraph is that if I do render w/ vegas (using their mainconcept) to create the marker file, then re-render (assuming w/ same specs but actually I want VBR and I can't remember whether vegas offers vbr and I assume it wouldn't be exactly the same), would the marker file still be appropriate - that is, does it contain the h:m:s.frame (which might not translate) or how does it mark them? I can only assume that the markers would only be usable (e.g. in the same place) w/ the same render that creates the mpeg. I'll try the frameserve / markers on my next project and try to post the results - may take a week or so as I'm not yet starting on it.

just an update for anyone interested -- I tried what jeffcrow suggested (although I did it in reverse order)...created an m2p file from my project in vegas by frameserving to procoder. then created an mpg file in vegas by rendering to the dvda template (although I modify it to add sound so it's not an elemental stream which dvda can't take - not sure why the template would create a file that dvda can't load but that's another post).

when I load the mpg file created with the dvda template the markers show up. when I load the m2p file created in procoder, the markers aren't there (the marker file doesn't look like it's created from the frameserve I use even w/ the check box checked).

I then copied my vegas created marker file & renamed it to match my procoder rendered file but dvda wouldn't load it (no error msg, just nothing happens). again, structure of my 2 rendered files is different so I can't see how it would work but I did want to give it a try.

so, I guess if I want to render outside vegas I need to add markers in DVDA, which is too bad b/c I like to add them in vegas to match the splits/transitions, etc. so I can name the chapeters as I'm doing the editing itself.

Any comments on this would be appreciated, from sofo or otherwise.

You don't need to "turn on sound" in the DVDA render templates. The DVDA templates create a MPG file that is NOT elementary - simply contains a blank audio stream.

thanks - this is a little OT but where do I get my audio stream? Would I pull in the avi file then let DVDA render it into AC3 (w/o rendering it into mpeg layer 2 first then ac3?)

Do a separate render in Vegas and choose the AC3 template to get your audio stream.

If your procoder-rendered file is a program stream MPEG-2 (if it loads in DVDA, it is), you can load the file in the Vegas TRIMMER, add and save makers there...and the markers will show up in DVDA.

swampler/jetdv - thanks. what's the difference between:
render in vegas w/ DVDA template to get video w/ blank audio, then render the AC3 template to get audio stream

vs.

render in vegas w/ dvda template modified by me to add an audio stream, then have dvda render the audio into ac3.?

seems to me that w/ the first example I can see the file sizes better (blank audio stream must be small?) but I have to render each file's audio separately, whereas the second way, which I have been using, lets me encode into ac3 in batch when I make my dvd in dvda (in optimize, I see it wanting to convert all my audio to ac3 which I like b/c it's smaller).